If one must be your choice, which d'ye approve,
The curtain lecture, or the curtain love?
Would you be godly with perpetual ftrife,
Still drudging on with homely Joan your wife:
Or take your pleasure in a wicked way,
Like honest whoring Harry in the play?
I guess your minds the miftrefs would be taken,
And naufeous matrimony fent a packing.
The devil's in you all, mankind's a rogue;
You love the bride, but you deteft the clog.
After a year, poor fpoufe is left i' th' lurch,
And you, like Haynes, return to mother church.
Or, if the name of Church comes crofs your mind,
Chapels of ease behind our scenes you find.

The play-house is a kind of market-place;
One chaffers for a voice, another for a face;
Nay, fome of you, I dare not say how many,
Would buy of me a pen'worth for your penny
Ev'n this poor face, which with my fan I hide,
Would make a shift my portion to provide,
With fome small perquifites I have befide,
Though for your love, perhaps I fhould not care,
I could not hate a man that bids me fair.
What might enfue, 'tis hard for me to tell;
But I was drench'd to-day for loving well,
And fear the poison that would make me (well.

GALLANTS, a bafhful poet bids me fay,
He's come to lofe his maidenhead to day.
Be not too fierce; for he's but green of age,
And ne'er, till now, debauch'd upon the stage.
He wants the suffering part of refolution,
And comes with blufhes to his execution.
Ere you deflower his Mufe, he hopes the pit
Will make fome fettlement upon his wit.
Promife him well, before the play begin :
For he would fain be cozen'd into fin.
"Tis not but that he knows you mean to fail;
But, if you leave him after being frail,
He'll have, at least, a fair pretence to rail:
To call you base, and fwear you us'd him ill,
And put you in the new deferters bill.
Lord, what a troop of perjur'd men we see ;
Enough to fill another Mercury!

But this the ladies may with patience brook:
Theirs are not the first colours you forfook.

}

He would be loth the beauties to offend;
But, if he should, he's not too old to mend.
He's a young plant, in his first year of bearing;
But his friend fwears, he will be worth the rearing.
His glofs is ftill upon him: though 'tis true
He's yet unripe, yet take him for the blue.
You think an apricot half green is best;
There's fweet and four, and one fide good at least.
Mangos and limes, whose nourishment is little,
Though not for food, are yet preferv'd for pickle.
So this green writer may pretend, at leaft,
To whet your stomachs for a better feast.
He makes this difference in the fexes too;
He fells to men, he gives himself to you.
To both he would contribute some delight;
A mere poetical hermaphrodite.

Thus he's equipp'd, both to be woo'd, and woo;
With arms offenfive and defensive too;

'Tis hard, he thinks, if neither part will do.

To fay, this Comedy pleas'd long ago,
Is not enough to make it pafs you now.
Yet, gentlemen, your ancestors had wit;
When few men cenfur'd, and when fewer writ.

And Jonfon, of those few the beft, chose this,
As the best model of his master-piece :
Subtle was got by our Albumazar,
That Alchemist by this Aftrologer;

Here he was fashion'd, and we may suppose
He lik'd 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 fuch authors does afford,

As make whole plays, and yet scarce write one word:

Who, in this anarchy of wit, rob all,

And what's their plunder, their poffeffion call:
Who, like bold padders, fcorn by night to prey,
But rob by fun-fhine, in the face of day:
Nay fcarce the common ceremony use
Of, Stand, Sir, and deliver up your Muse;
But knock the Poet down, and, with a grace,
Mount Pegafus before the owner's face.
Faith, if you have fuch country Toms abroad,
'Tis time for all true men to leave that road,
Yet it were modeft, could it but be said,
They ftrip the living, but these rob the dead;

Dare with the mummies of the Mufes play,
And make love to them the Ægyptian 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 prais'd, for Laureats
Poets, not of the head, but of the hand.
They make the benefits of others studying,
Much like the meals of politic Jack-Pudding,
Whose dish to challenge no man has the courage;
'Tis all his own, when once he has spit i' th' por-

ridge.

