Lo! where of late the Book of Martyrs stood, Old pious tracts, and Bibles bound in wood; There, such the taste of our degenerate age, Stand the profane delusions of the STAGE: Yet virtue owns the TRAGIC MUSE a friend, Fable her means, morality her end; For this she rules all passions in their turns; And now the bosom bleeds, and now it burns, Pity with weeping eye surveys her bowl, Her anger swells, her terror chills the soul; She makes the vile to virtue yield applause, And own her sceptre while they break her laws; For vice in others is abhorred of all, And villains triumph when the worthless fall. Not thus her sister COMEDY prevails, Who shoots at folly, for her arrow fails; Folly, by dulness armed, eludes the wound, And harmless sees the feathered shafts rebound; Unhurt she stands, applauds the archer's skill, Laughs at her malice, and is folly still. Yet well the Muse portrays in fancied scenes, What pride will stoop to, what profession means; How formal fools the farce of state applaud, How caution watches at the lips of fraud; The wordy variance of domestic life; The tyrant husband, the retorting wife; The snares for innocence, the lie of trade, And the smooth tongue's habitual masquerade. With her the virtues too obtain a place, Each gentle passion, each becoming grace; The social joy in life's securer road, Its easy pleasure, its substantial good; The happy thought that conscious virtue gives, And all that ought to live, and all that lives. But who are these? Methinks a noble mien And awful grandeur in their form are seen, Now in disgrace: what though by time is spread Polluting dust o'er every reverend head; What though beneath yon gilded tribe they lie, And dull observers pass insulting by: Forbid it shame, forbid it decent awe, What seems so grave, should no attention draw! Come, let us then with reverend step advance, And greet--the ancient worthies of ROMANCE.