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Good. Sir Noble married to Victoria too! may then in spite of misfortunes-

This day shall be a day of jubilee.

Good people all that my sad fortune see,

I beg you to take warning here by me; Marriage and hanging go by destiny. Especially you gay young married blades,

But first,

Beware, and keep your wives from balls and masquerades.

[Exeunt omnes,

EPILOGUE.

WELL, sirs, if now my spouse and I should part,
To which kind critic shall I give my heart?
Stay, let me look, not one in all the place
But has a scurvy, froward, damning face.
Have you resolv'd then on the poet's fall?
Go, ye ill-natur'd, ugly devils all.

The married sparks I know this play will curse
For the wife's sake; but some of 'em have worse.
Poets themselves their own ill-luck have wrought,
You ne'er had learnt, had not their quarrels taught.
But, as in the disturbance of a state,

Each factious maggot thinks of growing great:
So when the poets first had jarring fits,

You all set up for critics and for wits:

Then straight there came, which cost you mothers' pains,
Songs and lampoons in litters from your brains:
Libels, like spurious brats, ran up and down,
Which their dull parents were asham'd to own;
But vented 'em in others' names, like whores
That lay their bastards down at honest doors.
For shame, leave off this higgling way of wit,
Railing abroad, and roaring in the pit;
Let poets live in peace, in quiet write,
Else may they all to punish you unite;
Join in one force to study to abuse ye,

And teach your wives and misses how to use ye!

THE

HISTORY AND FALL

OF

CAIUS MARIUS.

A TRAGEDY.

Qui color albus erat, nunc est contrarius albo.

OVID. METAM. LIB. 2.

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