PROLOGUE To the SUICIDE, A COMEDY! Spoken by Mr. PALMER. August, 1778

'Tis now the reigning taste with Belle and Beau Their art and skill in Coachmanship to show. Nobles contend who throws a Whip the best; From head to foot like Hackney-coachmen dress'd: Duchess and Peeress too discard their fear, Ponies in front, my lady in the rear. A Female Phaeton all danger mocks, Half-coat, half-petticoat, she mounts the box; Wrapt in a dusty whirlwind scours the plains, And cutting—Jehu!—whistling—holds the reins. Happy, thrice happy, Britain, is thy state, In the year seventeen hundred sev'nty eight, When each sex drives at such a furious rate.

The modish Artist, Playwright, or Coach-maker, In Grub-street starv'd, or thriving in Long-Acre, To suit the times, and tally with the mode, Must travel in the beaten turnpike road: Wherefore our Crane-neck'd Manager to-day Upon four acts attempts to run his Play; A fifth he fears you'd deem the Bard's reproach, A mere fifth wheel that would but stop the Coach. With Two Act Pieces what machines agree? Buggies, Tim-whiskies, or squeez'd Vis a-vis, Where two sit face to face, and knee to knee.

What is a piece in one short Act compress'd? A Wheelbarrow, or Sulky at the best. A scale so small, the Bard would suffer for't; You'd say his Farce was like himself—too short; Yet anxious with your smiles his works to crown, In many a varied shape he courts the town. Sometimes he drives—if Brother Bards implore, Sometimes he in a Prologue trots before, Or in an Epilogue gets up behind— Happy in all, so you appear but kind. His vehicle to day may none reproach, Nor take it for a Hearse, or Mourning-Coach! 'Tis true a gloomy outside he has wrought, " That rather threatens than doth promise aught;" Yet from black fun'ral, like his brother Bayes, A nuptial banquet he intends to raise. We do but jest—poison in jest—no more— And thus One Mercer to the world restore. But if a well-tim'd jest should chance to save One Mercer from Perdition and the Grave, All Ludgate-Hill be judge, if 'twere not hard, Felo-de-se should you bring in the Bard.