PROLOGUE Written and Spoken by Mr. FOOTE. HAPPY my muse, had she first turn'd her art, You hiss not heroes now, you only gape; Nor (strangers quite to heroes, kings, and queens) Dare you intrude your judgment on their scenes. A different lot the comic muse attends, She is obliged to treat you with your friends; Must search the court, the forum, and the city, Mark out the dull, the gallant, and the witty, Youth's wild profusion, th' avarice of age, Nay, bring the pit itself upon the stage. First to the bar she turns her various face; Hem! my lord, I am council in this case, And if so be your lordship should think fit, Why, to be sure, my client must submit ; For why? because Then off she trips again, And, to the sons of commerce, shifts her scene: There, whilst the griping sire, with moping care, Defrauds the world himself t'enrich his heir, The pious boy, his father's toil rewarding, For thousands throws a main at Covent-garden! These are the portraits we're oblig'd to shew; You are all judges if they're like or no : Here should we fail, some other shape we'll try, And grace our future scenes with novelty. I have a plan to treat you with burletta, That cannot miss your taste, mia spiletta: But, should the following piece your mirth excite From Nature's volume we'll persist to write; Your partial favour bade us first proceed, Then spare th' offender since you urg'd the deed Hart. Choice, dear Dick, is very little concerned in the matter; and, to convince you that love is not the minister of my counsels, know that I never saw but once the object of my present purpose, and that too at a time, and in a circumstance, not very likely to stamp a favourable impression. What think you of a raw boarding-school-girl at Lincoln-Minster, with a mind unpolished, a figure uninformed, and a set of features tainted with the colours of her unwholesome food? Jenk. No very engaging object indeed, Hartop. Hart. Your thoughts now were mine then; but some connections I have since had with her father have given birth to my present design upon her. Xou are no stranger to the situation of my circumstances: my neighbourhood to Sir Penurious Trifle was a sufficient motive for his advancing what money I wanted by way of mortgage; the hard terms he imposed upon me, and the little regard I have paid to œconomy, has made it necessary for me to attempt by some scheme the reestablishment of my fortune: this young lady's simplicity, not to call it ignorance, presented her at once as a proper subject for my purpose. Jenk. Success to you, Jack, with all my soul! a fellow of your spirit and vivacity mankind ought to support for the sake of themselves; for, whatever Seneca and the other moral writers may have suggested in contempt of riches, it is plain their maxims were not calculated for the world as it now stands; in days of yore indeed, when virtue was called wisdom, and vice folly, such principles might have been encouraged; but, as the present subjects of our enquiry arc, not what man is, but what he has, as to be rich is to be wise and virtuous, and to be poor ignorant and vicious, I heartily applaud your plan! Hart. Your observation is but too just! and is it not, Dick, a little unaccountable, that we, who condescend so servilely to copy the follies and fopperies of our polite neighbours, should be so totally averse to an imitation of their virtues? In France, Hashewealth? is an interrogation never put till they are disappointed in their inquiries after the birth and wisdom of a fashionable fellow: but here, How much a year?-Two thousand. The devil! In what country?-Berkshire.-Indeed! God bless us |
