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CESAR BORGIA.

As we strew ratsbane when we vermin fear,
'Twere worth the cost to scatter foolbane here;
And after all our judging fops were served,
Dull poets too should have a dose reserved;
Such reprobates as, past all sense of shaming,
Write on, and ne'er are satisfied with damning;
Next, those, to whom the stage does not belong,
Such whose vocation only is to song,

At most to prologue; whom for want of time
Poets take in for journey-work in rhyme.
But I want curses for those mighty shoals
Of scribbling Chlorises, and Phyllis fools:

Those oafs should be restrained, during their lives,
From pen and ink, as madmen are from knives.
I could rail on, but 'twere a task as vain
As preaching truth at Rome or wit in Spain:
Yet to huff out our play was worth my trying;
John Lilburn scaped his judges by defying.
If guilty, yet I'm sure of the Church's blessing,
By suffering for the Plot without confessing.

PROLOGUE TO "CÆSAR BORGIA, SON OF POPE
ALEXANDER THE SIXTH."*

THE unhappy man who once has trailed a pen
Lives not to please himself, but other men;
Is always drudging, wastes his life and blood,
Yet only eats and drinks what you think good.
What praise soe'er the poetry deserve,
Yet every fool can bid the poet starve.
That fumbling letcher to revenge is bent,

Because he thinks himself or whore is meant :
Name but a cuckold, all the city swarms;
From Leadenhall to Ludgate is in arms.
Were there no fear of Antichrist or France,
In the best time poor poets live by chance.
Either you come not here, or, as you grace
Some old acquaintance, drop into the place,
Careless and qualmish with a yawning face :
You sleep o'er wit, and by my troth you may;
Most of your talents lie another way.
You love to hear of some prodigious tale,
The bell that tolled alone, or Irish whale.

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News is your food, and you enough provide,
Both for yourselves and all the world beside.

The text Besides the more This tragedy by Lee was produced at the Duke's House, Dorset Gardens, in 1680.

of this Prologue has been corrected from the quarto edition of the play, 1680. important blunder of blest for best in line 13, all the modern editions have your for our in line 30, and feast for feasts in line 41.

+ Best has been improperly changed into blest in all modern editions.

One theatre there is of vast resort,

Which whilome of Requests was called the Court;
But now the great Exchange of News 'tis hight,
And full of hum and buzz from noon till night.
Up stairs and down you run, as for a race,
And each man wears three nations in his face.

So big you look, though claret you retrench,

That, armed with bottled ale, you huff the French.
But all your entertainment still is fed

By villains in our own dull island bred.

Would you return to us, we dare engage

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By smelling a perfume to make you die;

To show you better rogues upon the stage.
You know no poison but plain ratsbane here;
Death's more refined, and better bred elsewhere.
They have a civil way in Italy

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That 'tis infallible as is the chair.

A trick would make you lay your snuff-box by.
Murder's a trade, so known and practised there,

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But, mark their feasts, you shall behold such pranks ;
The Pope says grace, but 'tis the Devil gives thanks.

PROLOGUE TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.*

1680.

THESPIS, the first professor of our art,
At country wakes, sung ballads in a cart.
To prove this true, if Latin be no trespass,
Dicitur et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis.
But Æschylus, says Horace in some page,
Was the first mountebank e'er‡ trod the stage;
Yet Athens never knew your learned sport
Of tossing poets in a tennis-court.
But 'tis the talent of our English nation
Still to be plotting some new reformation ;
And few years hence, if anarchy go on,
Jack Presbyter will here erect his throne,

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ΤΟ

This Prologue preceded the representation at Oxford in 1680 of Lee's tragedy of "Sophonisba, or Hannibal's Overthrow," which originally appeared in 1676 in London. The Prologue has no reference to the play, but is adapted to Oxford. It is here printed from the Prologue as prefixed to the quarto editions of Lee's play, 1685 and 1693; and this varies considerably from what has been printed in all editions from the first volume of the "Miscellany Poems," 1684. It must be presumed that either Dryden altered the Prologue for Lee's publication, or that the publication in the "Miscellany Poems' was from an incorrect copy. It contains by the way one very careless misprint, Escalus for Æschylus. The variances are recorded in the notes.

From instead of in in "Miscellany Poems," 1684.

That instead of e'er in the same.
Shall instead of will in the same.

$ Goes instead of go in the same.

Knock out a tub with preaching once a day.
And every prayer be longer than a play.
Then all you* heathen wits shall go to pot
For disbelieving of a Popish plot;†

Nor should we want the sentence to depart

Even in our first original, a cart.§

Occham, Dun Scotus, must though learned go down,||

As chief supporters of the triple crown.

And Aristotle¶¶ for destruction ripe :

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PROLOGUE TO "THE LOYAL GENERAL."++

1680.

IF yet there be a few that take delight

In that which reasonable men should write,
To them alone we dedicate this night.
The rest may satisfy their curious itch
With city gazettes, or some factious speech,
Or whate'er libel, for the public good,
Stirs up the shrovetide crew to fire and blood.
Remove your benches, you apostate pit,
And take, above, twelve pennyworth of wit;
Go back to your dear dancing on the rope,

Or see what's worse, the Devil and the Pope.

Your instead of you in "Miscellany Poems," 1684.

