EPILOGUE TO THE MAID OF HONOUR, Acted at the THEATRE ROYAL, DRURY LANE, Spoken by Mrs. SIDDONS. January, 1785

Well, sirs! our English Antients are agreed A Maid of Honour, is a Maid indeed! 'Tis not alone, among the virgin band, Demure behind the Chair of State to stand; To groan beneath the labours of the loom, A walking pageant of the Drawing Room; To hear the small talk of small lords in waiting, Or trifle with White Wands, inclin'd to prating; No! 'tis her province, firmly to support, Intrench'd in the strong fences of a Court, That citadel, where thousand dangers wait, And Female Honour holds her aweful state! Harmless, with busy hum and empty sound, The silken Court-Flies buz and flutter round; They, like Fulgentio, are with scorn dismist, So weak, 'tis scarce a triumph to resist. But when Bertoldos, true blood Royal, vie— Then, then's the glorious effort to deny! To prove with all a woman's graces on her, She's still a Maid, a real Maid of Honour!

Yet, ah! Camiola, thy fate was hard! Severe the sentence of our rigid Bard! What! nip a beauteous maiden in her bloom, And in a convent all her charms entomb! Consign her fortune, blast her bud of youth, Though one swain's Falsehood proves another's Truth; While she, like Cato, finds from each adorer " Her Bane and Antidote are both before her!

Sicilian Maids of Honour thus were undone— Ah, Maids of Honour act not thus in London! Here, in chaste dew sweet roses hail the morn, Undoom'd to wither on the virgin thorn. Stern Romish doctrines, strict Italian rules, Suit not the freedom of our British schools: Our wiser Law a sager code exhibits; Our milder Church such sacrifice prohibits. Should some false lord, betroth'd, his contract break, And at the altar's foot the maid forsake, In comes the Serjeant to distrain his lands— And while some young Adorni ready stands, In comes the readier Priest to join their Hands. Nay e'en the Widow, who her lost love grieves, Here takes those Thirds our Maid of Honour leaves. Not Rome herself so dreadfully enthralls: E'en Eloisa, 'twixt a nunnery's walls, Past joys with her dear Abelard recalls: Joys which, her days of trial nobly past, May ev'ry Maid of Honour taste at last!