But Candour's veil love's foibles still should cover And NYK be stil'd a FASHIONABLE LOVER.[8] To polish'd travellers is only known That taste which makes the ancient arts our own; Which shares with Rome in every gem antique; Which blends the modern with the ancient Greek; Improves on both, and greatly soars above, In pure philanthropy, Platonic love; That love which burns with undistinguish'd rage, And spares in fondness neither sex nor age? Ah! therefore why in these enlighten'd times Sould rigid Nature call such errours crimes? Must not the taste of Attic wits be nice? Can antient virtue be a modern vice? The Mantuan bard, or else his scholiast lies,[9] Virgil the chaste, nay Socrates the wise. NOTES. [8] "_If any author of prolific brains In this good company feels labour-pains; If any gentle poet big with rhyme Has run his reckoning out and gone his time: Know such that at our hospital of muses He may lie-in in private if he chuses; We've single lodgings there for secret sinners With good encouragement for your beginners._" Prologue to the FASHIONABLE LOVER. It is indeed now plain enough that ROSCIUS has given great encouragement to _secret sinners_; but I would advise none of our poets to lie in again in private; but to remember the fate of a late tragedy and farce. Poor _Clementina_, and the lady _An hour before marriage_, both privately lay-in and miscarried. [9] The Jesuit Ruæus begins the argument of Virgil's second Eclogue with the following explicit declaration, _Amabat Virgilius puerum_. The gay Petronius, sophists, wits and bards, Of old, bestow'd on youth their soft regards; In modish dalliance pass'd their harmless time Ev'n modish now in soft Italia's clime. Could lightenings ever issue from above To blast poor men for such a crime as love; When the lewd daughters of incestuous Lot Were both with child by their own father got? Poor goody Lot indeed might be in fault, And justly turn'd to monumental salt: The matrimonial emblem of a wife: Needs must be salt a dish to keep for life! A fable Sodom's fate: in Heav'n above All is made up of harmony and love; That such its vengeance I believe not, I; Historians err and Hebrew Jews will lie. Sing then, my Muse, a more engaging strain To lure my NYKY back to Drury-lane. Tell him the fancied danger all is o'er; Home he may come and love as heretofore. IMITATIONS. Formosum pastor Corydon ardebat Alexin. ---- Deos didici securum agere ævum Nec si quid miri faciat natura, deos id Tristes ex alto coeli demittere tecto. ---- ---- Credat Judæus Apella, Non ego. ---- Ducite ab urbe domum mea carmina ducite Daphnim.