SPOKEN BY GARRICK, APRIL 5, 1750,

BEFORE THE MASQUE OF COMUS, ACTED AT DRURY-LANE THEATRE, FOR THE BENEFIT OF MILTON'S GRANDDAUGHTER.

YE patriot crowds who burn for England's fame,
Ye nymphs whose bosoms beat at Milton's name,
Whose generous zeal, unbought by flattering rhymes,
Shames the mean pensions of Augustan times;
Immortal patrons of succeeding days,
Attend this prelude of perpetual praise;
Let Wit condemn'd the feeble war to wage,
With close malevolence, or public rage;
Let Study, worn with virtue's fruitless lore,
Behold this theatre, and grieve no more.
This night, distinguish'd by your smiles, shall tell,
That never Britain can in vain excel:
The slighted arts futurity shall trust,
And rising ages hasten to be just.

At length our mighty bard's victorious lays
Fill the loud voice of universal praise;

And baffled spite, with hopeless anguish dumb,
Yields to renown the centuries to come;
With ardent haste each candidate of fame
Ambitious catches at his towering name;
He sees, and pitying sees, vain wealth bestow
Those pageant honours which he scorn'd below;
While crowds aloft the laureate bust behold,
Or trace his form on circulating gold.
Unknown-unheeded, long his offspring lay,
And want hung threatening o'er her slow decay.
What though she shine with no Miltonian fire,
No favouring muse her morning dreams inspire!
Yet softer claims the melting heart engage,
Her youth laborious, and her blameless age;
Hers the mild merits of domestic life,
The patient sufferer, and the faithful wife.
Thus graced with humble virtue's native charms,
Her grandsire leaves her in Britannia's arms;
Secure with peace, with competence to dwell,
While tutelary nations guard her cell.
Yours is the charge, ye fair, ye wise, ye brave!
'Tis yours to crown desert beyond the grave.

PROLOGUE TO GOLDSMITH'S COMEDY OF
THE GOOD-NATURED MAN.1

SPOKEN BY MR. BRINSLEY, AT THE FIRST PERFORMANCE AT COVENT-GARDEN THEATRE, JANUARY 29, 1768.

PRESS'D by the load of life, the weary mind
Surveys the general toil of human kind,
With cool submission joins the labouring train,
And social sorrow loses half its pain;

Our anxious bard without complaint may share
This bustling season's epidemic care;
Like Cæsar's pilot dignified by fate,

Toss'd in one common storm with all the great:
Distress'd alike the statesman and the wit,
When one a borough courts, and one the pit.
The busy candidates for power and fame
Have hopes and fears, and wishes just the same;
Disabled both to combat, or to fly,

Must hear all taunts, and hear without reply.
Uncheck'd on both, loud rabbles vent their rage,
As mongrels bay the lion in a cage.

The offended burgess hoards his angry tale,
For that bless'd year when all that vote may rail;
Their schemes of spite the poet's foes dismiss,
Till that glad night when all that hate may hiss.
"This day the powder'd curls and golden coat'
(Says swelling Crispin) "begg'd a cobbler's vote;"
"This night our wit" (the pert apprentice cries)
"Lies at my feet; I hiss him, and he dies."
The great, 'tis true, can charm the electing tribe,
The bard may supplicate, but cannot bribe.
Yet judg'd by those whose voices ne'er were sold,
He feels no want of ill-persuading gold;
But confident of praise, if praise be due,
Trusts without fear to merit and to you.

1 The Good-natured Man, although pronounced by Johnson the best comedy that had appeared since The Provoked Husband, did not meet with great success.

