d, and you enough provide, 20
Both for yourselves, and all the world beside;
One theatre there is of vast resort,
Which whilome of Requests was called the Court;
But now the great Exchange of News 'tis hight,
And full of hum and buzz from noon till night.
Up stairs and down you run, as for a race,
And each man wears three nations in his face.
So big you look, though claret you retrench,
That, arm'd with bottled ale, you huff the French.
But all your entertainment still is fed 30
By villains in your own dull island bred.
Would you return to us, we dare engage
To show you better rogues upon the stage.
You know no poison but plain ratsbane here;
Death's more refined, and better bred elsewhere.
They have a civil way in Italy,
By smelling a perfume to make you die:
A trick would make you lay your snuff-box by.
Murder's a trade, so known and practised there,
That 'tis infallible as is the Chair. 40
But mark their feast, you shall behold such pranks;
The Pope says grace, but 'tis the Devil gives thanks.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 54: 'Caesar Borgia:' a play produced about the time of the
Popish Plot.]

* * * * *

XXVI.

PROLOGUE TO "SOPHONISBA,"

ACTED AT OXFORD, 1680.

WRITTEN BY NATHAN LEE.

Thespis,[55] the first professor of our art,
At country wakes sung ballads from a cart.
To prove this true, if Latin be no trespass,
"Dicitur et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis."
But AEschylus, says Horace in some page,
Was the first mountebank that trod the stage:
Yet Athens never knew your learned sport
Of tossing poets in a tennis-court.
But 'tis the talent of our English nation,
Still to be plotting some new reformation: 10
And few years hence, if anarchy goes on,
Jack Presbyter shall here erect his throne,
Knock out a tub with preaching once a day,
And every prayer be longer than a play.
Then all your heathen wits shall go to pot,
For disbelieving of a Popish plot:
Your poets shall be used like infidels,
And worst, the author of the Oxford bells:
Nor should we 'scape the sentence, to depart,
Even in our first original, a cart. 20
No zealous brother there would want a stone
To maul us cardinals, and pelt Pope