So great a trust to him alone was due;
Well have they trusted whom so well they knew.
The saint, who walk'd on waves, securely trod,
While he believed the beck'ning of his God;
But when his faith no longer bore him out,
Began to sink, as he began to doubt.
Let us our native character maintain;
Tis of our growth, to be sincerely plain.
To excel in truth we loyally may strive,
Set privilege against prerogative:

He plights his faith, and we believe him just;
His honour is to promise, ours to trust.
Thus Britain's basis on a word is laid,
As by a word the world itself was made.

PROLOGUE

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TO "ARVIRAGUS AND PHILICIA" REVIVED. [BY LODOWICK CARLELL, ESQ.] SPOKEN BY MR. HART.

WITH sickly actors and an old house too,
We're match'd with glorious theatres and new,
And with our alehouse scenes, and clothes bare
worn,

Can neither raise old plays, nor new adorn.
If all these ills could not undo us quite,

A brisk French troop is grown your dear delight; +

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Who with broad bloody bills call you each day,
To laugh and break your buttons at their play;
Or see some serious piece, which we presume
Is fall'n from some incomparable plume;
And therefore, Messieurs, if you 'll do us grace,
Send lackeys early to preserve your place.
We dare not on your privilege intrench,
Or ask you why you like them? they are French.
Therefore some go with courtesy exceeding,
Neither to hear nor see, but show their breeding:
Each lady striving to out-laugh the rest;
To make it seem they understood the jest.
Their countrymen come in, and nothing pay,
To teach us English where to clap the play:
Civil, egad! our hospitable land
Bears all the charge, for them to understand:
Meantime we languish, and neglected lie,
Like wives, while you keep better company;
And wish for your own sakes, without a satire, 25
You'd less good breeding, or had more good-

nature.

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This tragedy was first acted at Blackfriars in 1639, and revived with success in 1690. DERRICK.

†The story of Moliere reading his plays to his old servant (Le Furet) to see what effect they would have on her, is well known. But it is not so much known, that when he read over a new piece to the comedians, he used to desire them to bring their children with them, that he might see how they looked, and what notice they took of any passages. The famous naturalist Rohault was the person from whom Moliere drew the character of the philosopher he has introduced in his Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Moliere was intimately acquainted with him. Moliere even borrowed the bat that Rohault commonly wore, and which was of an uncommon size, and intended to produce it upon the stage, but his friend discovered his design, and took it out of his bands. Ben Jonson is said to have known personally a man who could not bear any noise, from whom he exactly copied his character of Morose. Dr. J. WARTON.

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So may cast poets write; there's no pretension
To argue loss of wit from loss of pension.
Your looks are cheerful; and in all this place
I see not one that wears a damning face.
The British nation is too brave, to show
Ignoble vengeance on a vanquish'd foe.
At last be civil to the wretch imploring;
And lay your paws upon him, without roaring. 10
Suppose our poet was your foe before,
Yet now, the business of the field is o'er;
'Tis time to let your civil wars alone,
When troops are into winter-quarters gone.
Jove was alike to Latian and to Phrygian;
And you well know a play 's of no religion.
Take good advice and please yourselves this day;
No matter from what hands you have the play.
Among good fellows every health will pass,
That serves to carry round another glass:
When with full bowls of Burgundy you dine,
Though at the mighty monarch you repine,
You grant him still Most Christian in his wine.
Thus far the poet; but his brains grow addle,
And all the rest is purely from this noddle.
You have seen young ladies at the senate-door
Prefer petitions, and your grace implore;
However grave the legislators were,
Their cause went ne'er the worse for being fair.
Reasons as weak as theirs, perhaps, I bring;
But I could bribe you with as good a thing.
I heard him make advances of good-nature;
That he, for once, would sheathe his cutting satire.
Sign but his peace, he vows he 'll ne'er again
The sacred names of fops and beaus profane.
Strike up the bargain quickly; for I swear,
As times go now, he offers very fair.

