If you pretend, as well you may,
Your high degree, your friends will say,
The duke St. Aignon made a play.
If Gallic wit convince you scarce,
His grace of Bucks has made a farce,
And you, whose comic wit is terse all,
Can hardly fall below Rehearsal.
Then finish what you have began ;
But scribble faster if you can :
For yet no George, to our difcerning,
Has writ without a ten years warning.
COMEDY call'd, The WIVES EXCUSE.
URE there's a fate in plays, and 'tis 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 nafty 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 :
But let a monster Muscovite appear,
He draws a crowded audience round the year.
May be thou hast not pleas'd the box and pit;
Yet those who blame thy tale applaud thy wit:
So Terence plotted, but so Terence writ.
Like his thy thoughts are true, thy language clean;
E'en 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 did use,
Who, not accepting, did but 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 Wycherly :
Learn, after both, to draw some just design,
And the next age will learn to copy thine.
Tranflation of the Tenth Satire of JUVENAL.
HE Grecian wits, who Satire first began,
Were pleasant Pasquins on the life of man;
At mighty villains, who the state opprest,
They durst not rail, perhaps; they lash'd, at least,
And turn'd them out of office with a jest.
No fool could peep abroad, but ready stand
The drolls to clap a bauble in his hand.
Wife legislators never yet could draw
A fop within the reach of common law;
For posture, dress, grimace and affectation,
Tho foes to sense, are harmless to the nation.
Our last redress is dint of verse to try,
And Satire is our court of Chancery.
This way took Horace to reform an age,
Not bad enough to need an author's rage.
But yours, who liv'd in more degenerate times,
Was forc'd to fasten deep, and worry crimes.
Yet you, my friend, have temper'd him so well,
You make him smile in spite of all his zeal :
An art peculiar to yourself alone,
To join the virtues of two styles in one.
Oh! were your author's principle receiv'd,
Half of the lab'ring world would be reliev'd :
For not to wish is not to be deceiv'd.
Revenge would into charity be chang'd,
Because it costs too dear to be reveng'd :
It costs our quiet and content of mind,
And when 'tis compass'd leaves a sting behind.
Suppose I had the better end o'th' staff,
Why should I help th' ill-natur'd world to laugh?
'Tis all alike to them, who get the day;
They love the spite and mischief of the fray.
No; I have cur'd myself of that disease;
Nor will I be provok'd, but when I please :
But let me half that cure to you restore;
You give the falve, I laid it to the fore.
Our kind relief against a rainy day,
Beyond a tavern, or a tedious play,
We take your book, and laugh our spleen away.
If all your tribe, too studious of debate,
Would cease falfe hopes and titles to create,
Led by the rare example you begun,
Clients would fail, and lawyers be undone.
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