To you who live in chill degree, As map informs, of fifty-three, And do not much for cold atone, By bringing thither fifty-one, Methinks all climes should be alike, From tropic e'en to pole arctique;...
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....
We act by fits and starts, like drowning men, But just peep up, and then pop down again. Let those who call us wicked change their sense; For never men lived more on Providence....
As Jupiter I made my court in vain; I'll now assume my native shape again. I'm weary to be so unkindly used, And would not be a god to be refused. State grows uneasy when it hinders love;...
Oft has our poet wish'd, this happy seat Might prove his fading Muse's last retreat: I wonder'd at his wish, but now I find He sought for quiet, and content of mind;...
After our 'sop's fable shown to-day, I come to give the moral of the play. Feign'd Zeal, you saw, set out the speedier pace: But the last heat, Plain Dealing won the race:...
Poets, like disputants, when reasons fail, Have one sure refuge left--and that's to rail. Fop, coxcomb, fool, are thunder'd through the pit; And this is all their equipage of wit....
A Poet once the Spartans led to fight, And made them conquer in the muse's right; So would our poet lead you on this day, Showing your tortured fathers in his play....
You've seen a pair of faithful lovers die: And much you care; for most of you will cry, 'Twas a just judgment on their constancy. For, heaven be thank'd, we live in such an age,...
What Sophocles could undertake alone, Our poets found a work for more than one; And therefore two lay tugging at the piece, With all their force, to draw the ponderous mass from Greece;...
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;...
To all and singular in this full meeting, Ladies and gallants, Phoebus sends ye greeting. To all his sons, by whate'er title known, Whether of court, or coffee-house, or town;...
You see what shifts we are enforced to try, To help out wit with some variety; Shows may be found that never yet were seen, 'Tis hard to find such wit as ne'er has been:...
Most modern wits such monstrous fools have shown, They seem not of Heaven's making, but their own. Those nauseous harlequins in farce may pass; But there goes more to a substantial ass:...
Perhaps the parson[1] 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....
They who have best succeeded on the stage, Have still conform'd their genius to their age. Thus Jonson did mechanic humour show, When men were dull, and conversation low....
Of all dramatic writing, comic wit, As 'tis the best, so 'tis most hard to hit, For it lies all in level to the eye, Where all may judge, and each defect may spy. Humour is that which every day we meet,...