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A play, which, like a perspective set right,
Presents our vast expenses close to sight;
But turn the tube, and there we sadly view
Our distant gains; and those uncertain too:
A sweeping tax, which on ourselves we raise,
And all, like you, in hopes of better days.
When will our losses warn us to be wise?
Our wealth decreases, and our charges rise.
Money, the sweet allurer of our hopes,
Ebbs out in oceans, and comes in by drops.
We raise new objects to provoke delight;
But you grow sated, ere the second sight.
False men, e'en so you serve your mistresses:
They rise three stories in their towering dress;
And, after all, you love not long enough
To pay the rigging, ere you leave them off.
Never content with what you had before,
But true to change, and Englishmen all o'er.
Now honour calls you hence; and all your care
Is to provide the horrid pomp of war.
In plume and scarf, jack-boots, and Bilbo blade,
Your silver goes, that should support our trade.
Go, unkind heroes, leave our stage to mourn;
"Till rich from vanquish'd rebels you return;
And the fat spoils of Teague in triumph draw,
His firkin-butter, and his usquebaugh.
Go, conquerors of your male and fernale foes;
Men without hearts, and women without hose. 30
Each bring his love a Bogland captive home;
Such proper pages will long trains become;
With copper collars, and with brawny backs,
Quite to put down the fashion of our blacks.
Then shall the pious Muses pay their vows,
And furnish all their laurels for your brows;
Their tuneful voice shall raise for your delights;
We want not poets fit to sing your flights.
But you, bright beauties, for whose only sake
Those doughty knights such dangers undertake,,
When they with happy gales are gone away,
With your propitious presence grace our play;
And with a sigh their empty seats survey:
Then think, on that bare bench my servant sat;
I see him ogle still, and hear him chat;
Selling facetious bargains, and propounding
That witty recreation, call'd dumb-founding.
Their loss with patience we will try to bear;
And would do more, to see you often here:
That our dead stage, revived by your fair
Under a female regency may rise.

eyes,

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as Langbaine, who is generally pretty exact, asserts. Our author only wrote the prologue, and that was forbid by the Earl of Dorset, then Lord Chamberlain, after the first day of its being spoken. King William was at this time prosecuting the war in Ireland, which is alluded to in these lines:

'Till rich from vanquish'd rebels you return;
And the fat spoils of Teague in triumph draw,
His firkin-butter, and his usquebaugh.

"This prologue," says Colley Cibber in his Apology, "had some familiar metaphorical sneers at the Revolution itself; and as the poetry of it was good, the offence of it was less pardonable."

Go, conquerors of your male and female foes,
Men without hearts, and women without hose.
DERRICK.

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And now a word or two in sober sadness.
Ours is a common play; and you pay down
A common harlot's price; just half-a-crown.
You'll say, I play the pimp, on my friend's score;
But since 'tis for a friend, your gibes give o'er:
For many a mother has done that before.
How's this, you cry? an actor write? we know it;
But Shakspeare was an actor, and a poet.
Has not great Jonson's learning often fail'd?
But Shakspeare's greater genius still prevail'd.
Have not some writing actors, in this age,
Deserved and found success upon the stage?

*The Mistakes, or False Reports, was not written, but, according to G. Jacob, spoiled by Joseph Harris, a comedian, who dedicated it to Mr. afterwards Sir Godfrey Kneller. It was acted in 1690. DERRICK.

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SURE there's a dearth of wit in this dull town,
When silly plays so savourily go down;
As, when clipp'd money passes, 'tis a sign
A nation is not over-stock'd with coin.
Happy is he, who, in his own defence,
Can write just level to your humble sense;
Who higher than your pitch can never go;
And, doubtless, he must creep, who writes below.
So have I seen, in hall of knight, or lord,
A weak arm throw on a long shovel-board;
He barely lays his piece, bar rubs and knocks,
Secured by weakness not to reach the box.
A feeble poet will his business do,
Who, straining all he can, comes up to you:
For, if you like yourselves, you like him too.
An ape his own dear image will embrace;
An ugly beau adores a hatchet face:
So, some of you, on pure instinct of nature,
Are led, by kind, to admire your fellow creature.
In fear of which, our house has sent this day,
To ensure our new-built vessel, call'd a play;
No sooner named, than one cries out,-These

stagers

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Come in good time, to make more work for

wagers.

