University of Virginia Library

EPILOGUE. [Spoken by two young Ladies.]

Enter First Lady.
LADIES, to-night our unexperienc'd train
Your favour courted:—Did we court in vain?
Like Hamlet's Ghost just rising from the dead,
“With all our imperfections on our head,”
Unlectur'd in the deep theatric art,
To rouse the feelings of the pitying heart;
Unus'd to acting, and untaught to feign
The fancy'd pleasure, and the mimic pain,
You'll wonder how we ventur'd into view—
And to say truth, I wonder at it too!
Yet think not, fill'd with insolence we come;
Conscious, demerit still would keep us dumb.

Enter Second Lady.
Child, we must quit these visionary scenes,
And end our follies when we end our teens:
These bagatelles we must relinquish now,
And good matronic gentlewomen grow.
Fancy no more on airy wings shail rise;
We now must scold the maids, and make the pies.
Verse is a folly: we must get above it;
And yet I know not how it is—I love it.
Tho', should we still the rhyming trade pursue,
The men will shun us—and the women too.
The men, poor souls! of scholars are afraid;
We shou'd not, did they govern, learn to read;
At least, in no abstruser volume look
Than the learn'd records—of a Cook'ry-book.
The ladies too, their well-meant censure give:
“What! does she write? A slattern, as I live.—
“I wish she'd leave her books, and mend her clothes:
“I thank my stars I know not verse from prose.
“How well soe'er these learned ladies write,
“They seldom act the virtues they recite;
“No useful qualities adorn their lives:
“They make sad Mothers, and still sadder Wives.”

First Lady.