_—­Thesei vultus amo;
     Illos priores quos tulit quondam puer,
     Cum prima puras barba signaret genas._

4.  I wish the duty of an editor had permitted me to omit this
   extravagant and ludicrous rhapsody.

EPILOGUE

  A pretty task! and so I told the fool,
  Who needs would undertake to please by rule: 
  He thought, that if his characters were good,
  The scenes entire, and freed from noise and blood;
  The action great, yet circumscribed by time,
  The words not forced, but sliding into rhyme,
  The passions raised, and calm by just degrees,
  As tides are swelled, and then retire to seas;
  He thought, in hitting these, his business done,
  Though he, perhaps, has failed in every one: 
  But, after all, a poet must confess,
  His art’s like physic, but a happy guess. 
  Your pleasure on your fancy must depend: 
  The lady’s pleased, just as she likes her friend. 
  No song! no dance! no show! he fears you’ll say: 
  You love all naked beauties, but a play. 
  He much mistakes your methods to delight;
  And, like the French, abhors our target-fight: 
  But those damned dogs can ne’er be in the right. 
  True English hate your Monsieur’s paltry arts,
  For you are all silk-weavers in your hearts[1]. 
  Bold Britons, at a brave Bear-Garden fray,
  Are roused:  And, clattering sticks, cry,—­Play, play, play![2]
  Meantime, your filthy foreigner will stare,
  And mutters to himself,—­Ha! gens barbare!
  And, gad, ’tis well he mutters; well for him;
  Our butchers else would tear him limb from limb. 
  ’Tis true, the time may come, your sons may be
  Infected with this French civility: 
  But this, in after ages will be done: 
  Our poet writes an hundred years too soon. 
  This age comes on too slow, or he too fast: 
  And early springs are subject to a blast! 
  Who would excel, when few can make a test
  Betwixt indifferent writing and the best? 
  For favours, cheap and common, who would strive,
  Which, like abandoned prostitutes, you give? 
  Yet, scattered here and there, I some behold,
  Who can discern the tinsel from the gold: 
  To these he writes; and, if by them allowed,
  ’Tis their prerogative to rule the crowd. 
  For he more fears, like a presuming man,
  Their votes who cannot judge, than theirs who can.

Footnotes: 
1.  Enemies, namely, like the English silk-weavers to the manufactures
   of France.

2.  Alluding to the prize-fighting with broad-swords at the
   Bear-Garden:  an amusement sufficiently degrading, yet more manly,
   and less brutal than that of boxing, as now practised.  We have
   found, in the lowest deep, a lower still.

* * * * *

ALL FOR LOVE;