If not, I swear we'll pull up all our benches,
Not for your sakes, but for our orange-wenches:
For you thrust wide sometimes; and many a spark,
That misses one, can hit the other mark.
This makes our boxes full; for men of sense
Pay their four shillings in their own defence;
That safe behind the ladies they may stay,
Peep o'er the fan, and judge the bloody fray.
But other foes give beauty worse alarms;
The posse poetarum's up in arms:
No woman's fame their libels has escaped;
Their ink runs venom, and their pens are clapped.
When sighs and prayers their ladies cannot move,
They rail, write treason, and turn Whigs to love.
Nay, and I fear they worse designs advance,
There's a damn'd love-trick now brought o'er
from France;
We charm in vain, and dress, and keep a pother,
Whilst those false rogues are ogling one another.
All sins besides admit some expiation;
But this against our sex is plain damnation.
They join for libels, too, these women-haters;
And, as they club for love, they club for satires;
The best on't is, they hurt not: for they wear
Stings in their tails; their only venom's there.
'Tis true, some shot at first the ladies hit,
Which able marksmen made, and men of wit:
But now the fools give fire, whose bounce is louder:
And yet, like mere train-bands, they shoot but
powder.
Libels, like plots, sweep all in their first fury;
Then dwindle like an ignoramus jury
Thus age begins with touzing and with tumbling,
But grunts, and groans, and ends at last, in fumbling.
SPOKEN BY MR. HART AT THE ACTING OF THE SILENT WOMAN.
No poor Dutch peasant, wing'd with all his fear, Flies with more haste, when the French arms draw near,
Than we with our poetic train come down,
For refuge hither, from the' infected Town.
Heaven for our sins this summer has thought fit
To visit us with all the plagues of wit.
A French troop first swept all things in its way;
But those hot Monsieurs were too quick to stay:
Yet, to our cost, in that short time, we find
They left their itch of novelty behind.
The Italian Merry-Andrews took their place,
And quite debauch'd the stage with lewd-grimace.
Instead of wit and humour, your delight
Was there to see two hobby-horses fight:
Stout Scaramoucha with rush lance rode in,
And ran a-tilt at Centaur Harlequin.
For love you heard how amorous asses bray'd,
And cats in gutters gave their serenade.
Nature was out of countenance, and each day
Some new-born monster shown you for a play;
But when all fail'd, to strike the stage quite dumb,
Those wicked engines call'd Machines are come.
Thunder and lightning now for wit are play'd,
And shortly scenes in Lapland will be laid :
Art-magic is for poetry profess'd;
And cats and dogs, and each obscener beast,
To which Egyptian dotards once did bow,
Upon our English stage are worshipp'd now.
Witchcraft reigns there, and raises to renown
Macbeth, and Simon Magus of the Town;
Fletcher's despised, your Jonson's out of fashion,
And wit the only drug in all the nation.
In this low ebb our wares to you are shown;
By you those staple authors' worth is known;
For wit's a manufacture of your own.
When you, who only can, their scenes have praised,
We'll boldly back, and say, their price is raised.
OFT has our poet wish'd this happy seat
Might prove his fading Muse's last retreat:
I wonder❜d at his wish, but now I find
He sought for quiet, and content of mind,
Which noiseful towns and courts can never know,
And only in the shades, like laurels, grow.
Youth, ere it sees the world, here studies rest,
And Age, returning thence, concludes it best.
What wonder if we court that happiness
Yearly to share, which hourly you possess ;
Teaching e'en you, while the vex'd world we show,
Your peace to value more, and better know?
"Tis all we can return for favours past,
Whose holy memory shall ever last;
For patronage from him whose care presides
O'er every noble art, and every science guides:
Bathurst! a name the learn'd with reverence know,
And scarcely more to his own Virgil owe;
Whose age enjoys but what his youth deserved,
To rule those Muses whom before he served.
His learning, and untainted manners too,
We find, Athenians, are derived to you:
Such ancient hospitality there rests
In yours, as dwelt in the first Grecian breasts,
Whose kindness was religion to their guests.
Such modesty did to our sex appear,
As, had there been no laws, we need not fear,
Since each of you was our protector here:
Converse so chaste, and so strict virtue shown,
As might Apollo with the Muses own.
Till our return we must despair to find
Judges so just, so knowing, and so kind.
OUR hero's happy in the play's conclusion;
The holy rogue at last has met confusion:
Though Arius all along appear'd a saint,
The last act show'd him a true Protestant.
Eusebius (for you know I read Greek authors)
Reports, that after all these plots and slaughters,
The court of Constantine was full of glory,
And every Trimmer turn'd addressing Tory.
They follow'd him in herds as they were mad:
When Clause was king, then all the world was glad.
Whigs kept the places they possess'd before,
And most were in a way of getting more;
Which was as much as saying, 'Gentlemen,
Here's power and money to be rogues again.'
Indeed there were a sort of speaking tools,
Some call them modest, but I call them fools,
Men much more loyal, though not half so loud;
But these poor devils were cast behind the crowd:
For bold knaves thrive without one grain of sense,
But good men starve for want of impudence.
Besides all these there were a sort of wights,
(I think my author calls them Tekelites)
Such hearty rogues against the king and laws,
They favour'd e'en a foreign rebel's cause:
When their own damn'd design was quash'd and
awed,
At least they gave it their good word abroad:
As many a man who, for a quiet life,
Breeds out his bastard, not to noise his wife.
Thus o'er their darling plot these Trimmers cry,
And though they cannot keep it in their eye,
They bind it 'prentice to Count Tekely.
They' believe not the last plot; may I be curs'd,
If I believe they e'er believed the first.
No wonder their own plot no plot they think;
The man that makes it never smells the stink.
And now it comes into my head, I'll tell [well.
Why these damn'd Trimmers loved the Turks so
The original Trimmer, though a friend to no man,
Yet in his heart adored a pretty woman;
He knew that Mahomet laid
up for ever
Kind black-eyed rogues for every true believer;
And, which was more than mortal man e'er tasted,
One pleasure that for threescore twelvemonths
To turn for this may surely be forgiven: [lasted:
Who'd not be circumcised for such a heaven?
|