ANOTHER EPILOGUE.

Intended to have been spoken to the Play before it was forbidden last summer.*

Two houses joined, two poets to a play?
You noisy Whigs will sure be pleased to-day;
It looks so like two shrieves † the city way.
But since our discords and divisions cease,
You, bilboa-gallants, learn to keep the peace;
Make here no tilts; let our poor stage alone;
Or if a decent murder must be done,

Pray take a civil turn to Marybone.

If not, I swear we'll pull up all our benches;
Not for your sakes, but for our orange-wenches:

For you thrust wide sometimes, and many a spark,
That misses one, can hit the other mark.
This makes our boxes full; for men of sense
Pay their four shillings in their own defence:
That safe behind the ladies they may stay,
Peep o'er the fan, and judge the bloody fray.
But other foes give beauty worse alarms;
The posse-poetarum's up in arms:

No woman's fame their libels has escaped;
Their ink runs venom, and their pens are clapped.
When sighs and prayers their ladies cannot move,
They rail, write treason, and turn Whigs to love.
Nay, and I fear they worse designs advance,

པ་

5

ΙΟ

There's a damned love-trick new brought o'er from France.
We charm in vain, and dress, and keep a pother,

15

20

25

While those false rogues are ogling one another.
All sins besides admit some expiation;
But this against our sex is plain damnation.
They join for libels too, these women-haters;
And as they club for love, they club for satires :
The best on't is they hurt not for they wear
Stings in their tails; their only venom's there.
'Tis true, some shot at first the ladies hit,
Which able marksmen made and men of wit:

30

But now the fools give fire, whose bounce is louder;

35

And yet, like mere train-bands, they shoot but powder.

Libels, like plots, sweep all in their first fury;

Then dwindle like an ignoramus jury:

Thus age begins with towzing and with tumbling,

But grunts, and groans, and ends at last in fumbling.

40

461

This Epilogue appeared for the first time among Dryden's poems in R. Bell's edition, three Mr. Bell printed it from a copy of the broadsheet, published at the time, furnished to vols, 1854. him by Mr. P. Collier. There is a copy of the same broadsheet in the British Museum and it is expressly stated after the heading as given above that the Epilogue was written by Mr. Dryden. If, as is probable, Dryden is correct in saying that this Epilogue was composed before the play was forbidden in the previous year, the opening lines would show that the question of the two companies was settled some time before they began operations together in November 1682.

+ Printed shrieves in the original edition. See note on sheriffs in Epilogue to "The Tempest," 13. I Marybone Garden.

EPILOGUE TO "CONSTANTINE THE GREAT."*

1684.

OUR hero's happy in the play's conclusion ;
The holy rogue at last has met confusion;
Though Arius all along appeared a saint,
The last act showed him a True Protestant. +
Eusebius for you know I read Greek authors--
Reports, that, after all these plots and slaughters,
The court of Constantine was full of glory,
And every Trimmer turned addressing Tory.
They followed him in herds as they were mad :

When Clause was king, then all the world was glad. ‡
Whigs kept the places they possessed before,
And most were in a way of getting more;
Which was as much as saying, gentlemen,
Here's power and money to be rogues again.
Indeed, there were a sort of peaking tools,
Some call 'em modest, but I call 'em fools;
Men much more loyal, though not half so loud;
But these poor devils were cast behind the crowd;
For bold knaves thrive without one grain of sense,
But good men starve for want of impudence.
Besides all these, there were a sort of wights,
(I think my author calls them Teckelites,)

Such hearty rogues against the king and laws,

They favoured even a foreign rebel's cause,

5

ΙΟ

15

20

When their own damned design was quashed and awed; 25

At least they gave it their good word abroad.

As many a man, who for a quiet life

Thus o'er their darling plot these Trimmers cry,

Breeds out his bastard, not to noses his wife,

And, though they cannot keep it in their eye,
They bind it prentice to Count Teckely.||

30

Constantine the Great," a tragedy by Lee, was produced in 1684 Arius, the heretic, is the villain of the piece.

+ The Whigs called themselves True Protestants.

This is an allusion to a passage in the speech of Orator Higgins to Clause, when elected King of the Beggars, in the " Beggars Bush," act ii. scene 1.

"Who is he here that did not wish thee chosen

Now thou art chosen? Ask them: all will say so,
Nay swear 't-'tis for the King-but let that pass.

Nose turned into noise in the "Miscellany Poems," third edition of Part I., 1702; and noise has appeared in all subsequent editions.

Count Teckely, a Hungarian Protestant and insurrectionist leader against the Austrian Government, allied himself with the Turks, assumed the crown of Transylvania as a vassal of the Porte, and in 1683 joined with a large Hungarian force the Turkish army besieging Vienna. The Whigs sympathised with Teckely and his followers, who were waging war against a Roman Catholic Government which persecuted them. The name of Teckelites was thus given to the Whigs The word occurs as if it were universally understood in an Address presented by the citizens of Carlisle to James II December 1687 (History of Addresses, p. 161).

They believe not the last plot; may I be curst,
If I believe they e'er believed the first!

No wonder their own plot no plot they think,

The man that makes it never smells the stink.

And now it comes into my head, I'll tell

Why these damned Trimmers loved the Turks so well.
The original Trimmer, though a friend to no man,
Yet in his heart adored a pretty woman;
He knew that Mahomet laid

up

for ever

Kind black-eyed rogues for every true believer;
And,-which was more than mortal man e'er tasted,-
One pleasure that for threescore twelvemonths lasted.
To turn for this may surely be forgiven:
Who'd not be circumcised for such a heaven?

35

40

45

PROLOGUE TO "DISAPPOINTMENT, OR THE
MOTHER IN FASHION." *

1684.

