AIR.-A bonny young lad is my Jockey.

I'll sing to amuse you by night and by day,
And be unco merry when you are but gay;
When you with your bagpipes are ready to play,
My voice shall be ready to carol away

With Sandy, and Sawney, and Jockey,
With Sawney, and Jarvie, and Jockey.

Mrs. B. Ye gamesters, who, so eager in pursuit,
Make but of all your fortune one va toute:
Ye jockey tribe, whose stock of words are few,
"I hold the odds.-Done, done, with you, with you!"
Ye barristers, so fluent with grimace,

"My Lord, your Lordship misconceives the case;"
Doctors, who cough, and answer every misfortuner-
"I wish I'd been call'd in a little sooner;"
Assist my cause with hands and voices hearty,
Come, end the contest here, and aid my party!

AIR.-Ballinamony.

Miss C. Ye brave Irish lads, hark away to the crack, Assist me, I pray, in this woful attack;

For sure I don't wrong you-you seldom are slack,
When the ladies are calling, to blush and hang back.
For you're always polite and attentive,
Still to amuse us inventive,

And death is your only preventive :

Your hands and your voices for me.

Mrs. B. Well, Madam, what if, after all this sparring, We both agree, like friends, to end our jarring?

Miss C. And that our friendship may remain unbroken, What if we leave the Epilogue unspoken?

Mrs. B. Agreed.
Miss C. Agreed.

Mrs. B. And now with late repentance,
Un-epilogued the Poet waits his sentence.
Condemn the stubborn fool who can't submit
To thrive by flattery, though he starves by wit.

[Exeunt.

AN EPILOGUE,

INTENDED FOR MRS. BULKLEY.

[This epilogue was first printed in Percy's edition, 1801. The editor added, in a note, that the MS. was given to him by Goldsmith, but that he, Percy, had forgotten to which comedy it belonged. Later editors, however, have viewed it as being one of the several unused epilogues written for She Stoops to Conquer,' of which Goldsmith has himself given the history in the letter quoted in the introduction to the preceding epilogue. Mr. Bolton Corney thought it was the one which Goldsmith says Colman judged as "too bad to be spoken."-ED.]

THERE is a place-so Ariosto sings

A treasury for lost and missing things;

Lost human wits have places there assign'd them,
And they who lose their senses, there may find them.
But where's this place, this storehouse of the age? 5
The Moon, says he; but I affirm, the Stage:
At least, in many things, I think I see
His lunar and our mimic world agree:

Both shine at night, for, but at Foote's1 alone,
We scarce exhibit till the sun goes down;
Both prone to change, no settled limits fix,
And sure the folks of both are lunatics.
But in this parallel my best pretence is,
That mortals visit both to find their senses:
To this strange spot, rakes, macaronies, cits,
Come thronging to collect their scatter'd wits.
The gay coquette, who ogles all the day,
Comes here at night, and goes a prude away.
Hither the affected city dame advancing,
Who sighs for operas, and doats on dancing,
Taught by our art, her ridicule to pause on,
Quits the ballet, and calls for Nancy Dawson.2
The gamester, too, whose wit's all high or low,
Oft risks his fortune on one desperate throw,

10

15

20

1 "Foote's" was "the little theatre in the Haymarket," where morning performances were sometimes given.-Ed.

2 A popular air of the time; also the name of a famous hornpipe dancer.-ED.

Comes here to saunter, having made his bets,
Finds his lost senses out, and pays his debts.
The Mohawk,' too-with angry phrases stor❜d-
As, "Damme, Sir!" and, " Sir, I wear a sword!
Here lesson'd for awhile, and hence retreating,
Goes out, affronts his man, and takes a beating.
Here come the sons of scandal and of news,
But find no sense-for they had none to lose.
Of all the tribe here wanting an adviser,
Our Author's the least likely to grow wiser;
Has he not seen how you your favour place
On sentimental queens2 and lords in lace?
Without a star, a coronet, or garter,
How can the piece expect or hope for quarter?
No high-life scenes, no sentiment: the creature
Still stoops among the low to copy Nature.
Yes, he's far gone :-and yet some pity fix,
The English laws forbid to punish lunatics.

HOLD! Prompter, hold! a word before your nonsense:
I'd speak a word or two, to ease my conscience.
My pride forbids it ever should be said

My heels eclips'd the honours of my head;

40

EPILOGUE,

SPOKEN BY MR. LEE LEWES, IN THE CHARACTER OF HARLEQUIN, AT HIS BENEFIT.

