In shabby state they strut, and tatter'd robe, The scene a blanket, and a barn the globe: No high conceits their moderate wishes raise, Content with humble profit, humble praise. Let dowdies simper, and let bumpkins stare, 240 The strolling pageant hero treads in air: Pleased, for his hour he to mankind gives law, And snores the next out on a truss of straw. But if kind Fortune, who sometimes, we know, Can take a hero from a puppet-show, In mood propitious should her favourite call, On royal stage in royal pomp to bawl, Forgetful of himself, he rears the head, And scorns the dunghill where he first was bred; Conversing now with well dress'd kings and queens, 250 With gods and goddesses behind the scenes, He sweats beneath the terror-nodding plume, Taught by mock honours real pride to assume. On this great stage, the world, no monarch e'er Was half so haughty as a monarch player. Doth it more move our anger or our mirth To see these things, the lowest sons of earth, Presume, with self-sufficient knowledge graced, To rule in letters, and preside in taste? The town's decisions they no more admit, 260 Themselves alone the arbiters of wit; And scorn the jurisdiction of that court To which they owe their being and support. Actors, like monks of old, now sacred grown, Must be attack'd by no fools but their own. Let the vain tyrant[89] sit amidst his guards, His puny green-room wits and venal bards, Who meanly tremble at the puppet's frown, And for a playhouse-freedom lose their own; In spite of new-made laws, and new-made kings, 270 The free-born Muse with liberal spirit sings. Bow down, ye slaves! before these idols fall; Let Genius stoop to them who've none at all: Ne'er will I flatter, cringe, or bend the knee To those who, slaves to all, are slaves to me. Actors, as actors, are a lawful game, The poet's right, and who shall bar his claim? And if, o'erweening of their little skill, When they have left the stage, they're actors still; If to the subject world they still give laws, 280 With paper crowns, and sceptres made of straws; If they in cellar or in garret roar, And, kings one night, are kings for evermore; Shall not bold Truth, e'en there, pursue her theme, And wake the coxcomb from his golden dream? Or if, well worthy of a better fate, They rise superior to their present state; If, with each social virtue graced, they blend The gay companion and the faithful friend; If they, like Pritchard, join in private life 290 The tender parent and the virtuous wife; Shall not our verse their praise with pleasure speak, Though Mimics bark, and Envy split her cheek? No honest worth's beneath the Muse's praise; No greatness can above her censure raise; Station and wealth to her are trifling things; She stoops to actors, and she soars to kings. Is there a man,[90] in vice and folly bred, To sense of honour as to virtue dead,