How comes it, gentlemen, that, now-a-days,
When all of you so shrewdly judge of plays,
Our poets tax you still with want of sense?
All prologues treat you at your own expense.
Sharp citizens a wiser way can go ;

They make you fools, but never call you so.
They in good manners seldom make a slip,
But treat a common whore with ladyship:
But here each saucy wit at random writes,
And uses ladies as he uses knights.

Our author, young and grateful in his nature,
Vows that from him no nymph deserves a satire ;
Nor will he ever draw-I mean his rhyme
Against the sweet partaker of his crime;
Nor is he yet so bold an undertaker

To call men fools, 'tis railing at their Maker.
Besides, he fears to split upon that shelf;
He's young enough to be a fop himself :

And, if his praise can bring you all a-bed;

He swears such hopeful youth no nation ever bred.

5

10

15

20

* "Disappointment, or the Mother in Fashion," was a play written by Southern, brought out in 1684. The Epilogue to the same play has been printed by Scott as Dryden's, misled doubtless by its being assigned to Dryden in the third edition of the First Part of the "Miscellany Poems," pubIn the collected edition of Southern's plays the Epilogue lished in 1702, after Dryden's death. The assignment of the poem by Jacob Tonson to is said to be by the Hon. John Stafford. Dryden after his death is of no authority. In Mr. R. Bell's and the Aldine editions the Epilogue is also printed as Dryden's.

Your nurses, we presume, in such a case,
Your father chose, because he liked the face,
And often they supplied your mother's place.
The dry nurse was your mother's ancient maid,
Who knew some former slip she ne'er betrayed.
Betwixt them both, for milk and sugar-candy,
Your sucking bottles were well stored with brandy.
Your father, to initiate your discourse,
Meant to have taught you first to swear and curse,
But was prevented by each careful nurse.
For, leaving dad and mam, as names too common,
They taught you certain parts of man and woman.
I pass your schools; for there when first you came,
You would be sure to learn the Latin name.
In colleges, you scorned the art of thinking,
But learned all moods and figures of good drinking:
Thence come to town, you practise play, to know
The virtues of the high dice and the low.
Each thinks himself a sharper most profound:
He cheats by pence, is cheated by the pound.
With these perfections, and what else he gleans,
The spark sets up for love behind our scenes,
Hot in pursuit of princesses and queens.

25

30

35

40

There, if they know their man, with cunning carriage,
Twenty to one but it concludes in marriage.
He hires some lonely room, love's fruits to gather,
And garret-high rebels against his father:
But he once dead-

45

Brings her in triumph, with her portion, down,
A toilet, dressing-box, and half a crown.
Some marry first, and then they fall to scouring,
Which is refining marriage into whoring.
Our women batten well on their good-nature;
All they can rap and rend† for the dear creature.
But while abroad so liberal the dolt is,

50

55

Poor spouse at home as ragged as a colt is.‡
Last, some there are, who take their first degrees
Of lewdness in our middle galleries;

The doughty bullies enter bloody drunk,

Invade and grabble one another's punk :

60

They caterwaul, and make a dismal rout,

Call sons of whores, and strike, but ne'er lug out:
Thus, while for paltry punk they roar and stickle,
They make it bawdier than a conventicle.§

Toilet printed twillet in early editions.

Rap and rend," seize or plunder; literally, snatch and pull, or snatch and tear.

"All they could rap and rend and pilfer."-HUDIBRAS, Part II. canto ii. line 789.

This phrase came to be used as one word; and it is given in Coles's Dictionary (1696) as rap an ven, and is there explained “snatch and catch (or else rend)."

These two lines are used by Dryden again in his last Epilogue written for the representation for his benefit a few weeks before his death.

For the pronunciation of conventicle, with the accent on the penultimate syllable, see note on "The Medal," line 284.

FULL twenty years and more our labouring stage
Has lost on this incorrigible age:

Our poets, the John Ketches of the nation,
Have seemed to lash ye even to excoriation:
But still no sign remains; which plainly notes
You bore like heroes or you bribed like Oates.
What can we do, when mimicking a fop,
Like beating nut-trees, makes a larger crop?

Faith, we'll e'en spare our pains, and to content you,
We'll fairly leave you what your Maker meant you.

Satire was once your physic, wit your food;

One nourished not, and t' other drew no blood.
We now prescribe, like doctors in despair,
The diet your weak appetites can bear.
Since hearty beef and mutton will not do,
Here's julep dance, ptisan of song and show:
Give you strong sense, the liqour is too heady;
You're come to farce, that's asses' milk, already.
Some hopeful youths there are of callow wit,
Who one day may be men, if Heaven think fit;
Sound may serve such, ere they to sense are grown,
Like leading strings, till they can walk alone.
But yet, to keep our friends in countenance, know,
The wise Italians first invented show;
Thence into France the noble pageant past;
'Tis England's credit to be cozened last.

Freedom and zeal have choused you o'er and o'er;

30

Change for the worse has ever used to please:

Then 'tis the mode of France, without whose rules

Sees operas daily, learns the tunes so long,

35

Till foot, hand, head, keep time with every song;

*The opera of "Albion and Albanius" was written before the death of Charles II and privately represented several times in his presence: but it was not brought before the public till after Charles's death. It was first acted publicly, June 3, 1685. It is a political piece, and was intended to celebrate the victory of Charles II. over the Whigs. "Albion is Charles, and "Albanius" his brother James. The opera was brought out after James's accession to the throne with great splendour, and at very great expense: on the sixth night of the representation, June 13, news came to London of the landing of Monmouth, which stopped the career of the play, and caused great loss to the theatre. The music of the opera was by Grabut, a Frenchman, the master of the King's band, whom Charles preferred to Purcell.

H H