Here they, who long have known the useful stage,
Come to be taught themselves to teach the age.
As your commiffioners our poets go,
To cultivate the virtue which
fow
you ;
In your Lyceum firft themfelves refin'd,
And delegated thence to human-kind.
But as ambaffadors, when long from home,
For new inftructions to their princes come;
So poets, who your precepts have forgot,
Return, and beg they may be better taught:
Follies and faults elfewhere by them are shown,
But by your manners they correct their own.
Th' illiterate writer, emp'ric-like, applies
To minds difeas'd, unfafe, chance, remedies :
The learn'd in fchools, where knowlege first began,
Studies with care th' anatomy of man;
Sees virtue, vice, and paffions, in their cause,
And fame from fcience, not from fortune, draws.
So Poetry, which is in Oxford made
An art, in London only is a trade.
There haughty dunces, whose unlearned pen
Could ne'er spell grammar, would be reading men.
Such build their poems the Lucretian way;
So many huddled atoms make a play;
And if they hit in order by fome chance,
They call that nature, which is ignorance.
To fuch a fame let mere town-wits afpire,
And their gay nonsense their own cits admire,
Our poet, could he find forgiveness here,
Would wish it rather than a plaudit there.
He owns no crown from thofe Prætorian bands,
But knows that right is in the fenate's hands,
Not impudent enough to hope your praise,
Low at the Mufes feet his wreath he lays,
And, where he took it up, refigns his bays.
Kings make their poets whom themselves think fit,
But 'tis your fuffrage makes authentic wit.
EPILOGUE, spoken by the fame.
NO poor Dutch peafant, wing'd with all his fear,
Flies with more hafte, when the French arms
draw near,
Than we with our poetic train come down,
For refuge hither, from th' infected town :
Heaven for our fins this fummer has thought fit
To visit us with all the plagues of wit.
A French troop first swept all things in its way;
But those hot Monfieurs were too quick to stay :
Yet, to our coft, in that short time, we find
They left their itch of novelty behind.
Th' Italian merry-andrews took their place,
And quite debauch'd the ftage with lewd grimace:
Inftead of wit, and humours, your delight
Was there to fee two hobby-horses fight;
Stout Scaramoucha with rufh lance rode in,
And ran a tilt at centaur Arlequin.
For love you heard how amorous affes bray'd,
And cats in gutters gave their ferenade.
Nature was out of countenance, and each day
Some new-born monster fhewn you for a play.
But when all fail'd, to ftrike the ftage quite dumb,
Those wicked engines call'd machines are come.
Thunder and lightning now for wit are play'd,
And fhortly scenes in Lapland will be laid:
Art magic is for poetry profest;
And cats and dogs, and each obscener beast,
To which Ægyptian dotards once did bow,
Upon our English stage are worship'd now.
Witchcraft reigns there, and raises to renown
Macbeth and Simon Magus of the town,
Fletcher's defpis'd, your Jonfon 's out of fashion,
And Wit the only drug in all the nation.
In this low ebb our wares to you are shown
By you thofe ftaple authors worth is known ;
For wit's a manufacture of your own.
When you, who only can, their scenes have prais'd,
We'll boldly back, and say, the price is rais'd.
EPILOGUE, spoken at OXFORD,
by Mrs. MARSHALL.
FT has our poet wish'd, this happy feat
Might prove his fading Mufe's laft retreat :
I wonder'd at his wish, but now I find
He fought for quiet, and content of mind;
Which noifeful towns and courts can never know,
And only in the fhades like laurels grow.
Youth, ere it fees the world, here ftudies reft,
And age returning thence concludes it beft.
What wonder if we court that happiness
Yearly to fhare, which hourly you poffefs,
Teaching ev'n you, while the vext world we show,
Your peace to value more, and better know?
'Tis all we can return for favours past,
Whofe holy memory fhall ever last,
For patronage from him whofe care prendes
O'er every noble art, and every fcience guides:
Bathurst, a name the learn'd with reverence know,
And scarcely more to his own Virgil owe;
Whofe age enjoys but what his youth deferv'd,
To rule thofe Mufes whom before he ferv'd.
His learning, and untainted manners too,
We find, Athenians, are deriv'd to you:
Such antient hospitality there rests
In yours, as dwelt in the first Grecian breasts,
Whofe kindness was religion to their guests.
Such modefty did to our sex appear,
As, had there been no laws, we need not fear,
Since each of you was our protector here.
Converfe fo chafte, and fo ftrict virtue.shown,
As might Apollo with the Mufes own.
Till our return, we must despair to find
Judges fo juft, fo knowing, and fo kind.
PROLOGUE to the Univerfity of OXFORD.
Difcord, and plots, which have undone our age,
With the fame ruin have o'erwhelm'd the stage.
Our houfe has fuffer'd in the common woe,
We have been troubled with Scotch rebels too.
Our brethren are from Thames to Tweed departed,
And of our fifters, all the kinder-hearted,
To Edinburgh gone, or coach'd, or carted.
With bonny bluecap there they act all night
For Scotch half-crown, in English three-pence hight.
One nymph, to whom fat Sir John Falstaff 's lean,
There with her fingle perfon fills the scene.
Another, with long ufe and age decay'd,
Div'd here old woman, and rofe there a maid.
Our trufty door-keepers of former time
There ftrut and fwagger in heroic rhyme.
Tack but a copper-lace to drugget fuit,
And there's a hero made without difpute: .
And that, which was a capon's tail before,
Becomes a plume for Indian emperor.
But all his fubjects, to exprefs the care
Of imitation, go, like Indians, bare:
Lac'd linen there would be a dangerous thing;
It might perhaps a new rebellion bring;
The Scot, who wore it, would be chofen king.
But why should I these renegades defcribe,
When you yourfelves have feen a lewder tribe?
VOL. II.
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