About their godlike mate, and sing him on his way.

He cleaves the liquid air, behold, he flies, 70 And every moment gains upon the skies. The new-come guest admires th' ethereal state,

The sapphire portal, and the golden gate; And now admitted in the shining throng, He shows the passport which he brought along.

His passport is his innocence and grace, Well known to all the natives of the place. Now sing, ye joyful angels, and admire Your brother's voice that comes to mend your choir:

Sing you, while endless tears our eyes bestow;

For like Amyntas none is left below.

80

TO MR. SOUTHERNE, ON HIS COMEDY CALL'D THE WIVES' EXCUSE

[After The Loyal Brother and The Disappointment (see pp. 122, 171, above), Southerne brought out Sir Anthony Love, or The Rambling Lady (1691) and The Wives' Excuse, or Cuckolds Make Themselves (1692). This last play had poor success on the stage. When it was published, early in 1692 - it is entered in the Term Catalogue for Hilary Term (February) Dryden prefixed to it the following poem; and in his Epistle Dedicatory Southerne boasts as follows:

"If Mr. Dryden's judgment goes for anything, I have it on my side: for, speaking of this play, he has publicly said, the town was kind to Sir Anthony Love, I needed 'em only to be just to this; and to prove there was more than friendship in his opinion, upon the credit of this play with him, falling sick last summer, he bequeathed to my care the writing of half the last act of his tragedy of Cleomenes, which, when it comes into the world, you will find to be so considerable a trust, that all the town will pardon me for defending this play, that preferred me to it. If modesty be sometimes a weakness, what I say can hardly be a crime. In a fair English trial both parties are allowed to be heard; and, without this vanity of mentioning Mr. Dryden, I had lost the best evidence of my cause."]

SURE there's a fate in plays, and 't is 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;

ΤΟ

But let a monster Muscovite appear, He draws a crowded audience round the year.

Maybe thou hast not pleas'd the box and pit,

Yet those who blame thy tale commend thy wit;

So Terence plotted, but so Terence writ. Like his thy thoughts are true, thy language clean;

Ev'n lewdness is made moral in thy scene. The hearers may for want of Nokes repine;

But rest secure, the readers will be thine. Nor was thy labor'd drama damn'd or hiss'd,

But with a kind civility dismiss'd;
With such good manners, as

The Wife in

20

the Wife did use, the play, Mrs. Who, not accepting, did but Friendall. just refuse.

There was a glance at parting; such a look,
As bids thee not give o'er, for one rebuke.
But if thou wouldst be seen, as well as
read,

Copy one living author, and one dead:
The standard of thy style let Etherege be;
For wit, th' immortal spring of Wycherley.
Learn, after both, to draw some just de-

sign,

And the next age will learn to copy thine.

30

They to the boxes show their booby faces.
A merry-andrew such a mob will serve,
And treat 'em with such wit as they deserve.
Let 'em go people Ireland, where there's
need

Of such new planters to repair the breed;
Or to Virginia or Jamaica steer,
But have a care of some French privateer;
For, if they should become the prize of
battle,

They'll take 'em, black and white, for Irish cattle.

Arise, true judges, in your own defense, Control those foplings, and declare for sense: For, should the fools prevail, they stop not

As, first, my youth; for, as I have been told, Some of you modish sparks are dev'lish

old.

My chastity I need not leave among ye; For, to suspect old fops, were much to wrong ye.

You swear y' are sinners; but, for all your haste,

Your misses shake their heads, and find

you chaste.

I give my courage to those bold com

manders

That stay with us, and dare not go to Flanders.

20

I leave my truth (to make his plot more clear)

To Mr. Fuller, when he next shall swear.
I give my judgment, craving all your

mercies,

To those that leave good plays for damn'd

dull farces.

