To all and singular in this full meeting,
  Ladies and gallants, Phoebus sends ye greeting. 
  To all his sons, by whate’er title known,
  Whether of court, or coffee-house, or town;
  From his most mighty sons, whose confidence
  Is placed in lofty sound, and humble sense,
  Even to his little infants of the time,
  Who write new songs, and trust in tune and rhyme
  Be ’t known, that Phoebus (being daily grieved
  To see good plays condemn’d, and bad received) 10
  Ordains your judgment upon every cause,
  Henceforth, be limited by wholesome laws. 
  He first thinks fit no sonnetteer advance
  His censure farther than the song or dance,
  Your wit burlesque may one step higher climb,
  And in his sphere may judge all doggrel rhyme;
  All proves, and moves, and loves, and honours too;
  All that appears high sense, and scarce is low. 
  As for the coffee wits, he says not much;
  Their proper business is to damn the Dutch:  20
  For the great dons of wit—­
  Phoebus gives them full privilege alone,
  To damn all others, and cry up their own. 
  Last, for the ladies, ’tis Apollo’s will,
  They should have power to save, but not to kill: 
  For love and he long since have thought it fit,
  Wit live by beauty, beauty reign by wit.

* * * * *

V.

PROLOGUE TO SIR MARTIN MARR-ALL.

  Fools, which each man meets in his dish each day,
  Are yet the great regalios of a play;
  In which to poets you but just appear,
  To prize that highest, which cost them so dear: 
  Fops in the town more easily will pass;
  One story makes a statutable ass: 
  But such in plays must be much thicker sown,
  Like yolks of eggs, a dozen beat to one. 
  Observing poets all their walks invade,
  As men watch woodcocks gliding through a glade: 
  And when they have enough for comedy,
  They stow their several bodies in a pie: 
  The poet’s but the cook to fashion it,
  For, gallants, you yourselves have found the wit. 
  To bid you welcome, would your bounty wrong;
  None welcome those who bring their cheer along.

* * * * *

VI.

PROLOGUE TO THE TEMPEST.

  As when a tree’s cut down, the secret root
  Lives under ground, and thence new branches shoot;
  So from old Shakspeare’s honour’d dust, this day
  Springs up and buds a new reviving play: 
  Shakspeare, who (taught by none) did first impart
  To Fletcher wit, to labouring Jonson art. 
  He, monarch like, gave those, his subjects, law;
  And is that nature which they paint and