PROLOGUE TO THE COMEDY OF A WORD TO
THE WISE.1

THIS night presents a play which public rage,
Or right, or wrong, once hooted from the stage.2
From zeal, or malice, now no more we dread,-
For English vengeance wars not with the dead.
A generous foe regards with pitying eye
The man whom fate has laid where all must lie.
To wit reviving from its author's dust,
Be kind, ye judges, or at least be just.
For no renew'd hostilities invade
The oblivious grave's inviolable shade.
Let one great payment every claim appease;
And him who cannot hurt, allow to please;
To please by scenes unconscious of offence,
By harmless merriment or useful sense.
Where aught of bright or fair the piece displays.
Approve it only-'tis too late to praise !
If want of skill, or want of care appear,
Forbear to hiss-the poet cannot hear!
By all like him must praise and blame be found,
At best a fleeting gleam or empty sound.
Yet then shall calm reflection bless the night
When liberal pity dignified delight;

When pleasure fired her torch at virtue's flame,
And mirth was bounty with an humbler name.

EPILOGUE,

INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SPOKEN BY A LADY WHO WAS
TO PERSONATE THE GHOST OF HERMIONE.3

YE blooming train, who give despair or joy,
Bless with a smile, or with a frown destroy;
In whose fair cheeks destructive Cupids wait,
And with unerring shafts distribute fate;

1 Performed at Covent Garden Theatre for the benefit of Mrs. Kelly, widow of the author of the play, and her children, 1777.

2 Upon the first representation of this play in 1770, it was damned from the violence of party.

3 Some young ladies at Litchfield having proposed to act The Distressed Mother, Johnson wrote this, and gave it to Mr. Hector to convey privately to them.

Whose snowy breasts, whose animated eyes,
Each youth admires, though each admirer dies;
Whilst you deride their pangs in barbarous play,
Unpitying see them weep, and hear them pray,
And unrelenting sport ten thousand lives away;
For you, ye fair, I quit the gloomy plains,
Where sable night in all her horror reigns;
No fragrant bowers, no delightful glades
Receive the unhappy ghosts of scornful maids.
For kind, for tender nymphs, the myrtle blooms,
And weaves her bending boughs in pleasing glooms;
Perennial roses deck each purple vale,

And scents ambrosial breathe in every gale;
Far hence are banish'd vapours, spleen, and tears,
Tea, scandal, ivory teeth, and languid airs;
No pug, nor favourite Cupid there enjoys
The balmy kiss, for which poor Thyrsis dies;
Form'd to delight, they use no foreign arms,
Nor torturing whalebones pinch them into charms;
No conscious blushes there their cheeks inflame,
For those who feel no guilt can know no shame;
Unfaded still their former charms they shew,
Around them pleasures wait, and joys for ever new.
But cruel virgins meet severer fates;

Expell'd and exiled from the blissful seats,
To dismal realms, and regions void of peace,
Where furies ever howl, and serpents hiss.
O'er the sad plains perpetual tempests sigh;
And pois'nous vapours, blackening all the sky,
With livid hue the fairest face o'ercast,
And every beauty withers at the blast:
Where'er they fly their lovers' ghosts pursue,
Inflicting all those ills which once they knew;
Vexation, fury, jealousy, despair,

Vex every eye and every bosom tear;
Their foul deformities by all descried,

No maid to flatter, and no paint to hide.

Then melt, ye fair, while crowds around you sigh,
Nor let disdain sit lowering in your eye;
With pity soften every awful grace,

And beauty smile auspicious in each face:
To ease their pains exert your milder power,

So shall you guiltless reign, and all mankind adore.

BAGATELLES.

LINES

WRITTEN IN RIDICULE OF CERTAIN POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1777.1

WHERESOE'ER I turn my view,

All is strange, yet nothing new;
Endless labour all along,

Endless labour to be wrong;

Phrase that time has flung away,

Uncouth words in disarray,

Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet,
Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.

BURLESQUE

OF THE MODERN VERSIFICATIONS OF ANCIENT LEGENDARY
TALES. AN IMPROMPTU.

THE tender infant, meek and mild,
Fell down upon the stone:

The nurse took up the squealing child,

But still the child squeal'd on.

TRANSLATION

OF TWO STANZAS OF THE SONG, RIO VERDE, RIO VERDE," PRINTED IN PERCY'S RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY.AN IMPROMPTU.

GLASSY water, glassy water,

Down whose current clear and strong,

Chiefs confus'd in mutual slaughter,
Moor and Christian, roll'd along.

By Thomas Warton.