The town divides, if it will take or no;

The courtiers bet, the cits, the merchants, too; 25 A sign they have but little else to do.

Bets, at the first, were fool-traps; where the wise, Like spiders, lay in ambush for the flies:

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But now they're grown a common trade for all,
And actions by the new-book rise and fall;
Wits, cheats, and fops, are free of Wager-hall.
One policy as far as Lyons carries;
Another, nearer home, sets up for Paris.
Our bets, at last, would even to Rome extend,
But that the pope has proved our trusty friend. 35
Indeed, it were a bargain worth our money,
Could we ensure another Ottoboni.

Among the rest there are a sharping set,
That pray for us, and yet against us bet.
Sure Heaven itself is at a loss to know

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THUS you the sad catastrophe have seen,
Occasion'd by a mistress and a queen.
Queen Eleanor the proud was French, they say;
But English manufacture got the day.
Jane Clifford was her name, as books aver:
Fair Rosamond was but her nom de guerre.
Now tell me, gallants, would you lead your life
With such a mistress, or with such a wife?
If one must be your choice, which d' ye approve,
The curtain lecture, or the curtain love?
Would ye be godly with perpetual strife,
Still drudging on with homely Joan your wife;
Or take your pleasure in a wicked way,
Like honest whoring Harry in the play?

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I guess your minds: the mistress would be taken, 15
And nauseous matrimony sent a packing.
The devil's in you all; mankind's a rogue;
You love the bride, but you detest the clog.
After a year, poor spouse is left i' the lurch,
And you, like Haynes, return to mother-Church.20
Or, if the name of Church comes cross your mind,
Chapels of ease behind our scenes you find.
The playhouse is a kind of market-place;
One chaffers for a voice, another for a face:
Nay, some of you, I dare not say how many,
Would buy of me a pen'orth for your penny.
E'en this poor face, which with my fan I hide,
Would make a shift my portion to provide,
With some small perquisites I have beside.
Though for your love, perhaps, I should not
I could not hate a man that bids me fair.
What might ensue, 'tis hard for me to tell;
But I was drench'd to-day for loving well,
And fear the poison that would make me swell.

care,

To say, this comedy pleased long ago,
Is not enough to make it pass you now.
Yet, gentlemen, your ancestors had wit;
When few men censured, and when fewer writ.
And Jonson, of those few the best, chose this,
As the best model of his master-piece.
Subtle was got by our Albumazar,
That Alchymist by this Astrologer;
Here he was fashion'd, and we may suppose

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He liked the fashion well, who wore the clothes.
But Ben made nobly his what he did mould;
What was another's lead, becomes his gold:
Like an unrighteous conqueror he reigns,
Yet rules that well, which he unjustly gains.
But this our age such authors does afford,
As make whole plays, and yet scarce write one word:

Ver. 15.

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the mistress would be taken, And nauseous matrimony sent a packing.] The incident of Lady Easy's throwing her handkerchief over Sir Charles's head, whilst he was sleeping, seems to have been taken from the Memoirs of Bassompierre, concerning a Count d'Orgevillier and his mistress, tom. ii. p. 6., 1728, at Amsterdam. Dr. J. WARTON.

Declare how circulating pestilences

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Who, in this anarchy of wit, rob all,
And what's their plunder, their possession call:
Who, like bold padders, scorn by night to prey,
But rob by sunshine, in the face of day:
Nay, scarce the common ceremony use
Of, Stand, sir, and deliver up your Muse;
But knock the Poet down, and, with a grace,
Mount Pegasus before the author's face.
Faith, if you have such country Toms abroad,
"Tis time for all true men to leave that road.
Yet it were modest, could it but be said,
They strip the living, but these rob the dead;
Dare with the mummies of the Muses play,
And make love to them the Egyptian way;
Or, as a rhyming author would have said,
Join the dead living to the living dead.
Such men in Poetry may claim some part:
They have the licence, though they want the art;
And might, where theft was praised, for Laureats

stand,

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You saw our wife was chaste, yet throughly tried,
And, without doubt, you 're hugely edified;
For, like our hero, whom we show'd to-day,
You think no woman true, but in a play.
Love once did make a pretty kind of show:
Esteem and kindness in one breast would grow:
But 'twas Heaven knows how many years ago.
Now some small chat, and guinea expectation,
Gets all the pretty creatures in the nation:
In comedy your little selves you meet;
"Tis Covent Garden drawn in Bridges-street.
Smile on our author then, if he has shown
A jolly nut-brown bastard of your own.
Ah! happy you, with ease and with delight,
Who act those follies, Poets toil to write!
The sweating Muse does almost leave the chace;
She puffs, and hardly keeps your Protean vices
pace.

