To The

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 1681.

This Prologue appears to have been spoken at Oxford shortly after the dissolution of the famous Parliament held there, March, 1680-1. From the following couplet, it would seem that the players had made an unsuccessful attempt to draw houses during the short sitting of that Parliament:

We looked what representatives would bring, But they served us just as they did the king.

At that time a greater stage was opened for the public amusement, and the mimic theatre could excite little interest.

Dryden seems, though perhaps unconsciously, to have borrowed the two first lines of this Prologue from Drayton:

The Tuscan poet doth advance The frantic Paladin of France.

Nymphidia.

The famed Italian muse, whose rhimes advance Orlando, and the Paladins of France, Records, that, when our wit and sense is flown, 'Tis lodged within the circle of the moon, In earthern jars, which one, who thither soared, Set to his nose, snuffed up, and was restored. Whate'er the story be, the moral's true; The wit we lost in town, we find in you. Our poets their fled parts may draw from hence, And fill their windy heads with sober sense When London votes with Southwark's disagree, Here may they find their long lost loyalty. Here busy senates, to the old cause inclined, May snuff the votes their fellows left behind; Your country neighbours, when their grain grows dear, May come, and find their last provision here; Whereas we cannot much lament our loss, Who neither carried back, nor brought one cross. We looked what representatives would bring, But they helped us--just as they did the king. Yet we despair not; for we now lay forth The Sibyl's books to those who know their worth; And though the first was sacrificed before, These volumes doubly will the price restore. Our poet bade us hope this grace to find, To whom by long prescription you are kind. He, whose undaunted Muse, with loyal rage, Has never spared the vices of the age, Here finding nothing that his spleen can raise, Is forced to turn his satire into praise.