Well, let him go; 'tis yet too early day, To get himfelf a place in farce or play. We know not by what name we should arraign him, A pedant, canting preacher, and a quack, EPILOGU E To the PILGRI M. Perhaps the parfon ftretch'd a point too far 1, When with our Theatres he wag'd a war. The Poets, who muft live by courts, or starve, I Dryden in this epilogue labours to throw the fault of the licentiouf nefs of dramatic writers, which had been fo feverely cenfured by the Rev. Dr. Jeremy Collier, upon the example of a court returned from banishment, accompanied by all the vices and follies of foreign climates; and whom to please was the poet's bufinefs, as he wrote to eat, VOL. II. U For For they, like harlots, under bawds profest, The court, its head, the Poets but the tail. But neither you, nor we, with all our pains, 2 Jo. Haines is well known to all lovers of the ftage, as a good actor; but by this infinuation we are to fappofe he was not fo good a chriftian. Cibber calls him a wicked wit. TRAN Concerning Mr. DRYDEN'S TRANSLATIONS. FOR this laft half year I have been troubled with FOR the disease (as I may call it) of translation: the cold profe fits of it, which are always the most tedious with me, were spent in the hiftory of the League; the hot, which fucceeded them, in verse mifcellanies. The truth is, I fancied to myfelf a kind of eafe in the change of the paroxyfm; never fufpecting but the humour would have wafted itself in two or three paftorals of Theocritus, and as many odes of Horace. But finding, or at least thinking I found, fomething that was more pleasing in them than my ordinary productions, I encouraged myself to renew my old acquaintance with Lucretius and Virgil; and immediately fixed upon fome parts of them, which had moft affected me in the reading. These were my natural impulfes for the undertaking. But there was an accidental motive which was full as forcible. It was my Lord Rofcommon's Effay on Tranflated Verfe; which made me uneafy until I tried whether or no I was capable of following his rules, and of reducing the fpeculation into practice. For many a fair precept in Poetry is, like a feeming demonftration in the Mathematics, very specious in the diagram, but failing in the mechanic operation, I think I have generally observed his inftructions; I am fure my reason is fufficiently convinced both of their truth and usefulness; which, in other words, is to confess no lefs a vanity, than to pretend that I have at least in fome U 3 places |