IO

After line 16, the following couplet is in the Prologue as printed in "Miscellany Poems," 1684, and in all editions:

"Your poets shall be used like infidels,

And worst the author of the Oxford bells."

Scape instead of want in "Miscellany Poems," 1684.

§ After line 18, the Prologue, as printed in all editions from the "Miscellany Poems," 1684, has the following:

**

No zealous brother there would want a stone,
To maul us cardinals, and pelt Pope Joan.
Religion, learning, wit, would be suppressed,
Rags of the whore, and trappings of the beast."

Instead of line 19, as above, it is in "Miscellany Poems," 1684:

'Scot, Suarez, Tom of Aquin, must go down."

Aristotle's instead of Aristotle in "Miscellany Poems," 1684.

Then be proved instead of thence be called in the same.

1 The last four lines are not in the Prologue as printed in "Miscellany Poems," 1684.

"The Loyal General" is a tragedy by Nahum Tate: it was produced in Dorset Gardens in 1680. This Prologue was reprinted in the third edition of the First Part of "Miscellany Poems,"

The plays that take on our corrupted stage,
Methinks, resemble the distracted age;
Noise, madness, all unreasonable things,
That strike at sense, as rebels do at kings.
The style of forty-one our poets write,
And you are grown to judge like forty-eight :
Such censures our mistaking audience make,
That 'tis almost grown scandalous to take.
They talk of fevers that infect the brains;
But nonsense is the new disease that reigns.
Weak stomachs, with a long disease oppressed,
Cannot the cordials of strong wit digest;
Therefore thin nourishment of farce ye choose,
Decoctions of a barley-water muse.

A meal of tragedy would make ye sick,

Unless it were a very tender chick.

Some scenes in sippets would be worth our time;

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Those would go down; some love that's poached in rhyme;

If these should fail

We must lie down, and, after all our cost,

Keep holiday, like watermen in frost ;

Whilst you turn players on the world's great stage,

And act yourselves the farce of your own age.

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PROLOGUE TO "THE SPANISH FRIAR, OR THE
DOUBLE DISCOVERY." *

1681.

Now, luck for us, and a kind hearty pit,
For he who pleases never fails of wit.
Honour is yours,

And you, like kings at city treats, bestow it;
The writer kneels, and is bid rise a poet.
But you are fickle sovereigns, to our sorrow;
You dub to-day, and hang a man to-morrow:
You cry the same sense up, and down again,
Just like brass money once a year in Spain :

* Dryden's tragi-comedy "The Spanish Friar," one of his best plays, was produced at Dorset Gardens, in 1681; it was published in November 1682. Dryden called this 'a Protestant play." It is a severe attack on the Roman Catholic priesthood. The "Religio Laici" was published by Dryden in the interval between the first representation and the publication of "The Spanish Friar. This play was prohibited by James II., and Dryden having then become a Roman Catholic, would not have wished that it should be acted. After the Revolution, it was the first play ordered to be represented by Queen Mary in her presence; but her Protestant zeal brought punishment on this occasion, for she was greatly disconcerted by passages in the play, bearing hard on her own position, with reference to her exiled father, the bearing of which struck the audience. The Epilogue to this play was written by an unnamed friend and the greater part of this Epilogue is printed in the "State Poems vol. iii. as A Satire on Romish Confessors, by Mr. Dryden."

Take you in the mood, whate'er base metal come,
You coin as fast as groats at Birmingham;1
Though 'tis no more like sense in ancient plays
Than Rome's religion like St. Peter's days.

In short, so swift your judgments turn and wind,
You cast our fleetest wits a mile behind.

'Twere well your judgments but in plays did range,
But even your follies and debauches change

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With such a whirl, the poets of your age
Are tired, and cannot score them on the stage,
Unless each vice in short-hand they indite,

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Even as notched prentices whole sermons write. †
The heavy Hollanders no vices know,
But what they used a hundred years ago;

Like honest plants, where they were stuck, they grow.
They cheat, but still from cheating sires they come;
They drink, but they were christened first in mum.
Their patrimonial sloth the Spaniards keep,

And Philip first taught

Philip how to sleep.

The French and we still change; but here's the curse,
They change for better, and we change for worse;
They take up our old trade of conquering,
And we are taking theirs, to dance and sing :
Our fathers did for change to France repair,
And they for change will try our English air.
As children, when they throw one toy away,
Straight a more foolish gewgaw comes in play;
So we, grown penitent on serious thinking,
Leave whoring, and devoutly fall to drinking.
Scouring the watch grows out of fashion wit;
Now we set up for tilting in the pit,
Where 'tis agreed by bullies chicken-hearted,
To fright the ladies first, and then be parted.
A fair attempt has twice or thrice been made,
To hire night murderers, and make death a trade.‡
When murder's out, what vice can we advance,
Unless the new-found poisoning trick of France?
And, when their art of ratsbane we have got,
By way of thanks, we'll send them o'er our Plot.

* Birmingham was famous for false coinage.

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It was in old time a part of the apprentice's duty to write out the sermon after church for his

master,

Scott suggests that this is an allusion to the murder of Mr. Thynne: this, however, occurred a few months after the production of "The Spanish Friar." It is much more probably an allusion to the night attack on Dryden himself in Rose Alley, in December 1679, and similar night ambuscades.