[ftand,

But, gentlemen, you're all concern'd in this;
You are in fault for what they do amifs :
For they their thefts still undiscover'd think,
And durft not steal, unless you please to wink.
Perhaps, you may award by your decree,
They should refund; but that can never be.
For fhould you letters of reprisal seal, [fteal.
These men write that which no man else would

You faw our wife was chafte, yet throughly try'd,
And, without doubt, y' are hugely edify'd;
For, like our hero, whom we fhew'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 breaft would grow:

Now fome small-chat, and guinea expectation,
Gets all the pretty creatures in the nation :
In Comedy your little felves you meet;
'Tis Covent Garden drawn in Bridges-street,
Smile on our author then, if he has fhewn
A jolly nut-brown bastard of your own.
Ah happy you, with ease and with delight,
Who act thofe follies, Poets toil to write!
The fweating Mufe does almost leave the chace;
She puffs, and hardly keeps your Protean_vices
Pinch you but in one vice, away you fly [pace.
To fome new frisk of contrariety.

You roll like fnow-balls, gathering as you run;
And get feven devils when difpoffefs'd of one,
Your Venus once was a Platonic queen;
Nothing of love befide the face was seen ;
But every inch of her you now uncafe,
And clap a vizard-mask upon the face :
For fins like these, the zealous of the land,
With little hair, and little or no band,
Declare how circulating peftilences
Watch, every twenty years, to snap offences.
Saturn, ev'n now, takes doctoral degrees;
He'll do your work this summer without fees.
Let all the boxes, Phœbus, find thy grace,
And, ah, preferve the eighteen-penny place!
But for the pit confounders, let them go,
And find as little mercy as they shew:
The Actors thus, and thus thy Poets pray;
For every critic fav'd, thou damn'st a play.

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;

Yet to be fhewn 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 fuftian stuff he wrote,
Was dead-born droggrel, or quite forgot:
His man of Uz, ftript of his Hebrew robe,
I 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 ftill he kept in fight;
But here, he founders in, and finks downright.
Had he prepar'd us, and been dull by rule,
Tobit bad first been turn'd to ridicule:
But our bold Briton, without fear or awe,
O'erleaps at once the whole Apocrypha;

Invades the pfalms with rhymes, and leaves no For any Vandal Hopkins yet to come. [room

}

But when, if, after all this godly geer Is not fo fenfelefs as it would appear; Our mountebank has laid a deeper train, His cant, like Merry Andrew's noble vein, Cat-calls the fects to draw them in again. At leisure hours, in epic fong he deals, Writes to the tumbling of his coach's wheels, Prescribes in hafte, and feldom kills by rule, But rides triumphant between stool and ftool. Well, let him go; 'tis yet too early day, To get himself a place in farce or play.. [him We knew not by what name we should arraign For no one category can contain him; A pedant, canting preacher, and a quack, Are load enough to break one afs's back : At laft grown wanton, he prefum'd to write, Traduc'd two kings, their kindness to requite; One made the doctor, and one dubb'd the knight.

PERHAPS the Parfon stretch'd a point toe far,
When with our Theatres he wag'd a war.
He tells you, that this very moral age
Receiv'd the first infection from the stage.
But fure, a banish'd court, with lewdnefs fraught,
The feeds of open vice, returning, brought.
Thus lodg'd (as vice by great example thrives)
It first debauch'd the daughters and the wives.
London, a fruitful foil, yet never bore
So plentiful a crop of horns before.

The Poets, who must live by courts, or starve,
Were proud, fo good a government to ferve;
And, mixing with buffoons and pimps prophane,
Tainted the Stage, for fome fmall snip of gain.
For they, like harlots, under bawds profeft,
Took all th' ungodly pains, and got the least.
Thus did the thriving malady prevail,
The court its head, the Poets but the tail.
The fin was of our native growth, 'tis true;
The fcandal of the fin was wholly new.
Miffes they were, but modeftly conceal'd;
White-hall the naked Venus firft reveal'd.
Who ftanding as at Cyprus, in her fhrine,
The ftrumpet was ador'd with rites divine.

Ere this, if faints had any fecret motion,
'Twas chamber-practice all, and close devotion.
I pafs the peccadillos of their time;
Nothing but open lewdness was a crime.
A monarch's blood was venial to the nation,
Compar'd with one foul act of fornication.
Now, they would filence us, and shut the door,
That let in all the bare-fac'd vice before.
As for reforming us, which fome 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 ftop the trade of love behind the scene:
Where actreffes make bold with married men
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 fome rę-
mains,
[Hains.
While you have ftill your Oats, and we our.

}