PROLOGUE. Spoken by Mr. MURRAY

The time hath been, but in a barbarous age, When poets brav'd their audience from the stage, Poets pontifical, whose lofty tone Acknowledg'd no tribunal but their own, And sent their Prologue-purveyor to raise First fruits and fines of tributary praise.

Our modern bards are taught an humbler strain, And, if less valiant, are not half so vain; No longer aim the nation's taste to lead, Content if they can follow and succeed. Thus if the time should come, when in the place Of Nature you shou'd substitute grimace, (Fatal reverse!) What cou'd the Poet do? Offend the many to appease the few? No, if in Greece true taste had been as scarce, The Stagyrite himself had stood for farce. If wit thro' five long acts will not hold out, Momus must help to stir the laugh about, And when you crown his mummery with applause, You bribe him to transgress the drama's laws.

He were a very wild romantic elf, Who only wrote to figure on the shelf; To hear his own sad sentiments rebound Thro' empty galleries with a dying sound, And sit like Seneca in calm decay, Watching how life steals drop by drop away: No, let him take his profit and his ease, And trifle on so long as trifles please: Too weak to struggle against fashion's tide, If with the current he's content to glide, He only yields as Caesar did before, When Tiber's torrent drove him from the shore.

The simple tale we have to tell this night, Shews truth triumphant over ranc'rous spite, Casts in dark shades the base defamer's part, And crowns with just reward the liberal heart. Oh might our efforts gain their wisht for end, The gay to' amuse, the faulty to amend, Make fiction rule her thoughts by nature's laws, And wit exert her powers in virtue's cause, Then and then only might we claim applause.