University of Virginia Library

30 [Second Rejected Epilogue to She Stoops to Conquer]

There is a place, so Ariosto sings,
A treasury for lost and missing things.
Lost human wits have places there assigned them,
And they, who lose their senses, there may find them.
But where's this place, this storehouse of the age?
The moon, says he: but I affirm the stage.
At least in many things, I think I see
His lunar and our mimic world agree.
Both shine at night, for, but at Foote's alone,
We scarce exhibit till the sun goes down.
Both prone to change, no settled limits fix;
'Tis said the folks of both are lunatics.
But in this parallel my best pretence is
That mortals visit both to find their senses.
To this strange spot, rakes, macaronies, cits,
Come thronging to collect their scattered wits.
The gay coquette, who ogles all the day,
Comes here by night and goes a prude away.
The gamester too who, eager in pursuit,
Makes but of all his fortune one va toute,
Whose mind is barren and whose words are few—
‘I take the odds’; ‘Done, done, with you, and you’—
Comes here to saunter, having made his bets,
Finds his lost senses out and pays his debts.
The Mohawk too, with angry phrases stored—
As ‘damme, Sir,’ and ‘Sir, I wear a sword’—
Here lessoned for a while and hence retreating,
Goes out, affronts his man and takes a beating.
Here come the sons of scandal and of news,
But find no sense—for they had none to lose.
The poet too comes hither to be wiser,
And so for once I'll be the man's adviser.
What could he hope in this lord-loving age,
Without a brace of lords upon the stage?
In robes and stars unless the bard adorn us,
You grow familiar, lose respect and scorn us.
Then not one passion, fury, sentiment:
Sure his poetic fire is wholly spent!
Oh, how I love to hear applauses shower
On my fixed attitude of half an hour; (Stands in an attitude)

And then with whining, staring, struggling, slapping,
To force their feelings and provoke their clapping.
Hither the affected city dame advancing,
Who sighs for operas and dotes on dancing,
Who hums a favourite air and, spreading wide,
Swings round the room, the Heinel of Cheapside,
Taught by our art her ridicule to pause on,
Quits Che faro and calls for Nancy Dawson.
Of all the tribe here wanting an adviser,
Our author's the least likely to grow wiser.
Has he not seen how you your favours place
On sentimental queens and lords in lace?
Without a star, a coronet or Garter,
How can the piece expect or hope for quarter?
No high-life scenes, no sentiment, the creature
Still stoops among the low to copy nature.
Yes, he's far gone. And yet some pity mix:
The English laws forbid to punish lunatics.