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OFT has our poet wifh'd, this happy feat
Might prove his fading Mufe's last retreat:
I wonder'd at his wifh, but now I find

He fought for quiet, and content of mind;
Which noifeful towns, and courts can never
know,

5

And only in the shades 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 e'en you, while the vext world we

show,

Your peace to value more, and better know? "Tis all we can return for favours paft,

Whofe holy memory fhall ever last,

10

For patronage from him whofe care prefides 15
O'er
every noble art, and every fcience guides:

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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. 20
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 firft Grecian breafts,
Whofe kindness was religion to their guests. 25
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.
Converse fo chafte, and fo ftrict virtue fhown,
As might Apollo with the Muses own.
Till our return, we must despair to find
Judges fo juft, fo knowing, and fo kind.

30

PROLOGUE

TO THE

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.

DISCORD and plots, which have undone

our age,

With the fame ruin have o'erwhelm'd the stage. Our house has fuffer'd in the common woe, We have been troubled with Scotch rebels too. Our brethren are from Thames to Tweed departed,

5

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,

10

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 strut and swagger in heroic rhime.

15

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;

20

The Scot, who wore it, would be chosen king.
But why fhould I thefe renegades defcribe, 25
When you yourselves have feen a lewder tribe?
Teague has been here, and, to this learned pit,
With Irish action flander'd English wit:
You have beheld fuch barbarous Macs appear,
As merited a fecond maffacre:

Such as,

30

like Cain, were branded with dif grace,

And had their country ftamp'd upon their

face.

When strollers durft presume to pick your purse, We humbly thought our broken troop not worfe,

How ill foe'er our action may deferve,

Oxford's a place where wit can never starve,

35

PROLOGUE

TO THE

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.

THOUGH actors cannot much of learning

boaft,

Of all who want it, we admire it most:
We love the praises of a learned pit,
As we remotely are ally'd to wit.

We fpeak our poet's wit, and trade in ore,
Like thofe, who touch upon the golden fhore:
Betwixt our judges can diftinction make,
Difcern how much, and why, our poems take:

Ver. 8.

why, our poems take :] The pleasure properly to be expected from a good tragedy is "the pleasure that arifes from pity and terror." Has Pope in the first lines of his famous prologue to Cato touched on this pleafure? or made this the effential bufinefs of tragedy? It is obfervable that in Greece the Drama was perfected in half a century; in Europe it took up 400 years to bring it to any perfection. Ariftotle in the poetics, complains of the effeminacy of the Athenian tafte, in forcing their poets to foften fome of their most striking catastrophes, and diminishing the terror and To Bepov of their pieces. In the Trachiniæ of Sophocles, Deianira utters a fentiment that was Solon's years before Solon lived. Sophocles alfo ufes the word ne, long before it was framed at Athens. But the defcription of the chariot race at the Ifthmian games is the greatest anachronism. Dr. J. WARTON.

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