pass. 
  ’Twere folly now a stately[48] pile to raise,
  To build a playhouse, while you throw down plays;
  While scenes, machines, and empty operas reign,
  And for the pencil you the pen disdain: 
  While troops of famish’d Frenchmen hither drive,
  And laugh at those upon whose alms they live: 
  Old English authors vanish, and give place 40
  To these new conquerors of the Norman race. 
  More tamely than your fathers you submit;
  You’re now grown vassals to them in your wit. 
  Mark, when they play, how our fine fops advance
  The mighty merits of their men of France,
  Keep time, cry Bon, and humour the cadence. 
  Well, please yourselves; but sure ’tis understood,
  That French machines have ne’er done England good. 
  I would not prophesy our house’s fate: 
  But while vain shows and scenes you over-rate, 50
  Tis to be fear’d—­
  That as a fire the former house o’erthrew,
  Machines and tempests will destroy the new.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 47:  This Prologue was written for the King’s company, who had just opened their house in Drury-lane.]

[Footnote 48:  The reflection on the taste of the town in these four lines is levelled at the Duke’s company, who had exhibited the siege of Rhodes, and other expensive operas, and were now getting up the operas of Psyche, Circe, &c.]

* * * * *

XIV.

PROLOGUE TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 1674.

SPOKEN BY MR HART.

  Poets, your subjects have their parts assign’d
  To unbend, and to divert their sovereign’s mind: 
  When tired with following nature, you think fit
  To seek repose in the cool shades of wit,
  And, from the sweet retreat, with joy survey
  What rests, and what is conquer’d, of the way. 
  Here, free yourselves from envy, care, and strife
  You view the various turns of human life: 
  Safe in our scene, through 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[49] of crystal show’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 show,
  And crimes on theatres alone to know. 
  With joy we bring what our dead authors writ,
  And beg from you the value of their wit:  20
  That Shakspeare’s, Fletcher’s, and great Jonson’s claim,
  May be renew’d from those who gave