Pinch you but in one vice, away you fly
To some new frisk of contrariety.

You roll like snow-balls, gathering as you run,
And get seven devils, when dispossess'd of one.
Your Venus once was a Platonic queen;
Nothing of love beside the face was seen;
But every inch of her you now uncase,
And clap a vizard-mask upon the face.
For sins like these, the zealous of the land,
With little hair, and little or no band,

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Watch, every twenty years, to snap offences.
Saturn, e'en now, takes doctoral degrees;
He'll do your work this summer without fees.
Let all the boxes, Phoebus, find thy grace,
And, ah, preserve the eighteen-penny place!
But for the pit confounders, let 'em go,
And find as little mercy as they show:
The Actors thus, and thus thy Poets pray:
For every critic saved, thou damn'st a play.

EPILOGUE

TO "THE HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD.”*

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LIKE some raw sophister that mounts the pulpit.
So trembles a young Poet at a full pit.
Unused to crowds, the Parson quakes for fear.
And wonders how the devil he durst come there;
Wanting three talents needful for the place,
Some beard, some learning, and some little grace:
Nor is the puny Poet void of care;

For authors, such as our new authors are,
Have not much learning, nor much wit to spare:
And as for grace, to tell the truth, there's scarce one,
But has as little as the very Parson:

Both say, they preach and write for your instruction:

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But 'tis for a third day, and for induction.
The difference is, that though you like the play,
The poet's gain is ne'er beyond his day.
But with the Parson 'tis another case,
He, without holiness, may rise to grace;
The Poet has one disadvantage more,
That, if his play be dull, he's damn'd all o'er,
Not only a damn'd blockhead, but damn'd poor."
But dulness well becomes the sable garment;
I warrant that ne'er spoil'd a Priest's preferment:
Wit's not his business, and as wit now goes,
Sirs, 'tis not so much yours as you suppose,
For you like nothing now but nauseous beaux. S
You laugh not, gallants, as by proof appears,
At what his beauship says, but what he wears;
So 'tis your eyes are tickled, not your ears:
The tailor and the furrier find the stuff,
The wit lies in the dress, and monstrous muff.
The truth on 't is, the payment of the pit
Is like for like, clipt money for clipt wit
You cannot from our absent author hope,
He should equip the stage with such a fop:

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*This comedy was written by John Dryden, jun, our author's second son. It was acted at the theatre in Lincoln's-inn-fields in 1696. DERRICK.

Ver. 15. The poet's gain is ne'er beyond his day.] Dryden did not receive for his plays from the bookseller above 25. The third night brought about 701. The Dedication five or ten guineas perhaps. Tonson paid Sir Richard Steele for Addison's Drummer, 50, 1715. And Dr. Young received 501. for his Revenge, 1721. Southerne, for his Spartan Dame, in 1722, had 120., and now it is 100%. and 150. There were plays on Sundays till the third year of Charles the First's reign. Otway had but one benefit for a play. Southerne was the first who had two benefits from a new representation. Farquhar had three for Constant Couple in 1700. Three of Ben Jonson's plays, Sejanus, Catiline, and the New Inne, and two of Beaumont and Fletcher's, viz., The Faithful Shepherdess, and the Knight of the | Burning Pestle, were damned the first night. Even the Silent Woman had like to have been condemned. Dr. J. WARTON.

How wretched is the fate of those who write!
Brought muzzled to the stage, for fear they bite.
Where, like Tom Dove, they stand the common
foe;

Lugg'd by the critic, baited by the beau.
Yet worse, their brother Poets damn the Play,
And roar the loudest, though they never pay.
The fops are proud of scandal, for they cry,
At every lewd, low character-That's I.