[The "benefit" took place at Covent Garden Theatre, May 7, 1773. Charles Lee Lewes, though famous as harlequin, was not a comedian of standing till, through the lucky refusal of the part by Smith, he became the original Young Marlow in She Stoops to Conquer.'-ED.]

1 Or Mohock, =

London bully.-ED.

2 In this allusion to sentimental queens, it is probable that Goldsmith glanced in particular at Mr. Murphy's tragedy of ‘Zenobia,' though his splenetic attack is directed generally against the comedy which was brought into fashion about this time by the great popularity of Kelly's ́ False Delicacy,' and effectually exploded some years after by Foote's clever satire of Piety in Pattens.'-B.

That I found humour in a pye-bald vest,

5

Or ever thought that jumping was a jest. [Takes off his mask.
Whence, and what art thou, visionary birth?
Nature disowns, and reason scorns thy mirth :
In thy black aspect every passion sleeps,
The joy that dimples, and the woe that weeps.
How hast thou fill'd the scene with all thy brood
Of fools pursuing, and of fools pursued!
Whose ins and outs no ray of sense discloses,
Whose only plot it is to break our noses;
Whilst from below the trap-door demons rise,
And from above the dangling deities:
And shall I mix in this unhallow'd crew?
May rosin'd lightning1 blast me if I do!
No-I will act-I'll vindicate the stage:
Shakespeare himself shall feel my tragic rage.
Off! off! vile trappings! a new passion reigns!
The madd'ning monarch revels in my veins.
Oh! for a Richard's voice to catch the theme,-
"Give me another horse! bind up my wounds !—soft—
'twas but a dream."

10

15

20

Ay, 'twas but a dream, for now there's no retreating, 25
If I cease Harlequin, I cease from eating.
'Twas thus that Esop's stag, a creature blameless,
Yet something vain, like one that shall be nameless,
Once on the margin of a fountain stood,

And cavill'd at his image in the flood:

30

"The deuce confound," he cries," these drumstick shanks
They never have my gratitude nor thanks;
They're perfectly disgraceful! strike me dead!
But for a head, yes, yes, I have a head :
How piercing is that eye! how sleek that brow!
My horns! I'm told horns are the fashion now."

35

Whilst thus he spoke, astonish'd, to his view,
Near, and more near, the hounds and huntsmen drew;
"Hoicks! hark forward!" came thund'ring from behind :
He bounds aloft, outstrips the fleeting wind;
He quits the woods, and tries the beaten ways;

40

1 Rosin'd lightning stage lightning.-BOLTON Corney.

He starts, he pants, he takes the circling maze :
At length, his silly head, so prized before,
Is taught his former folly to deplore;
Whilst his strong limbs conspire to set him free,
And at one bound he saves himself-like me.

VIDA'S GAME OF CHESS,

[Taking a jump through the stage door.

45

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

AS IT HAS BEEN FOUND TRANSCRIBED IN THE HANDWRITING OF

[The MS. of the following translation in the handwriting of Goldsmith was one of the literary treasures of Mr. Bolton Corney, and the publishers have to thank him for permission to reprint it. Mr. Corney did not become possessed of it until after he had published his own edition of the Poems, and he first gave printed publicity to this before quite unknown work through Mr. Cunningham's edition, 1854. Mr. Forster, to whom Mr. B. Corney also lent the MS., concurs in believing it to be the work of Goldsmith. He describes the MS. as follows (Life of Goldsmith,' 1854, v. ii., p. 265):-"It is a small quarto manuscript of thirty-four pages, containing 679 lines, to which a fly-leaf is appended, in which Goldsmith notes the differences of nomenclature between Vida's chessmen and our own. It has occasional interlineations and corrections, but rather such as would occur in transcription, than in a first or original copy. Sometimes, indeed, choice appears to have been made between two words equally suitable to the sense and verse, as 'to' for 'toward;' but the insertions and erasures refer almost wholly to words or lines accidentally omitted and replaced." From the evidences of extra care which the MS. discloses, as well as from the apparent effort at "taking up" (as Mr. Forster says) "the manner of the great master of translation, Dryden," the work may be viewed as belonging to the middle-period of Goldsmith's career, that is, to the time immediately subsequent to the publication of the Traveller,' 1765.

Marco Vida (b. about 1480; d. 1567), the Italian poet whom Clement VII. made Bishop of Alba, was but little known in England till Alexander Pope praised his work in his juvenile Essay on Criticism' (1709), thus:

"Immortal Vida! on whose honoured brow
The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow:
Cremona now shall ever boast thy name,
As next in place to Mantua, next in fame!"
Essay on Criticism, 11. 705-8.