DEFENCE

OF

THE EPILOGUE;

OR,

AN ESSAY ON THE DRAMATIC POETRY
OF THE LAST AGE.

The promises of authors, that they will write again, are, in effect, a threatening of their readers with some new impertinence; and they, who perform not what they promise, will have their pardon on easy terms.  It is from this consideration, that I could be glad to spare you the trouble, which I am now giving you, of a postscript, if I were not obliged, by many reasons, to write somewhat concerning our present plays, and those of our predecessors on the English stage.  The truth is, I have so far engaged myself in a bold epilogue to this play, wherein I have somewhat taxed the former writing, that it was necessary for me either not to print it, or to show that I could defend it.  Yet I would so maintain my opinion of the present age, as not to be wanting in my veneration for the past:  I would ascribe to dead authors their just praises in those things wherein they have excelled us; and in those wherein we contend with them for the pre-eminence, I would acknowledge our advantages to the age, and claim no victory from our wit.  This being what I have proposed to myself, I hope I shall not be thought arrogant when I enquire into their errors:  For we live in an age so sceptical, that as it determines little, so it takes nothing from antiquity on trust; and I profess to have no other ambition in this essay, than that poetry may not go backward, when all other arts and sciences are advancing.  Whoever censures me for this inquiry, let him hear his character from Horace: 

  Ingeniis non ille favet, plauditque sepultis,
  Nostra sed impugnat; nos nostraque lividus odit.

  He favours not dead wits, but hates the living.

It was upbraided to that excellent poet, that he was an enemy to the writings of his predecessor Lucilius, because he had said, Lucilium lutulentum fluere, that he ran muddy; and that he ought to have retrenched from his satires many unnecessary verses.  But Horace makes Lucilius himself to justify him from the imputation of envy, by telling you that he would have done the same, had he lived in an age which was more refined: 

  Si foret hoc nostrum fato delapsus in aevum,
  Detereret sibi multa, recideret omne quod, ultra
  Perfectum traheretur, &c.

And, both in the whole course of that satire, and in his most admirable Epistle to Augustus, he makes it his business to prove, that antiquity alone is no plea for the excellency of a poem; but that, one age learning from another, the last (if we can suppose an equality of wit in the writers,) has the advantage of knowing more and better than the former And this, I think, is the state of the question in dispute.  It is therefore my part to make it clear, that the language, wit, and conversation of our age, are improved and refined above the last; and then it will not be difficult to infer, that our plays have received some part of those advantages.