The Poetical Works of John Dryden Volume Ii Part 31

XLVII.

AN EPILOGUE.

You saw our wife was chaste, yet thoroughly tried, And, without doubt, ye are hugely edified; For, like our hero, whom we show'd to-day, You think no woman true, but in a play.

Love once did make a pretty kind of show: Esteem and kindness in one breast would grow: But 'twas Heaven knows how many years ago.

Now some small chat, and guinea expectation, Gets all the pretty creatures in the nation: In comedy your little selves you meet; 10 'Tis Covent Garden drawn in Bridges Street.

Smile on our author then, if he has shown A jolly nut-brown b.a.s.t.a.r.d of your own.

Ah! happy you, with ease and with delight, Who act those follies, Poets toil to write!

The sweating Muse does almost leave the chase; She puffs, and hardly keeps your Protean vices pace.

Pinch you but in one vice, away you fly To some new frisk of contrariety.

You roll like snow-b.a.l.l.s, gathering as you run, 20 And get seven devils, when dispossess'd of one.

Your Venus once was a Platonic queen; Nothing of love beside the face was seen; But every inch of her you now uncase, And clap a vizard-mask upon the face.

For sins like these, the zealous of the land, With little hair, and little or no band, Declare how circulating pestilences Watch, every twenty years, to snap offences.

Saturn, even now, takes doctoral degrees; 30 He'll do your work this summer without fees.

Let all the boxes, Phoebus, find thy grace, And, ah! preserve 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 saved, thou d.a.m.n'st a play.

XLVIII.

EPILOGUE TO "THE HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD."

BY MR JOHN DRYDEN, JUN., 1696.[68]

Like some raw sophister that mounts the pulpit, So trembles a young Poet at a full pit.

Unused to crowds, the parson quakes for fear, And wonders how the devil he durst come there; Wanting three talents needful for the place-- Some beard, some learning, and some little grace.

Nor is the puny Poet void of care; For authors, such as our new authors are, Have not much learning, nor much wit to spare: And as for grace, to tell the truth, there's scarce one 10 But has as little as the very Parson: Both say, they preach and write for your instruction: But 'tis for a third day, and for induction.

The difference is, that though you like the play, The Poet's gain is ne'er beyond his day.

But with the Parson 'tis another case, He, without holiness, may rise to grace.

The Poet has one disadvantage more, That if his play be dull, he's d.a.m.n'd all o'er, Not only a d.a.m.n'd blockhead, but d.a.m.n'd poor. 20 But dulness well becomes the sable garment; I warrant that ne'er spoil'd a Priest's perferment: Wit's not his business, and as wit now goes, Sirs, 'tis not so much yours as you suppose, For you like nothing now but nauseous beaux.

You laugh not, gallants, as by proof appears, At what his beaus.h.i.+p says, but what he wears; So 'tis your eyes are tickled, not your ears.

The tailor and the furrier find the stuff, The wit lies in the dress, and monstrous m.u.f.f. 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, Yet every year new maggots make new flies; But where he lives abroad, he scarce can find One fool for millions that he left behind.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 68: 'John Dryden, jun.': second son of the poet, who was at Rome when this play was brought out.]

XLIX.

PROLOGUE TO "THE PILGRIM."

BY BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

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 stand the common foe; Lugg'd by the critic, baited by the beau.

Yet worse, their brother poets d.a.m.n the play, And roar the loudest, though they never pay.

The fops are proud of scandal, for they cry, At every lewd, low character,--That's I.

He who writes letters to himself would swear, The world forgot him, if he was not there. 10 What should a poet do? 'Tis hard for one To pleasure all the fools that would be shown: And yet not two in ten will pa.s.s the town.

Most c.o.xcombs are not of the laughing kind; More goes to make a fop, than fops can find.

Quack Maurus,[69] though he never took degrees In either of our universities, Yet to be shown by some kind wit he looks, Because he play'd the fool, and writ three books.

But, if he would be worth a Poet's pen, 20 He must be more a fool, and write again: For all the former fustian stuff he wrote Was dead-born doggerel, or is quite forgot: His man of Uz, stript of his Hebrew robe, Is just 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 sight; But here, he founders in, and sinks down right, Had he prepared us, and been dull by rule, 30 Tobit had first been turn'd to ridicule: But our bold Briton, without fear or awe, O'erleaps at once the whole Apocrypha; Invades the Psalms with rhymes, and leaves no room For any Vandal Hopkins yet to come.

But when if, after all, this G.o.dly gear Is not so senseless as it would appear; Our mountebank has laid a deeper train, His cant, like Merry-Andrew's n.o.ble vein, Cat-calls the sects to draw them in again. 40 At leisure hours, in epic song he deals, Writes to the rumbling of his coach's wheels, Prescribes in haste, and seldom kills by rule, But rides triumphant between stool 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 a.s.s's back: 50 At last, grown wanton, he presumed to write, Traduced two kings, their kindness to requite; One made the doctor, and one dubb'd the knight.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 69: 'Quack Maurus:' Sir Richard Blackmore.]

L.

EPILOGUE TO "THE PILGRIM."

Perhaps the parson[70] stretch'd a point too far, When with our Theatres he waged a war.

He tells you, that this very moral age Received the first infection from the stage.

But sure, a banish'd court, with lewdness fraught, The seeds of open vice, returning, brought.

Thus lodged (as vice by great example thrives) It first debauch'd the daughters and the wives.

London, a fruitful soil, yet never bore So plentiful a crop of horns before. 10 The poets, who must live by courts, or starve, Were proud so good a government to serve: And, mixing with buffoons and pimps profane, Tainted the stage, for some small snip of gain.

For they, like harlots under bawds profess'd, Took all the unG.o.dly pains, and got the least.