If any factious spirit should rebel,
Our sex with ease can every rifing quell. Then, as you hope we should your failings hide, An honeft jury for our play provide. Whigs at their poets never take offence; They fave dull culprits, who have murder'd fenfe. Tho' nonsense is a nauseous heavy mass, The vehicle call'd Faction makes it pass. Faction in play's the commonwealth-man's bribe; The leaden farthing of the canting tribe : Tho void in payment laws and statutes make it, The neighbourhood, that knows the man, will take it. "Tis faction buys the votes of half the pit; Their's is the penfion-parliament of wit. In city-clubs their venom let them vent; For there 'tis safe, in its own element. Here, where their madness can have no pretence, Let them forget themselves an hour of fenfe. In one poor ifle, why should two factions be? Small diff'rence in your vices I can fee: In drink and drabs both fides too well agree. Would there were more preferments in the land : If places fell, the party could not stand: Of this damn'd grievance ev'ry Whig complains ; They grunt like hogs till they have got their grains, Mean time you see what trade our plots advance; We fend each year good money into France; And they that know what merchandize we need, Send o'er true Proteftants to mend our breed..
To the UNIVERSITY of OXFORD,
Spoken by Mr. HART, at the Acting of the SILENT WOMAN.
HAT Greece, when learning flourish'd, only
knew, Athenian judges, you this day renew. Here too are annual rites to Pallas done, And here poetic prizes loft or won.
Methinks I see you, crown'd with olives, fit, And strike a facred horror from the pit. A day of doom is this of your decree, Where even the best are but by mercy free : A day, which none but Jonson durst have wish'd to fee. Here they, who long have known the useful stage, Come to be taught themselves to teach the age.
As your commiffioners our poets go, 'To cultivate the virtue which you sow; In your Lycæum first themselves refin'd, And delegated thence to human-kind. But as ambaffadors, when long from home, For new instructions to their princes come; So poets, who your precepts have forgot, Return, and beg they may be better taught: Follies and faults elsewhere by them are shown, But by your manners they correct their own. Th' illiterate writer, emperic-like, applies To minds difeas'd, unsafe, chance, remedies: The learned in schools, where knowledge first began,
Studies with care the anatomy of man;
Sees virtue, vice, and passions in their cause, And fame from science, not from fortune, draws. So Poetry which is in Oxford made An art, in London only is a trade. There haughty dunces, whose unlearned pen Could ne'er spell grammar, would be reading men. Such build their poems the Lucretian way; So many huddled atoms make a play; And if they hit in order by some chance, They call that nature, which is ignorance. To fuch a fame let mere town-wits afpire, And their gay nonsense their own cits admire. Our poet, could he find forgiveness here, Would wish it rather than a plaudit there. He owns no crown from those Prætorian bands, But knows that right is in the fenate's hands, Not impudent enough to hope your praise, Low at the Muses feet his wreath he lays, And, where he took it up, resigns his bays. Kings make their poets whom themselves think fit,
But 'tis your fuffrage makes authentic wit.
O poor Dutch peasant, wing'd with all his fear, Flies with more haste, when the French arms
Than with our poetic train come down, For refuge hither, from th' infected town : Heaven for our fins 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 Monfieurs were too quick to stay: Yet, to our cost, in that short time, we find They left their itch of novelty behind. Th' Italian merry-andrews took their place, And quite debauch'd the stage with lewd grimace: Instead of wit and humours, your delight Was there to fee two hobby-horses fight; Stout Scaramoucha with rush lance rode in, And ran a tilt at centaur Arlequin.
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 shewn 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 profeft;
And cats and dogs, and each obscener beast, To which Ægyptian 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 despis'd, 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 prais'd, We'll boldly back, and say, their price is rais'd.
EPILOGUE, Spoken at OXFORD, by Mrs. MARSHALL.
FT has our poet wish'd, this happy feat. Might prove his fading Muse's left retreat:
I wonder'd at his wish, but now I find He fought 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 fees the world, here studies rest, And age returning thence concludes it beft. What wonder if we court that happiness Yearly to share, which hourly you possess, Teaching e'en you, while the vext world we show, Your piece 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 prefides O'er every noble art, and every science guides : Bathurst 4, a name the learn'd with reverence know? ✓ And scarcely more to his own Virgil owe; Whose age enjoys but what his youth deserv'd, To rule those Muses whom before he serv'd. His learning, and untainted manners too, We find, Athenians, are deriv'd to you: Such antient hospitality there refts In yours, as dwelt in the first Grecian breasts, Whose kindness was religion to their guests.
4 Dr. Ralph Bathurst, prefident of Trinity College, Oxford, and Dean of Wells, a very loyal gentleman, and of great abilities. He died the 14th of June, 1704, in the 84th year of his age. See his life written by the ingenious Mr. Wharton, printed in 1761.
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