XLIX.

PROLOGUE TO "THE PILGRIM."

BY BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

REVIVED FOR OUR AUTHOR'S BENEFIT, ANNO 1700.

How wretched is the fate of those who write!
Brought muzzled to the stage, for fear they bite.
Where, like Tom Dove, they stand the common foe;
Lugg'd by the critic, baited by the beau.
Yet worse, their brother poets damn the play,
And roar the loudest, though they never pay.
The fops are proud of scandal, for they cry,
At every lewd, low character,-That's I.
He who writes letters to himself would swear,
The world forgot him, if he was not there.
What should a poet do? 'Tis hard for one
To pleasure all the fools that would be shown:
And yet not two in ten will pass the town.
Most coxcombs are not of the laughing kind;
More goes to make a fop, than fops can find.

Quack Maurus,1 though he never took degrees
In either of our universities,

Yet to be shown 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 fustian stuff he wrote
Was dead-born doggerel, or is quite forgot:
His man of Uz, stript of his Hebrew robe,
Is just the proverb, and as poor as Job.

1' Quack Maurus:' Sir Richard Blackmore.

One would have thought he could no longer jog;
But Arthur was a level, Job's a bog.

There, though he crept, yet still he kept in sight;
But here, he founders in, and sinks down right,
Had he prepared us, and been dull by rule,
Tobit had first been turn'd to ridicule :

But our bold Briton, without fear or awe,
O'erleaps at once the whole Apocrypha;

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

But when if, after all, this godly gear
Is not so senseless as it would appear;
Our mountebank has laid a deeper train,
His cant, like Merry-Andrew's noble vein,
Cat-calls the sects to draw them in again.
At leisure hours, in epic song he deals,
Writes to the rumbling of his coach's wheels,
Prescribes in haste, and seldom kills by rule,
But rides triumphant between stool and stool.
Well, let him go; 'tis yet too early day,

To get himself a place in farce or play.
We know not by what name we should arraign him,
For no one category can contain him ;

A pedant, canting preacher, and a quack,
Are load enough to break one ass's back:
At last, grown wanton, he presumed to write,
Traduced two kings, their kindness to requite;
One made the doctor, and one dubb'd the knight.

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L.

EPILOGUE TO "THE PILGRIM."

PERHAPS the parson 1 stretch'd a point too far,
When with our Theatres he waged a war.
He tells you, that this very moral age
Received the first infection from the stage.
But sure, a banish'd court, with lewdness fraught,
The seeds of open vice, returning, brought.
Thus lodged (as vice by great example thrives)
It first debauch'd the daughters and the wives.
London, a fruitful soil, yet never bore
So plentiful a crop of horns before.
The poets, who must live by courts, or starve,
Were proud so good a government to serve :
And, mixing with buffoons and pimps profane,
Tainted the stage, for some small snip of gain.
For they, like harlots under bawds profess'd,
Took all the ungodly pains, and got the least.
Thus did the thriving malady prevail:
The court, its head, the poets but the tail.
The sin was of our native growth, 'tis true;
The scandal of the sin was wholly new.
Misses they were, but modestly conceal'd;
Whitehall the naked Venus first reveal'd,

Who, standing as at Cyprus, in her shrine,
The strumpet was adored with rites divine.
Ere this, if saints had any secret motion,
'Twas chamber-practice all, and close devotion.

I

pass the peccadilloes of their time; Nothing but open lewdness was a crime.

1 Parson:' Jeremy Collier.

A monarch's blood was venial to the nation,
Compared with one foul act of fornication.
Now, they would silence us, and shut the door,
That let in all the barefaced vice before.
As for reforming us, which some 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 stop the trade of love behind the scene,
Where actresses 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 some remains,
While you have still your Oates, and we our Haines.

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TALES FROM CHAUCER.

TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF ORMOND.

Anno 1699.

MY LORD,-Some estates are held in England by paying a fine at the change of every lord: I have enjoyed the patronage of your family, from the time of your excellent grandfather to this present day. I have dedicated the translation of the "Lives of Plutarch" to the first Duke; and have celebrated the memory of your heroic father. Though I am very short of the age of Nestor, yet I have lived to a third generation of your house; and by your Grace's favour am admitted still to hold from you by the same tenure.

I am not vain enough to boast that I have deserved the value of so illustrious a line; but my fortune is the greater, that for three descents they have been pleased to distinguish my poems from those of other men; and have accordingly made me their peculiar care. May it be permitted me to say, that, as your grandfather and father were cherished and adorned with honours by two successive monarchs, so I have been esteemed and patronised by the grandfather, the father, and the son, descended from one of the most ancient, most conspicuous, and most deserving families in Europe?

It is true, that by delaying the payment of my last fine, when it was due by your Grace's accession to the titles and patrimonies of your house, I may seem, in rigour of law, to have made a forfeiture of my claim; yet my heart has always been devoted to your service; and since you have been graciously pleased, by your permission of this address, to accept the tender of my duty, it is not yet too late to lay these poems at your feet.

The world is sensible that you worthily succeed, not only to the honours of your ancestors, but also to their virtues. The long chain of magnanimity, courage, easiness of access, and desire of doing good even to the prejudice of your fortnne, is so far from being broken in your Grace, that the precious metal yet runs pure to the newest link of it; which I will not call the last, because I hope and pray it may descend to late posterity: and your flourishing youth, and that of your excellent Duchess, are happy omens of my wish.