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 sour 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 denied,

* Etherege has been pleased to confirm our author's opinion of the German jollity, and his own inclination to softer pleasures, by the following passage of a letter to the Duke of Buckingham :

"I find that to this day, they (ie. the Germans) make good the observation that Tacitus made of their ancestors; I mean, that their affairs (let them be never so serious and pressing) never put a stop to good eating and drinking, and that they debate their weightiest negotiations over their

cups.

"'Tis true, they carry this humour by much too far for one of my complexion; for which reason I decline appearing among them, but when my master's concerns make it necessary for me to come to their assemblies: they are, indeed, a free-hearted open sort of gentlemen that compose the Diet, without reserve, affectation, and artifice; but they are such unmerciful plyers of the bottle, so wholly given up to what our sots call good fellowship, that 'tis as great a constraint upon my nature to sit out a night's entertainment with them, as it would be to hear half a score long-winded Presbyterian divines cant successively one after another.

"To unbosom myself frankly and freely to your grace, I always looked upon drunkenness to be an unpardonable crime in a young fellow, who, without any of these foreign helps, has fire enough in his veins to enable him to do justice to Cælia whenever she demands a tribute from him. In a middle-aged man, I consider the bottle only as subservient to the nobler pleasures of love; and he that would suffer himself

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65

You would be pleased in humble way
To write a trifle called 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 have began,
But scribble faster if you can;

to be so far infatuated by it, as to neglect the pursuit of a more agreeable game, I think deserves no quarter from the ladies in old age, indeed, when it is convenient very often to forget and even steal from ourselves, I am of opinion, that a little drunkenness, discreetly used, may as well contribute to our health of body as tranquillity of soul.

"Thus I have given your grace a short system of my morals and belief in these affairs. But the gentlemen of this country go upon a quite different scheme of pleasure; the best furniture of their parlours, instead of innocent china, are tall overgrown rummers; and they take more care to enlarge their cellars, than their patrimonial estates. In short, drinking is the hereditary sin of this country; and that hero of a deputy here, that can demolish, at one sitting, the rest of his brother envoys, is mentioned with as much applause as the Duke of Lorraine for his noble exploits against the Turk, and may claim a statue, erected at the public expense in any town in Germany.

Judge, then, my lord, whether a person of my sober principles, and one that only uses wine (as the wiser sort of Roman Catholics do images) to raise up my imagination to something more exalted, and not to terminate my worship upon it, must not be reduced to very mortifying circumstances in this place; where I cannot pretend to enjoy conversation, without practising that vice that directly ruins it."

* [Bradamante. St. Aignan (as it should be spelt) was a famous courtier of Louis XIV.-ED.]

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For yet no George, to our discerning,
Has writ without a ten years' warning.

*This is the only mention that our author makes of the Rehearsal" in poetry: in prose he twice notices that satirical farce with some contempt. The length of time which the Duke spent upon it, or at least which elapsed between the first concoction and the representation, is mentioned by Duke in his character of Villerius :—

But with play-houses, wars, immortal wars,

He waged, and ten years' rage produced a farce.
As many rolling years he did employ,
And hands almost as many, to destroy

Heroic rhyme, as Greece to ruin Troy.

Once more, says fame, for battle he prepares,
And threatens rhymers with a second farce;
But if as long for this as that we stay,

He'll finish Cliveden sooner than his play.

The last line alludes to the magnificent structure at Cliveden, which Buckingham planned, but never completed. Another satirist has the same idea :

:

I come to his farce, which must needs well be done,

For Troy was no longer before it was won,

Since 'tis more than ten years since this farce was begun.

[Buckingham and Etherege were both named "George."ED.]

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EPISTLE THE TENTH.

ΤΟ

MR. SOUTHERNE,

ON HIS COMEDY

CALLED

THE WIVES' EXCUSE,

ACTED IN 1692.

SOUTHERNE well known to the present age as a tragic writer, for his Isabella has been ranked among the first-rate parts of our inimitable Siddons-was also distinguished by his contemporaries as a successful candidate for the honours of the comic muse. Two of his comedies, "The Mother in Fashion," and "Sir Anthony Love," had been represented with success, when, in 1692, "The Wives' Excuse, or Cuckolds make Themselves," was brought forward. The tone of that piece approaches what we now call genteel comedy: but, whether owing to the flatness into which such plays are apt to slide, for want of the vis comica which enlivens the more animated, though coarser, effusions of the lower comedy, or to some strokes of satire directed against music meetings, and other places of fashionable resort, "The Wives' Excuse unfortunate in the representation. The author, in the dedication of the printed play,* has hinted at the latter cause as that of his defeat, and vindicates himself from the idea of reflecting upon music meetings, or any other resort of the

was

To the Honourable Thomas Wharton, Esq., Comptroller of his Majesty's Household.

people of fashion, by urging, that although a billet doux is represented as being there delivered, "such a thing has been done before now in a church, without the place being thought the worse of." But Southerne consoles himself for the disapprobation of the audience with the favour of Dryden, who, says he, "speaking of this play, has publicly said, the town was kind to 'Sir Anthony Love;' I needed them only to be just to this." And, after mentioning that Dryden had intrusted to him, upon the credit of this play, the task of completing "Cleomenes," he triumphantly adds: "It modesty be sometimes a weakness, what I say can hardly be a crime in a fair English trial, both parties are allowed to be heard; and without this vanity of mentioning Mr. Dryden, I had lost the best evidence of my cause.' Dryden, not satisfied with a verbal exertion of his patronage, consoled his friend under his discomfiture by addressing to him the following Epistle, in which his failure is ascribed to the taste for bustling intrigue, and for low and farcical humour.

It is not the Editor's business to trace Southerne's life, or poetical career. He was born in the county of Dublin, in 1659, and produced, in his twenty-third year, the tragedy of "The Loyal Brother," which Dryden honoured with a prologue. On this occasion Southerne's acquaintance with our bard took place, under the whimsical circumstances mentioned vol. x. p. 369. The aged bard furnished also a prologue to Southerne's "Disappointment; or, Mother in Fashion;" and as he had repeatedly ushered him to success, he presented him with the following lines to console him under disappointment. The poets appear to have continued on the most friendly terms until Dryden's death. Southerne survived him many years, and lived to be praised by the rising generation of a second century for mildness of manners, and that cheerful and amiable disposition which rarely is found in old age, unless from the happy union of a body at ease and a conscience void of offence. When this dramatist was sixty-five, his last play, called "Money the Mistress," was acted, with a prologue by Welsted, containing the following beautiful lines :-+

* See the introductory remarks on that play, vol. viii.

+ Welsted, "howe'er insulted by the spleen of Pope," was a poet of merit. His fate is an instance, among a thousand, of the disadvantage sustained by an inferior genius, who enters into collision with one of supereminent talents. It is the combat of a gunboat with a frigate; and many an author has been run down in such an encounter, who, had he avoided it, might have still enjoyed a fair portion of literary reputation. The apologue of the iron and earthen pot contains a moral applicable to such circumstances.