University of Virginia Library

EPILOGUE, By ANOTHER HAND.

You saw your Wife was Chaste, yet throughly tryd,
And, without doubt, y'are hugely edify'd;
For, like our Hero, whom we shew'd to day,
You think no Woman true, but in a Play;
Love once did make a pretty kind of Show,
Esteem and Kindness in one Breast wou'd grow,
But 'twas Heav'n knows how many years ago.
Now some small Chatt, and Guinney Expectation,
Gets all the pretty Creatures in the Nation:
In Comedy your little Selves you meet,
'Tis Covent-Garden drawn in Bridges-street.
Smile on our Author then, if he has shown
A jolly Nut-brown Bastard of your own.
Ah! Happy you, with Ease and with Delight,
Who act those Follies, Poets toil to Write!
The sweating Muse does most leave the Chase,
She puffs, and hardly keeps your Protean Vices pace.
Pinch you but in one Vice, away you fly
To some new Frisk of Contrariety.
You rowl like Snow-Balls, gathering as you run,
And get seven Dev'ls, when dispossess'd of one.
Your Venus once was a Platonique Queen,
Nothing of Love beside the Face was seen;
But every Inch of Her you now Uncase,
And clap a Vizard Masque 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 Offences.
Saturn, even now, takes Doctoral Degrees,
Hee'l do your work this Summer, without Fees.
Let all the Boxes, Phœbus find thy Grace,
And, ah, preserve thy Eighteen penny Place!
But for the Pit-Confounders, let 'em go,
And find as little Mercy as they show:
The Actors thus and thus, thy Poets pray;
For every Critick sav'd, thou damn'st a Play.