Prologue

To glow with ardour, and attempt with zeal The reformation of the public weal, Is the high duty of the COMIC MUSE; And tho' keen Attic Salt allowed to use, To season Precept, and with Art to tickle The sores she means to wash with sharpest pickle, Yet not the rosy, pulpited Divine, Nor lank-hair'd Methodist with rueful whine, Is more intent to root out Vice and Folly, And make ye all lead lives discreet and holy.—

Yet why to clear the field were all their toil, If weeds o'erspread not the luxuriant soil? Congreve or Wesley, Whitfield or Moliere, In vain might prompt the laugh, or bribe the tear, If no man felt, or in himself, or neighbour, Some failing to call forth the zealot's labour;— If no fair dame descried, 'midst her acquaintance, Some few who might be mended by repentance.

Loose as the buxom air, the Youth from College Comes fraught with all Newmarket's hopeful knowledge; In haste to spend the Estate, not yet his own, Compleats his ruin ere his beard is grown; And when to foreign climes he spreads the sail, 'Tis not to enlarge his mind, but 'scape a jail.

Then blest the Poet, happy the Divine, When Folly gives the Ton from Fashion's Shrine! But whilst the Priest and Satirist reprove Those vices which provoke the wrath of JOVE, Our Author, like the patient Angler sitting To catch small fry, for humbler palates sitting, Has served a Meal, not seasoned high with crimes.— Taste it, and if approved, applaud THE TIMES.