They fix each haughty monarch's doom,
And bless whole ages yet to come.
Henceforth great Brunswick fhall decree
What flag muft awe the Tyrrhene fea;
For whom the Tuscan grape fhall glow;
And fruitful Arethufa flow.

See in firm league with Thames combine,
The Seine, the Maefe, and diftant Rhine!
Nor, Ebro, let thy fingle rage

With half the warring world engage.
Oh! call to mind thy thousands flain,
And Almanara's fatal plain;
While yet the Gallic terrors fleep,
Nor Britain thunders from the deep.

PROLOGUE,

TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.

BY THE SAME.

W

Hat kings henceforth fhall reign, what states
be free,

Is fix'd at length by Anna's juft decree :
Whofe brows the mufe's facred wreath fhall fit
Is left to you, the arbiters of wit.

With beating hearts the rival poets wait,
Till you, Athenians, fhall decide their fate;
Secure, when to these learned feats they come,
Of equal judgment, and impartial doom.
Poor is the player's fame, whose whole renown
Is but the praise of a capricious town;
While with mock-majefty, and fancied power,
He ftruts in robes, the monarch of an hour.
Oft wide of nature must he act a part,
Make love in tropes, in bombast break his heart;
In turn and fimile refign his breath,

And rhyme and quibble in the pangs of death.
We blush, when plays like these receive applaufe;
And laugh, in fecret, at the tears we cause;
With honest scorn our own success disdain,
A worthless honour, and inglorious gain.

No

No trifling scenes at Oxford fhall appear;
Well, what we blush to act, may you to hear.
Το you our fam'd, our ftandard plays we bring,
The work of poets, whom you taught to fing:
Tho' crown'd with fame, they dare not think it due,
Nor take the laurel till bestow'd by you.

Great Cato's felf the glory of the stage,
Who charms, corrects, exalts, and fires the age,
Begs here he may be tried by Roman laws;
To you, O fathers, he submits his caufe;
He refts not in the people's general voice,
Till you, the fenate, have confirm'd his choice.
Fine is the fecret, delicate the art,

To wind the paffions, and command the heart,
For fancied ills to force our tears to flow;
And make the generous foul in love with woe;
To raise the fhades of heroes to our view;
Rebuild fallen empires, and old time renew.
How hard the task! how rare the godlike rage!
None fhould prefume to dictate for the ftage,
But fuch as boast a great extensive mind,
Enrich'd by nature, and by art refin'd;
Who from the antient stores their knowledge bring,
And tafted early of the mufe's fpring.

May none pretend upon her throne to fit,

But fuch, as fprung from you, are born to wit: Chose by the mob, their lawless claim we flight: Your's is the old hereditary right.

CA

AN this be he! could Charles, the good, the
great,

Be funk by heaven to fuch a dismal state!
How meagre, pale, neglected, worn with care!
What steady sadness, and auguft despair!
In those funk eyes the grief of years I trace,
And forrow feems acquainted with that face.
Tears, which his heart disdain'd, from me o'erflow,
Thus to furvey God's substitute below,
In folemn anguifh, and majeftic woe.
When spoil'd of empire by unhallow'd hands,
Sold by his flaves, and held in impious bands;
Rent from, what oft had sweeten'd anxious life,
His helpless children, and his bofom wife;
Doom'd for the faith plebeian rage to stand,
And fall a victim for the guilty land;

Then

Then thus was feen, abandon'd and forlorn,
The king, the father, and the faint to mourn.
How could't thou, artift, then thy skill display?
Thy steady hands thy favage heart betray:
Near thy bold work the ftun'd spectators faint,
Nor fee unmov'd, what thou unmov'd could'st paint;
What brings to mind each various scene of woe,
Th' infulting judge, the folemn-mocking show,
The horrid fentence, and accursed blow.
Where then, juft heaven, was thy unactive hand,
Thy idle thunder, and thy lingering brand!
Thy adamantine fhield, thy angel wings,
And the great genii of anointed kings!
Treason and fraud fhall thus the stars regard!
And injur'd virtue meet this fad reward!
So fad, none like can time's old records tell,
Though Pompey bled, and poor Darius fell.
All names but one too low that one too high:
All parallels are wrongs, or blafphemy.

O power fupreme! how fecret are thy ways!
Yet man, vain man, would trace the mystic maze,
With foolish wisdom, arguing, charge his God,
His ballance hold, and guide his angry rod;
New-mould the spheres, and mend the sky's defign,
And found th' immense with his short scanty line.
Do thou, my foul, the deftin'd period wait,
When God fhall folve the dark decrees of fate,