PROLOGUE TO MR. ADDISON'S

TRAGEDY OF CATO.

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold:
For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage,
Commanding tears to stream thro' ev'ry age;
Tyrants no more their savage nature kept,
And foes to virtue wonder'd how they wept.
Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move
The hero's glory, or the virgin's love;
In pitying love, we but our weakness show,
And wild ambition well deserves its woe.

Here tears shall flow from a more gen'rous cause,
Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws:
He bids your breast with ancient ardour rise,
And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes.
Virtue confess'd in human shape he draws,
What Plato thought, and godlike Cato was :
No common object to your sight displays,
But what with pleasure Heav'n itself surveys,'
A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
And greatly falling, with a falling State.
While Cato gives his little senate laws,
What bosom beats not in his country's cause?
Who sees him act, but envies ev'ry deed?

Who hears him groan, and does not wish to bleed?

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1 This alludes to a famous passage of Seneca, which Mr. Addison after

wards used as a motto to his play, when it was printed.- WARBURTON,

Ev'n when proud Cæsar 'midst triumphal cars,
The spoils of nations, and the pomp of wars,
Ignobly vain and impotently great,

Show'd Rome her Cato's figure drawn in state;
As her dead Father's rev'rend image past,
The pomp was darken'd, and the day o'ercast;
The triumph ceas'd, tears gush'd from ev'ry eye;
The world's great victor pass'd unheeded by ;
Her last good man dejected Rome ador'd,
And honour'd Cæsar less than Cato's sword.

Britons, attend: be worth like this approv'd,'
And show, you have the virtue to be mov'd.
With honest scorn the first fam'd Cato view'd
Rome learning arts from Greece, whom she subdu'd;
Your scene precariously subsists too long

On French translation, and Italian song.

Dare to have sense yourselves; assert the stage,
Be justly warm'd with your own native rage:
Such plays alone should win a British ear,
As Cato's self had not disdained to hear."

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PROLOGUE TO THE "THREE HOURS AFTER
MARRIAGE."

AUTHORS are judg'd by strange capricious rules;
The great ones are thought mad, the small ones fools:

1 Britons, attend] Mr. Pope had written it arise, in the spirit of Poetry and Liberty; but Mr. Addison, frighten'd at so daring an expression, which, he thought, squinted at rebellion, would have it altered, in the spirit of Prose and Politics, to attend.-WARBurton.

2 As Cato's self, etc.] This alludes to the famous story of his going into the Theatre, and immediately coming

out again, related by Martial.-WAR-
BURTON. The first epigram of Mar-
tial's first book is the one referred to
by Warburton.

Nosses jocosa dulce cum sacrum Floræ
Lususque festos et licentiam vulgi;
Cur in theatrum, Cato severe, venisti?
An ideo tantum veneras, ut exires?

3 First published in the Miscellanies, 1727.

Yet sure the best are most severely fated,
For fools are only laugh'd at, wits are hated.
Blockheads with reason men of sense abhor;
But fool 'gainst fool is barb'rous civil war.'
Why on all authors then should critics fall,
Since some have writ, and shown no wit at all?
Condemn a play of theirs, and they evade it,

Cry, "Damn not us, but damn the French who made it."
By running goods, these graceless owlers' gain;
These are the rules of France, the plots of Spain:
But wit, like wine, from happier climates brought,
Dash'd by these rogues, turns English common draught.
They pall Molière's and Lopes'' sprightly strain,
And teach dull Harlequins to grin in vain.
How shall our author hope a gentler fate,
Who dares most impudently not translate?
It had been civil in these ticklish times,

To fetch his fools and knaves from foreign climes,
Spaniards and French abuse to the world's end,
But spare old England, lest you hurt a friend.
If any fool is by our satire bit,

Let him hiss loud, to show you all, he's hit.
Poets make characters, as salesmen clothes,
We take no measure of your fops and beaus,
But here all sizes and all shapes you meet,
And fit yourselves, like chaps in Monmouth-street.

1 Compare Dunciad, B. iii. 178, where this line is repeated.

2 i.e., smugglers. "Owl" was the country word for "wool." So Smollett: "I have toiled and moyled to a good purpose, for the advantage of Matt's family, if I can't save as much owl as will make me an under petticoat." The "owling trade," was the clandestine trade in wool carried on between England and France, chiefly by Romney Marsh.

3 Lope di Vega.

4i.e., chapmen. Monmouth Street in Soho was famous for the sale of cast-off clothes. Lady M. W. Montagu says in a letter to the Countess of Bute: "Ever since I knew the world, Irish patents have been hung out to sale, like the laced and embroidered coats in Monmouth Street, and bought up by the same sort of people." And Gay, in his "Trivia," says:

Gallants! look here, this fool's-cap has an air,
Goodly and smart, with ears of Issachar.
Let no one fool engross it, or confine,
A common blessing! now 'tis yours, now mine.
But poets in all ages had the care

To keep this cap, for such as will, to wear,
Our author has it now, (for every wit
Of course resign'd it to the next that writ :)
And thus upon the stage 'tis fairly thrown;
Let him that takes it, wear it as his own.'

Shores a cap with ears.

[Flings down the

and exit.

PROLOGUE DESIGNED FOR MR. D'URFEY'S
LAST PLAY.'

GROWN old in rhyme, 'twere barbarous to discard

Your persevering, unexhausted bard :

Damnation follows death in other men ;

But your damn'd poet lives, and writes again.
Th' adventurous lover is successful still,
Who strives to please the fair against her will:

Thames Street gives cheeses, Covent Garden fruits,

Moorfields old books, and Monmouth Street old suits.

Compare Epistle to Augustus, v. 419.

1 "C. Johnson in the Prologue to his Sultaness thus referred to this exit and the farce:

'Some wags have been, who boldly durst
adventure,

To club a farce by Tripartite indenture,
But let them share their dividend of praise,
And their own Fool's-cap wear instead of
bays.'

Which attack procured him a place in
the Dunciad."-Genest, History of
the Stage, ii. 598.

2 First published in the Miscellanies, 1727.

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Tom D'Urfey was born about the middle of the seventeenth century, his parents being of French extraction. He was a highly popular writer of farces under Charles II., but fell into destitution in his old age. Through Addison's influence one of his comedies, "The Plotting Sisters," was revived and acted for his benefit, and it is probable that this is the play to which Pope here refers. The proceeds must have been considerable, as D'Urfey appears to have been in fairly easy circumstances at his death in 1723. Compare Pope's letter to Cromwell, of April 10,

1710.