For they their thefts still undiscover'd think, And durst not steal, unless you please to wink. Perhaps, you may award by your decree, They should refund; but that can never be. For should you letters of reprisal feal,

These men write that which no man else would

steal.

AN

Y

EPILOGUE.

OU faw our wife was chaste, yet throughly

try'd,

And, without doubt, y'are hugely edify'd;
For, like our hero, whom we shew'd to-day,
You think no woman true, but in a play.
Love once did make a pretty kind of show :
Esteem and kindness in one breast would grow:
But 'twas Heav'n knows how many years ago.
Now fome small chat, and guinea expectation,
Gets all the pretty creatures in the nation:
In Comedy your little selves you meet;
'Tis Covent Garden drawn in Bridges-street.
Smile on our author then, if he has shown
A jolly nut-brown bastard of your own.

Ah! happy you, with ease and with delight,
Who act those follies, Poets toil to write!
The sweating Muse does almost leave the chace;
She puffs, and hardly keeps your Protean vices pace.
Pinch you but in one vice, away you fly
To fome new frisk of contrariety.
You rowl like snow-balls, gathering as you run,
And get seven devils, when dispossess'd of one.
Your Venus once was a Platonic queen;
Nothing of love beside the face was seen ;
But every inch of her you now uncase,
And clap a vizard-mask upon the face,
For fins like these, the zealous of the land,
With little hair, and little or no band,

Declare how circulating pestilences
Watch, every twenty years, to snap offences.
Saturn, e'en now, takes doctoral degrees;
He'll do your work this summer without fees.
Let all the boxes, Phœbus, find thy grace,
And, ah, preferve the eighteen-penny place!
But for the pit confounders, let 'em go,
And find as little mercy as they show :
The Actors thus, and thus thy Poets pray;
For ev'ry critic sav'd, thou damn'st a play.

1

EPILOLOGUE

TO THE

HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD.

IKE some raw sophister that mounts the pulpit, So trembles a young Poet at a full pit. Unus'd to crowds, the Parson quakes for fear, And wonders how the devil he durst come there; Wanting three talents needful for the place, Some beard, some learning, and some little grace ; Nor is the puny Poet void of care; For authors, fsuch as our new authors are,

Have not much learning, nor much wit to spare: And as for grace, to tell the truth, there's scarce

one,

But has as little as the very Parfon :

Both say, they preach and write for your inftruc

tion:

But 'tis for a third day, and for induction.

The difference is, that tho you like the play,

The Poet's gain is ne'er beyond his day.

But with the Parfon 'tis another cafe,

He, without holiness, may rise to grace;

1

}

}

The Poet has one disadvantage more, That if his play be dull, he's damn'd all o'er, Not only a damn'd blockhead, but damn'd poor, But dulness well becomes the sable garment ; I warrant that ne'er spoil'd a Priest's preferment : Wit's not his business, and as wit now goes, Sirs, 'tis not so much yours as you suppose, For you like nothing now but nauseous beaux. You laugh not, gallants, as by proof appears, At what his beauship says, but what he wears; So 'tis your eyes are tickled, not your ears : The taylor and the furrier find the stuff, The wit lies in the dress, and monstrous muff. The truth on't is, the payment of the pit Is like for like, clipt money for clipt wit. You cannot from our absent author hope He should equip the stage with such a fop : Fools change in England, and new fools arife, For tho' the immortal species never dies, Yet ev'ry year new maggots make new flies. But where he lives abroad, he scarce can find One fool, for million that he left behind.

**

HOW

OW 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, tho 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 wou'd 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.

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