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 Orford: 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:

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

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.]