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
Saturn e'en now takes doctoral degrees,
He'll do your work this summer without fees.
Let all the boxes, Phœbus, find thy grace,
And, ah! preserve the eighteenpenny place!
But for the pit confounders, let them go,
And find as little mercy as they show:
The actors thus, and thus thy poets pray;
For every critic saved, thou damn'st a play.
HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD.
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
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
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 damn'd all o'er,
Not only a damn'd blockhead, but damn'd poor.
But dulness well becomes the sable garment;
I warrant that ne'er spoil'd a Priest's preferment:
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 Beauship 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 muff.
The truth on 't is, the payment of the pit
Is like for like, clipp'd money for clipp'd 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.
TO THE PILGRIM.
PERHAPS the Parson 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.
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' ungodly pains, and got the least.
Thus did the thriving malady prevail,
The court its head, the poets but the tail.
The sin was of our native growth, 'tis true,
The scandal of the sin was wholly new.
Misses they were, but modestly conceal'd;
Whitehall the naked Venus first reveal'd,
Who standing, as at Cyprus, in her shrine,
The strumpet was adored with rites divine.
Ere this, if saints had any secret motion,
"Twas chamber-practice all, and close devotion.
I pass the peccadillos of their time;
Nothing but open lewdness was a crime.
A monarch's blood was venial to the nation,
Compared with one foul act of fornication.
Now they would silence us, and shut the door,
That let in all the bare-faced vice before.
As for reforming us, which some pretend,
That work in England is without an end:
Well may we change, but we shall never mend.
Yet if you can but bear the present stage,
We hope much better of the coming age.
SOLILOQUY OF A ROYAL EXILE.
What would
you say if we should first begin
To stop the trade of love behind the scene,
Where actresses make bold with married men?
For while abroad so prodigal the dolt is,
Poor spouse at home as ragged as a colt is.
In short we'll grow as moral as we can,
Save here and there a woman or a man:
But neither you nor we, with all our pains,
Can make clean work; there will be some remains,
While you have still your Oates, and we our
Haynes.
SOLILOQUY OF A ROYAL EXILE.
UNHAPPY I! who, once ordain'd to bear
God's justice sword, and his vicegerent here,
And now depos'd-'gainst me my children rise,
My life must be their only sacrifice:
Highly they me accuse, but nothing prove;
But this is out of tenderness and love!
They seek to spill my blood; 'tis that alone
Must for the nation's crying sins atone.
But careful, Heaven forewarn'd me in a dream,
And show'd me that my dangers were extreme;
The heavenly vision spoke, and bade me flee
The' ungrateful brood, that were not worthy me;
Alarm'd I fled at the appointed time;
And mere necessity was made my crime!
HAPPY and free, securely bless'd,
No beauty could disturb my rest;
My amorous heart was in despair,
To find a new victorious fair:
Till you, descending on our plains,
With foreign force renew my chains;
Where now you rule without control,
The mighty sovereign of my soul.
Your smiles have more of conquering charms
Than all your native country arms:
Their troops we can expel with ease,
Who vanquish only when we please.
But in your eyes, oh! there's the spell,
Who can see them, and not rebel?
You make us captives by your stay,
Yet kill us if you go away.
|