You laugh not, gallants, as by proof appears,
At what his beauship fays, 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 monftrous muff. 30
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 arise,
For though the immortal species never dies, 36
Yet every year new maggots make new flies.
But where he lives abroad, he fcarce can find
One fool, for million that he left behind.
REVIVED FOR OUR AUTHOR'S BENEFIT, ANNO 1700.
HOW wretched is the fate of those who write!
Brought muzzled to the stage, for fear they bite.
Where, like Tom Dove, they ftand the com-
mon foe;
Lugg'd by the critic, baited by the beau.
Yet worse, their brother Poets damn the Play, 5
And roar the loudeft, though they never pay.
The fops are proud of scandal, for they cry,
every lewd, low character-That's I.
He, who writes letters to himself, would fwear,
The world forgot him, if he was not there.
This play, with alterations by Sir John Vanbrugh, and a fecular mafque, together with this prologue and an epilogue written by our author, was revived for his benefit in 1700, his fortune being at that time in as declining a state as his health: they were both spoken by Mr. Cibber, then a very young actor, much to Dryden's fatisfaction. DERRICK.
What fhould a Poet do? 'Tis hard for one
To pleasure all the fools that would be shown:
And yet not two in ten will pass the town.
Moft coxcombs are not of the laughing kind;
More goes to make a fop, than fops can find. 15
Quack Maurus, though he never took degrees
In either of our universities;
Yet to be shown by fome kind wit he looks,
Because he play'd the fool, and writ three books.
But, if he would be worth a Poet's pen,
He must be more a fool, and write again :
For all the former fuftian stuff he wrote,
Was dead-born doggrel, or is quite forgot;
His man of Uz, ftript of his Hebrew robe,
Is juft the proverb, and As poor as Job.
One would have thought he could no longer
jog;
But Arthur was a level, Job's a bog.
There, though he crept, yet still he kept in fight;
But here, he founders in, and finks down right.
Had he prepar❜d us, and been dull by rule, 30
Tobit had firft been turn'd to ridicule:
But our bold Briton, without fear or awe,
O'erleaps at once the whole Apocrypha;
Invades the Pfalms with rhymes, and leaves no
For any Vandal Hopkins yet to come.
But when, if after all, this godly geer
Is not fo fenfelefs as it would appear;
Our mountebank has laid a deeper train,
His cant, like Merry Andrew's noble vein,
Cat-calls the fects to draw 'em in again.
At leisure hours, in epic fong he deals,
Writes to the rumbling of his coach's wheels,
Prescribes in hafte, and feldom kills by rule,
But rides triumphant between ftool and stool.
Well, let him go; 'tis yet too early day,
To get himself a place in farce or play.
We know not by what name we should arraign
him,
For no one category can contain him;
A pedant, canting preacher, and a quack,
Are load enough to break one ass's back : 50
At laft grown wanton, he prefum'd to write,
Traduc'd two kings, their kindness to requite;
One made the doctor, and one dubb'd the
knight.
PERHAPS the parfon ftretch'd a point too
When with our Theatres he wag'd a war.
He tells you, that this very moral age
Receiv'd the first infection from the stage.
But fure, a banish'd court, with lewdnefs fraught,
The feeds of open vice, returning, brought.
Thus lodg'd (as vice by great example thrives)
It first debauch'd the daughters and the wives.
London, a fruitful foil, yet never bore
So plentiful a crop of horns before.
The Poets, who must live by courts, or ftarve,
Were proud fo good a government to serve ;
* Dryden in this epilogue labours to throw the fault of the licentioufnefs of dramatic writers, which had been fo feverely cenfured by the Rev. Jeremy Collier, upon the example of a court returned from banishment, accompanied by all the vices and follies of foreign climates; and whom to pleafe was the poet's business, as he wrote to eat. DERRICK.
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