itain, rich without supply.
In this my rough-drawn play you shall behold
Some master-strokes, so manly and so bold,
That he who meant to alter, found 'em such,
He shook, and thought it sacrilege to touch.
Now, where are the successors to my name?
What bring they to fill out a poet's fame?
Weak, short-lived issues of a feeble age;
Scarce living to be christen'd on the stage!
For humour farce, for love they rhyme dispense,
That tolls the knell for their departed sense.
Dulness, that in a playhouse meets disgrace,
Might meet with reverence in its proper place.
The fulsome clench that nauseates the town,
Would from a judge or alderman go down--
Such virtue is there in a robe and gown!
And that insipid stuff which here you hate,
Might somewhere else be call'd a grave debate:
Dulness is decent in the church and state.
But I forget that still 'tis understood
Bad plays are best decried by showing good.
Sit silent, then, that my pleased soul may see
A judging audience once, and worthy me.
My faithful scene from true records shall tell,
How Trojan valour did the Greek excel;
Your great forefathers shall their fame regain,
And Homer's angry ghost repine in vain."

The best hand of any man that ever lived, at prologue and epilogue, was
Dryden. And here he showed himself to be the boldest too; and above fear
of ghosts. For though it was but a make-believe, it must have required
courage in Shakspeare's murderer to look on its mealy face. The ghost
speaks well--nobly--for six lines--though more like Dryden's than
Shakspeare's. _That_ was not his style when alive. The seventh line
would have choked him, had he been a mere light-and-shadow ghost. But in
death never would he thus have given the lie to his life. "Untaught," he
might have truly said--for he had no master. "Unpractised!" Nay,
"Troilus and Cressida" sprang from a brain that had teemed with many a
birth. "A barbarous age!" Read--"Great Eliza's golden time," when the
sun of England's genius was at meridian. "Sacrilege to touch!" Prologue
had not read Preface. Little did the "injured ghost" suspect the
spectacle that was to ensue. Much of what follows is, in worse degree,
Drydenish all over. Sweetest Shakspeare scoffed not so!

Suppose Shakspeare's ghost to have slipped quietly into the manager's
box to witness the performance. Poets after death do not lose all memory
of their own earthly visions. Thoughts of the fair