Poems on several occasions

You've seen me oft enough to know me here:
“Young Nick” 's my name, and “fool” my character.
Besides, my voice is heard, and phiz is shown:
I need not throw my cloak off to be known.
An old man's garb is a disguise too thin;
The cloak can seldom keep the fool within.

598

A lion's skin the silent ass may case,
But length of ear the solid brute betrays;
For, while his ears remain, an ass will be an ass.
Howe'er, our farce shall well be represented:
Nor is my acting here unprecedented.
Shakespeare in his own plays a part would bear,—
Some meal-faced ghost or black-wigg'd murderer:
But the top-characters surpass'd his skill;
For, what he well could write, he acted ill.
Thus to acquire renown and please the fair,
I come, like him, a playwright and a player.
Nor do my works and action disagree;
(In which you'll own I'm happier far than he;)
For I alike excel in each capacity.
None but myself can in so just a light
Each different humour place to open sight;
And none but Nick should play what none but Nick would write.
Say, every single she in Richmond, say,
Have I e'er fail'd to show or read my play,
Or act it all myself, on each glad holiday?
Have I e'er fail'd, soon as released from schooling,
To change my tragic birch for comic fooling?
In public, then, forbear my work aspersing:
'T has pass'd your private judgment in rehearsing.
Of the unlearn'd let it not feel the fury
That stood the verdict of an Oxford jury:

599

For 't has at Oxford had its hearing too,
Rehearsed at once to twelve good men and true.
I would not have you clap,—though it may happen
There mayn't be much occasion for your clapping.
But if you fain your private sense would utter,
Rattling with modish rage your fans must flutter:
They must, or else my schemes are all disjointed,—
The Fool, as well as “Rake,” is “disappointed.”

Well, for myself I'll say,—and mark, d' ye see?
I shall for once speak without vanity,—
Young Nick to-night does Falstaff's self transcend,
Though play'd by Betterton, by Shakespeare penn'd.
The best-drawn copy to delight must fail,
With me compared,—a mere original.
For never yet on any stage was shown a
Coxcomb so true in propriâ personâ.

He used to rehearse to all the women in Richmond.

He writ an epilogue for himself to speak in the person of an old man; where he throws off his cloak and tells them,

------ “You like the trick:
I am no more old Interest, but young Nick.”

He was the Doctor's son, and assistant in teaching school.

He read his play, at St. John's in Oxon, to twelve in company, most of them strangers.

The two last verses in his “Prologue to the Ladies” are,

“Lest rustic claps should hurt your tender hands,
Take the Spectator's rule, and flourish with your fans.”

University of Virginia Library

PROLOGUE TO MR. BRADY'S COMEDY, CALLED, “HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY; OR, THE RAKE DISAPPOINTED:”

SPOKEN BY HIMSELF, WHO ACTED THE CHIEF PART.