He, who writes letters to himself, would swear,
The world forgot him, if he was not there.
What should a Poet do? "Tis hard for one
To pleasure all the fools that would be shown:
And yet not two in ten will pass the town.
Most coxcombs are not of the laughing kind;
More goes to make a fop, than fops can find.

Quack Maurus, though he never took degrees In either of our universities;

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Yet to be shown by some kind wit he looks,
Because he play'd the fool, and writ three books.
But, if he would be worth a Poet's pen,
He must be more a fool, and write again :
For all the former fustian stuff he wrote,
Was dead-born doggrel, or is quite forgot;
His man of Uz, stript of his Hebrew robe,
Is just the proverb, and as poor as Job.
One would have thought he could no longer jog;
But Arthur was a level, Job's a bog.
There, though he crept, yet still he kept in sight;
But here he founders in, and sinks down right.
Had he prepared us, and been dull by rule,
Tobit had first been turn'd to ridicule :
But our bold Briton, without fear or awe,
O'erleaps at once the whole Apocrypha;
Invades the Psalms with rhymes, and leaves no room
For any Vandal Hopkins yet to come.

But when, if, after all, this godly gear
Is not so senseless as it would appear;
Our mountebank has laid a deeper train,
His cant, like Merry Andrew's noble vein,
Cat-calls the sects to draw 'em in again.
At leisure hours, in epic song he deals,
Writes to the rumbling of his coach's wheels,
Prescribes in haste, and seldom kills by rule,
But rides triumphant between stool and stool.
Well, let him go; 'tis yet too early day,
To get himself a place in farce or play.

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EPILOGUE

ΤΟ "THE PILGRIM." •

PERHAPS the parson stretch'd a point too far,
When with our Theatres he waged a war.
He tells you, that this very moral age
Received the first infection from the Stage.

But sure, a banish'd court, with lewdness fraught,
The seeds of open vice, returning, brought.
Thus lodged (as vice by great example thrives)
It first debauch'd the daughters and the wives.
London, a fruitful soil, yet never bore

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So plentiful a crop of horns before.
The Poets, who must live by courts, or starve,
Were proud so good a government to serve;
And, mixing with buffoons and pimps profane,
Tainted the Stage, for some small snip of gain.
For they, like harlots, under bawds profess'd,
Took all the ungodly pains, and got the least.
Thus did the thriving malady prevail,
The court, its head, the Poets but the tail.
The sin was of our native growth, 'tis true;
The scandal of the sin was wholly new.
Misses they were, but modestly conceal'd;
Whitehall the naked Venus first reveal'd.
Who standing as at Cyprus, in her shrine,
The strumpet was adored with rites divine.
Ere this, if saints had any secret motion,
'Twas chamber-practice all, and close devotion.
I pass the peccadillos of their time;
A monarch's blood was venial to the nation,
Nothing but open lewdness was a crime.
Compared with one foul act of fornication.
Now, they would silence us, and shut the door,
That let in all the barefaced vice before.
As for reforming us, which some pretend,
That work in England is without an end:
Well may we change, but we shall never mend.
Yet, if you can but bear the present Stage,
We hope much better of the coming age.
What would you say, if we should first begin
To stop the trade of love behind the scene:
Where actresses make bold with married men? 40
For while abroad so prodigal the dolt is,
Poor spouse at home as ragged as a colt is.
In short, we'll grow as moral as we can,

Save here and there a woman or a man:

But neither you, nor we, with all our pains, Can make clean work; there will be some remains,

This play, with alterations by Sir John Vanbrugh, and a secular masque, together with this prologue and an epilogue written by our author, was revived for his benefit in 1700, his fortune being at that time in as declining a state as his health: they were both spoken by Mr. Cibber, then a very young actor, much to Dryden's satisfaction. DERRICK.

* Dryden in this epilogue labours to throw the fault of the licentiousness of dramatic writers, which had been so severely censured by the Rev. Jeremy Collier, upon the example of a court returned from banishment, accompanied by all the vices and follies of foreign climates; and whom to please was the poet's business, as he wrote to eat. DERRICK.