Yet if some pride with want may be allow'd, We in our plainness may be justly proud: Our royal master will'd it should be so; 30 Whate'er he's pleas'd to own, can need no show: That sacred name gives ornament and grace, And, like his stamp, makes basest metals pass. 'T were folly now a stately pile to raise, To build a playhouse while you throw down plays, Whilst scenes, machines, and empty operas reign, And for the pencil you the pen disdain. While troops of famish'd Frenchmen hither drive, And laugh at those upon whose alms they live: Old English authors vanish, and give place To these new conqu'rors of the Norman race. More tamely than your fathers you submit: You're now grown vassals to 'em in your wit. So may fop-corner full of noise remain, And drive far off the dull attentive train; So may your midnight scourings happy prove, And morning batt'ries force your way to love; 20 So may not France your warlike hands recall, But leave you by each other's swords to fall, As you come here to ruffle vizard punk, PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 1674 [The prologue below was first printed in Miscellany Poems, 1684, with the heading Prologue to the University of Oxford, 1674. Spoken by Mr. Hart. Written by Mr. Dryden. After it follows Epilogue, Spoken by Mrs. Boutell. Written by Mr. Dryden. Six pages later the same epilogue is reprinted, with insignificant variations of text, but headed Epilogue to Oxford: Spoken by Mrs. Marshal, Writ by Mr. Dryden. The latter text is here followed.] PROLOGUE SPOKEN BY MR. HART POETS, your subjects, have their parts assign'd T'unbend, and to divert their sovereign's mind: When tir'd with following nature, you think fit To seek repose in the cool shades of wit, And, from the sweet retreat, with joy survey What rests, and what is conquer'd, of the way. Here, free yourselves from envy, care, and strife, You view the various turns of human life: Safe in our scene, thro' dangerous courts you go, And, undebauch'd, the vice of cities know. 10 Your theories are here to practice brought, As in mechanic operations wrought; And man, the little world, before you set, As once the sphere of crystal shew'd the great. Blest sure are you above all mortal kind, If to your fortunes you can suit your mind: Content to see, and shun, those ills we 'T is all we can return for favors past, Whose holy memory shall ever last, For patronage from him whose care presides O'er every noble art, and every science guides: Bathurst, a name the learn'd with rev'rence know, And scarcely more to his own Virgil owe; Whose age enjoys but what his youth deserv'd, To rule those Muses whom before he serv'd. His learning, and untainted manners too, Where kindness was religion to their guests. Such modesty did to our sex appear, As, had there been no laws, we need not fear, 20 Since each of you was our protector here. Converse so chaste, and so strict virtue shown, As might Apollo with the Muses own. 30 EPILOGUE INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SPOKEN BY THE LADY HENR. MAR. WENTWORTH, WHEN CALISTO WAS ACTED AT COURT [This epilogue is by no means certainly the work of Dryden. It was first printed, without any ascription to Dryden, in Miscellany Poems, 1684, near the end of the volume, apart from the other prologues and epilogues, and just before the translation of Virgil's Eclogues, which is paged separately. It was evidently inserted in the volume as an afterthought; in the table of contents it is put out of its natural order, at the close of the list of prologues and epilogues. Dryden's name was first joined to the piece in 1702, in the third edition of Miscellany Poems, the First Part. Calisto, or The Chaste Nymph, a masque by John Crowne, was presented at Court in 1675 by a company of ladies and gentlemen. The Lady Mary and the Lady Anne, daughters of the Duke of York, played the parts of Calisto and of her companion, Nyphe (see line 29 below); Lady Wentworth, afterwards mistress of the Duke of Monmouth, who himself was among "the persons of quality of the men that danced," represented Jupiter.] |