Wit’s now arrived to a more high degree: 
  Our native language more refined and free. 
  Our ladies and our men now speak more wit
  In conversation, than those poets writ. 
  Then, one of these is, consequently, true: 
  That what this poet writes comes short of you,
  And imitates you ill (which most he fears),
  Or else his writing is not worse than theirs. 30
  Yet though you judge (as sure the critics will),
  That some before him writ with greater skill,
  In this one praise he has their fame surpass’d,
  To please an age more gallant than the last.

* * * * *

XI.

PROLOGUE TO AMBOYNA.[46]

  As needy gallants in the scrivener’s hands,
  Court the rich knave that gripes their mortgaged lands,
  The first fat buck of all the season’s sent,
  And keeper takes no fee in compliment: 
  The dotage of some Englishmen is such,
  To fawn on those who ruin them—­the Dutch. 
  They shall have all, rather than make a war
  With those who of the same religion are. 
  The Straits, the Guinea trade, the herrings too,
  Nay, to keep friendship, they shall pickle you. 10
  Some are resolved not to find out the cheat,
  But, cuckold-like, love him who does the feat: 
  What injuries soe’er upon us fall,
  Yet, still the same religion answers all: 
  Religion wheedled you to civil war,
  Drew English blood, and Dutchmen’s now would spare: 
  Be gull’d no longer, for you’ll find it true,
  They have no more religion, faith—­than you;
  Interest’s the god they worship in their state;
  And you, I take it, have not much of that. 20
  Well, monarchies may own religion’s name,
  But states are atheists in their very frame. 
  They share a sin, and such proportions fall,
  That, like a stink, ’tis nothing to them all. 
  How they love England, you shall see this day;
  No map shows Holland truer than our play: 
  Their pictures and inscriptions well we know;
  We may be bold one medal sure to show. 
  View then their falsehoods, rapine, cruelty;
  And think what once they were, they still would he:  30
  But hope not either language, plot, or art;
  ’Twas writ in haste, but with an English heart: 
  And least hope wit; in Dutchmen that would be
  As much improper, as would honesty.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 46:  ‘Amboyna:’  a play written against the Dutch.]

* * * * *

XII.

EPILOGUE TO AMBOYNA.