Who, like bold padders, fcorn by night to prey,
But rob by fun-fhine, in the face of day:
Nay scarce the common ceremony use
Of, Stand, Sir, and deliver up your Mufe;
But knock the Poet down, and, with a grace,
Mount Pegasus before the author's face.
Faith, if you have fuch country Toms abroad, 25
"Tis time for all true men to leave that road.
Yet it were modeft, could it but be faid,
They ftrip the living, but these rob the dead;
Dare with the mummies of the Muses play,
And make love to them the Egyptian way; 30-
Or, as a rhiming author would have faid,
Join the dead living to the living dead.
Such men in Poetry may claim fome part:
They have the license, though they want the art;
And might, where theft was prais'd, for Lau-
reats ftand,
Poets, not of the head, but of the hand.
They make the benefits of others ftudying,
Much like the meals of politic Jack-Pudding,
Whose dish to challenge no man has the cou-
'Tis all his own, when once he has spit i'the porridge.
But, gentlemen, you're all concern'd in this;
You are in fault for what they do amifs:
For they their thefts ftill undiscover'd think,
And durft not steal, unless you please to wink.
Perhaps, you may award by your decree,
They fhould refund; but that can never be.
For fhould you letters of reprisal seal,
Thefe men write that which no man else would fteal.
YOU faw our wife was chafte, yet throughly
And, without doubt, you're hugely edify'd; For, like our hero, whom we fhew'd to-day, You think no woman true, but in a play. Love once did make a pretty kind of show: 5 Efteem and kindnefs in one breaft would
But 'twas Heaven knows how many years ago.
Now fome small chat, and guinea expectation,
Gets all the pretty creatures in the nation;
In comedy your little felves you meet ;
"Tis Covent Garden drawn in Bridges-ftreet.
Smile on our author then, if he has shown
A jolly nut-brown bastard of your own.
Ah! happy you, with eafe and with delight,
Who act those follies, Poets toil to write!
The fweating Mufe does almost leave the chace;
She puffs, and hardly keeps your Protean vices
Pinch but in one vice, away you fly
To fome new frisk of contrariety.
You roll like fnow-balls, gathering as you run,
And get feven devils, when difpoffefs'd of one. 21
Your Venus once was a Platonic queen ;
Nothing of love befide the face was feen;
But every inch of her you now uncafe,
And clap a vizard-mask upon the face.
For fins like thefe, the zealous of the land,
With little hair, and little or no band,
Declare how circulating peftilences
Watch, every twenty years, to fnap offences.
Saturn, e'en now, takes doctoral degrees; 30
He'll do your work this fummer 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 every critic fav'd, thou damn'ft a play.
HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD*.
LIKE fome raw fophifter that mounts the pulpit,
So trembles a young Poet at a full pit.
Unus'd to crowds, the Parfon quakes for fear, And wonders how the devil he durft come there;
Wanting three talents needful for the place, 5 Some beard, fome learning, and fome little grace:
Nor is the puny Poet void of care;
For authors, fuch as our new authors are,
Have not much learning, nor much wit to
And as for grace, to tell the truth, there's
But has as little as the very Parfon :
This comedy was written by John Dryden, jun. our author's fecond fon. It was acted at the theatre in Lincoln's-inn-fields in 1696,
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