Besides three holy mitred Hectors,
And the whole college of Electors.
No health of potentate is sunk,
That pays to make his envoy drunk.
These Dutch delights, I mention'd last,
Suit not, I know, your English taste:
For wine to leave a whore or play
Was ne'er your excellency's way.

.
Nor need this title give offence,
For here you were your excellence,
For gaming, writing, speaking, keeping,
His excellence for all but sleeping.
Now if you tope in form, and treat,
'Tis the four sauce to the sweet meat,
The fine you pay for being great.
Nay, here's a harder imposition,
Which is indeed the court's petition,
That setting worldly pomp aside,
Which

poet

has at font deny'd, You would be pleas'd in humble way To write a trifle call’d a Play, This truly is a degradation, But would oblige the crown and nation Next to your wise negotiation.

If you pretend, as well

you may, Your high degree, your friends will say, The duke St. Aignon made a play. If Gallic wit convince

you scarce, His grace

of Bucks has made a farce, And you,

whose comic wit is terse all, Can hardly fall below Rehearsal. Then finish what

you But scribble faster if you can : For yet no George, to our discerning, Has writ without a ten years warning.

have began;

EPISTLE the EIGHTH.

Τ Ο

Mr. SOUTHERN E,

ON HIS

Comedy call'd, The WIVES Excuse.

URE there's a fate in plays, and 'tis in vain

To write, while these malignant planets reign. Some

very foolish influence rules the pit,
Not always kind to sense, or just to wit :
And whilst it lasts, let buffoonry succeed,
To make us laugh; for never was more need.
Farce, in itself, is of a nasty scent ;
But the gain smells not of the excrement.
The Spanish nymph, a wit and beauty too,
With all her charms, bore but a single show :
But let a monster Muscovite appear,
He draws a crowded audience round the

year.
May be thou hast not pleas'd the box and pit ;
Yet those who blame thy tale applaud thy wit:
So Terence plotted, but so Terence writ.
Like his thy thoughts are true, thy language clean;
E’en lewdness is made nioral in thy scene.

The hearers may

for want of Nokes repine; But rest secure, the readers will be thine. Nor was thy labor’d drama damn'd or hiss'd, But with a kind civility dismiss’d; With such good manners, as the Wife did use, Who, not accepting, did but just refuse. There was a glance at parting; such a look, As bids thee not give o'er, for one rebuke. But if thou wouldst be seen, as well as read, Copy one living author, and one dead : The standard of thy style let Etherege be; For wit, th’immortal spring of Wycherly : Learn, after both, to draw fome just design, And the next age will learn to copy

thine.

EPISTLE the NINT H.

TO

HENRY HIGDEN, Efq;

ON HIS

Translation of the Tenth Satire of JUVENAL.

HE Grecian wits, who Satire first began,
Were pleasant Pasquins on

the life of man;
At mighty villains, who the state opprest,
They durst not rail, perhaps; they lalh’d, at least,
And turn'd them out of office with a jest.
No fool could peep abroad, but ready stand
The drolls to clap a bauble in his hand.
Wise legislators never yet could draw
A fop within the reach of common law ;
For posture, dress, grimace and affectation,
Tho foes to sense, are harmless to the nation.
Our last redress is dint of verse to try,
And Satire is our court of Chancery.
This
way

took Horace to reform an age, Not bad enough to need an author's rage. But yours, who liv'd in more degenerate times, Was forc'd to fasten deep, and worry

crimes. Yet you, my friend, have temper'd him so well, You make him smile in spite of all his zeal :