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And Envy did but look on her, and died.
Whate'er we suffer'd from our sullen fate,
Her sight is purchas'd at an easy rate.
Three gloomy years against this day were set;
But this one mighty sum has clear'd the debt:
Like Joseph's dream, but with a better doom,
The famine past, the plenty still to come.
For her the weeping heavens become serene;
For her the ground is clad in cheerful green :
For her the nightingales are taught to sing,
And Nature has for her delay'd the spring.
The Muse resumes her long-forgotten lays,
And Love restor❜d his ancient realm surveys,
Recalls our beauties, and revives our plays;
His waste dominions peoples once again,
And from her presence dates his second reign.
But awful charms on her fair forehead sit,
Dispensing what she never will admit :
Pleasing, yet cold, like Cynthia's silver beam,
The people's wonder and the poet's theme.
Distemper'd Zeal, Sedition, canker'd Hate,
No more shall vex the church, and tear the state:
No more shall Faction civil discords move,
Or only discords of too tender love:
Discord, like that of music's various parts;
Discord, that makes the harmony of hearts;
Discord, that only this dispute shall bring,
Who best shall love the duke, and serve the king.

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EPISTLE THE SEVENTH.

A LETTER TO SIR GEORGE ETHEREDGE.

To you who live in chill degree,
As map informs, of fifty-three,
And do not much for cold atone,
By bringing thither fifty-one,
Methinks all climes should be alike,
From tropic e'en to pole artique ;
Since you have such a constitution
As nowhere suffers diminution.

A work of wondrous merit sure,

So far to go, so much t' endure ;
And all to preach to German dame,
Where sound of Cupid never came,
Less had you done, had you been sent,
As far as Drake or Pinto went,
For cloves or nutmegs to the line-a,
Or e'en for oranges to China.
That had indeed been charity;
Where lovesick ladies helpless lie,
Chapp'd, and for want of liquor dry.

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But you have made your zeal appear
Within the circle of the Bear.

What region of the earth's so dull,
That is not of your labours full?
Triptolemus (so sung the Nine)
Strew'd plenty from his cart divine.
But spite of all these fable-makers,
He never sow'd on Almain acres:
No, that was left by fate's decree,

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To be perform'd and sung by thee.

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Thou break'st through forms with as much ease

As the French king through articles.

In grand affairs thy days are spent,
In waging weighty compliment,
With such as monarchs represent.
They, whom such vast fatigues attend,
Want some soft minutes to unbend,
To show the world that now and then
Great ministers are mortal men.

Then Rhenish rummers walk the round;
In bumpers every king is crown'd;
Besides three holy mitred Hectors,
And the whole college of Electors.
No health of potentate is sunk,
That pays to make his
envoy drunk.
These Dutch delights, I mention❜d last,
Suit not, I know, your English taste:
For wine to leave a whore or play
Was ne'er your Excellency's way.
Nor need this title give offence,

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For here you were your Excellence,
For gaming, writing, speaking, keeping,
His Excellence for all but sleeping.
Now if you tope in form, and treat,
'Tis the sour sauce to the sweet meat,
The fine you pay for being great.
Nay, here's a harder imposition,
Which is indeed the court's petition,
That setting worldly pomp aside,
Which poet has at font denied,

You would be pleas'd in humble way
To write a trifle call'd a Play.

This truly is a degradation

But would oblige the crown and nation
Next to your wise negotiation.
If you pretend, as well you may,

Your high degree, your friends will say,
The duke St. Aignon made a play.
If Gallic wit convince you scarce,
of Bucks has made a farce,

His

grace

And you, whose comic wit is terse all,
Can hardly fall below Rehearsal.
Then finish what you have began;
But scribble faster if you can:

For yet no George, to our discerning,

Has writ without a ten years warning.

EPISTLE THE EIGHTH.

TO MR. SOUTHERNE, ON HIS COMEDY CALLED THE WIVES' EXCUSE.*

SURE there's a fate in plays, and 'tis in vain
To write, while these malignant planets reign.
Some very foolish influence rules the pit,
Not always kind to sense, or just to wit;
And whilst it lasts, let buffoonry succeed,
To make us laugh; for never was more need.
Farce, in itself, is of a nasty scent;

But the gain smells not of the excrement.
The Spanish nymph, a wit and beauty too,
With all her charms, bore but a single show: 10
But let a monster Muscovite appear,
He draws a crowded audience round the year.
May be thou hast not pleas'd the box and pit:
Yet those who blame thy tale applaud thy wit:
So Terence plotted, but so Terence writ.
Like his thy thoughts are true, thy language clean;
E'en lewdness is made moral in thy scene.
The hearers may for want of Nokes repine;

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*The success of this play was but indifferent; but so high was our author's opinion of its merit, that, on this very account, he bequeathed to this poet the writing of the last act of his Cleomenes; which, Southerne says, 'when it comes into the world, will appear so considerable a trust, that all the town will pardon me for defending this play, that preferred me to it.' D.