Слике страница
PDF
ePub

15

As your commiffioners our poets go,
To cultivate the virtue which you fow;
In your Lyceum first themselves 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 elsewhere by them are shown,
But by your manners they correct their own,21
The illiterate writer, empiric-like, applies
To minds difeas'd, unfafe, chance, remedies:
The learned in fchools, where knowledge first

began,

Studies with care the anatomy of man ;

25

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, whofe unlearned pen 30
Could ne'er fpell grammar, would be reading

men.

Ver. 25. Studies with care the anatomy of man ;]" Créer un fujet; inventer un nœud et un dénouement; donner a chaque perfonnage fon charactere, et le foutenir; faire en forte qu' aucun d'eux ne paraiffe et ne forte fans une raifon fentie de tous les fpectateurs; ne laiffer jamais le theatre vuide; faire dire a chacun ce qu'il doit dire; avec nobleffe fans enflure, avec fimplicitè fans baffeffe; faire de beaux vers qui ne fentent point le poete, et tels que le perfonnage aurait dû en faire, s'il parlait en vers; c'eft-là une partie des devoirs que tout auteur d'une tragedie doit remplir." Dr. J. WARTON.

35

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 nonfenfe their own cits admire.
Our poet, could he find forgiveness here,
Would with it rather than a plaudit there.
He owns no crown from thofe Prætorian bands,
But knows that right is in the fenate's hands, 41
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.

}

45

EPILOGUE,

SPOKEN BY THE SAME.

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 the infected town:
Heaven for our fins this fummer has thought
fit

To vifit us with all the plagues of wit.

5

way;

A French troop first swept all things in its But those hot Monfieurs were too quick to ftay:

Yet, to our coft, in that short time, we find They left their itch of novelty behind.

10

In a very old French mystery acted at Paris, 1490, in order to render the character of Judas more deteftable, the author affirms, that before he became acquainted with Chrift, he had affaffinated the fon of his king, had afterwards murdered his father, and married his mother. Dr. J. WARTON.

The Italian merry-andrews took their place,

And quite debauch'd the stage with lewd gri

mace:

Instead of wit, and humours, your delight
Was there to fee two hobby-horfes fight;
Stout Scaramoucha with rufh lance rode in, 15
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 strike the ftage quite dumb,

21

Those wicked engines call'd machines are

come.

Thunder and lightning now for wit are play'd, And shortly scenes in Lapland will be laid : Art magic is for poetry profest;

25

And cats and dogs, and each obscener beast, To which Ægyptian dotards once did bow, Upon our English stage are worshipp'd now. Witchcraft reigns there, and raises to renown Macbeth and Simon Magus of the town,

30

Ver. 11. The Italian] Apoftolo Zeno had made a collection of four thousand old Italian tragedies and comedies. I Simillimi of Triffino, wrote in his old age, is an imitation of the Menæchmi of Plautus. See Triffino's fine letter in blank verfe prefixed to Sophonifba addrefied to Leo X.

Dr J. WARTON.

Fletcher's defpis'd, your Jonfon's out of fafhion,

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.

35

When you, who only can, their fcenes have

prais'd,

We'll boldly back, and say, their price is rais'd.

[blocks in formation]
« ПретходнаНастави »