earth: 
  Pent there since our last fire, and, Lilly says,
  Foreshows our change of state, and thin third-days. 
  ’Tis not our want of wit that keeps us poor;
  For then the printer’s press would suffer more. 
  Their pamphleteers each day their venom spit;
  They thrive by treason, and we starve by wit. 
  Confess the truth, which of you has not laid 20
  Four farthings out to buy the Hatfield maid? 
  Or, which is duller yet, and more would spite us,
  Democritus his wars with Heraclitus? 
  Such are the authors who have run us down,
  And exercised you critics of the town. 
  Yet these are pearls to your lampooning rhymes,
  Ye abuse yourselves more dully than the times. 
  Scandal, the glory of the English nation,
  Is worn to rags, and scribbled out of fashion. 
  Such harmless thrusts, as if, like fencers wise, 30
  They had agreed their play before their prize. 
  Faith! they may hang their harps upon the willows;
  ’Tis just like children when they box with pillows. 
  Then put an end to civil wars for shame;
  Let each knight-errant, who has wrong’d a dame,
  Throw down his pen, and give her, as he can,
  The satisfaction of a gentleman.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 59:  Epilogue spoken in 1682; and full of temporary allusions now of no earthly interest.]

* * * * *

XXXII.

PROLOGUE TO “THE LOYAL BROTHER; OR, THE PERSIAN PRINCE;"[60]

BY MR SOUTHERN, 1682.

  POETS, like lawful monarchs, ruled the stage,
  Till critics, like damn’d Whigs, debauch’d our age. 
  Mark how they jump:  critics would regulate
  Our theatres, and Whigs reform our state: 
  Both pretend love, and both (plague rot them!) hate. 
  The critic humbly seems advice to bring;
  The fawning Whig petitions to the king: 
  But one’s advice into a satire slides;
  The other’s petition a remonstrance hides. 
  These will no taxes give, and those no pence; 10
  Critics would starve the poet, Whigs the prince. 
  The critic all our troops of friends discards;
  Just so the Whig would fain pull down the guards. 
  Guards are illegal, that drive foes away,
  As watchful shepherds, that fright beasts of prey. 
  Kings, who disband such needless aids as these,
  Are safe—­as long as e’er their subjects please: 
  And that would be till next Queen Bess’s night:  [61]
  Which thus grave penny chroniclers indite. 
  Sir Edmondbury first, in woful wise, 20
  Leads up the show, and milks their maudlin eyes. 
  There’s not a butcher’s wife