My small devotion let the gallants share, That come to ogle us at evening pray'r.

dedicatory signed Will. Mountfort. Mountfort, who was a noted actor and a minor dramatist, does not, however, claim the play as his own. Gildon, in his continuation of Langbaine's English Dramatic Poets, 1699, assigns the play to John Bancroft, a surgeon, who may have presented his work to Mountfort for revision. In Six Plays written by Mr. Mountfort: Printed for J. Tonson, G. Strahan, and W. Mears, 1720, there occurs a preface, The Booksellers to the Reader, which concludes as follows:

we

"To the four pieces under his name. have annexed King Edward the Third, and Henry the Second, which though not wholly composed by him, it is presumed he had, at least, a share in fitting them for the stage, otherwise it cannot be supposed he would have taken the liberty of writing dedications to them, which we hope is sufficient authority for this freedom, notwithstanding one of them was afterwards owned by another author.

*Henry the Second, by Mr. Bancroft."

The play was probably acted in 1692; Mountfort was killed on December 9 of that year.]

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

TO THE

RIGHT HONORABLE

CHARLES

EARL OF DORSET AND MIDDLESEX

LORD CHAMBERLAIN OF THEIR MAJESTIES' HOUSEHOLD, KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER, &C.

MY LORD,

THE wishes and desires of all good men, which have attended your Lordship from your first appearance in the world, are at length accomplish'd, in your obtaining those honors and dignities which you have so long deserv'd. There are no factions, tho' irreconcilable to one another, that are not united in their affection to you, and the respect they pay you. They are equally pleas'd in your prosperity, and would be equally concern'd in your afflictions. Titus Vespasian was not more the delight of humankind. The universal empire made him only more known, and more powerful, but could not make him more belov'd. He had greater ability of doing good, but your inclination to it is not less; and tho' you could not extend your beneficence to so many persons, yet you have lost as few days as that excellent emperor; and never had his complaint to make when you went to bed, that the sun had shone upon you in vain, when you had the opportunity of relieving some unhappy man. This, my Lord, has justly acquir'd you as many friends as there are persons who have the honor to be known to you. Mere acquaintance you have none; you have drawn them all into a nearer line; and they who have convers'd with you are for ever after inviolably yours. This is a truth so generally acknowledg'd, that it needs no proof: 't is of the nature of a first principle, which is receiv'd as soon as it is propos'd; and needs not the reformation which Descartes us'd to his; for we doubt not, neither can we properly say we think we admire and love you above all other men; there is a certainty in the proposition, and we know it. With the

same assurance I can say, you neither have enemies, nor can scarce have any; for they who have never heard of you, can neither love or hate you; and they who have, can have no other notion of you, than that which they receive from the public, that you are the best of men. After this, my testimony can be of no farther use, than to declare it to be daylight at high noon; and all who have the benefit of sight, can look up as well, and see the sun.

'Tis true, I have one privilege which is almost particular to myself, that I saw you in the east at your first arising above the hemisphere: I was as soon sensible as any man of that light, when it was but just shooting out, and beginning to travel upwards to the meridian. I made my early addresses to your Lordship, in my Essay of Dramatic Poetry; and therein bespoke you to the world, wherein I have the right of a first discoverer. When I was myself in the rudiments of my poetry, without name or reputation in the world, having rather the ambition of a writer, than the skill; when I was drawing the outlines of an art, without any living master to instruct me in it; an art which had been better prais'd than studied here in England, wherein Shakespeare, who created the stage among us, had rather written happily, than knowingly and justly, and Jonson, who, by studying Horace, had been acquainted with the rules, yet seem'd to envy to posterity that knowledge, and, like an inventor of some useful art, to make a monopoly of his learning; when thus, as I may say, before the use of the loadstone, or knowledge of the compass, I was sailing in a vast ocean, without other help than the polestar of the ancients, and the rules of the French stage amongst the moderns, which are extremely different from ours, by reason of their opposite taste; yet even then, I had the presumption to dedicate to your Lordship-a very unfinish'd piece, I must confess, and which only can be excus'd by the little experience of the author, and the modesty of the title, An Essay. Yet I was stronger in prophecy than I was in criticism; I was inspir'd to foretell you to mankind, as the restorer