Grown old in rhyme, 'twere barbarous to discard Your persevering, unexhausted bard; Damnation follows death in other men, But your damn'd poet lives and writes again. The adventurous lover is successful still, Who strives to please the fair against her will: Be kind, and make him in his wishes easy, Who in your own despite has strove to please ye. He scorn'd to borrow from the wits of yore, But ever writ, as none e'er writ before. 10 You modern wits, should each man bring his claim, Have desperate debentures on your fame; And little would be left you, I'm afraid, If all your debts to Greece and Rome were paid. From this deep fund our author largely draws, Nor sinks his credit lower than it was. Though plays for honour in old time he made, 'Tis now for better reasons--to be paid. Believe him, he has known the world too long, And seen the death of much immortal song. 20 He says, poor poets lost, while players won, As pimps grow rich, while gallants are undone. Though Tom the poet writ with ease and pleasure, The comic Tom abounds in other treasure. Fame is at best an unperforming cheat; But 'tis substantial happiness to eat. Let ease, his last request, be of your giving, Nor force him to be damn'd to get his living. PROLOGUE TO 'THE THREE HOURS AFTER MARRIAGE' Authors are judged by strange capricious rules; The great ones are thought mad, the small ones fools: Yet sure the best are most severely fated; For fools are only laugh'd at, wits are hated. Blockheads with reason men of sense abhor; But fool 'gainst fool, is barbarous civil war. Why on all authors, then, should critics fall? Since some have writ, and shown no wit at all. Condemn a play of theirs, and they evade it; Cry, 'Damn not us, but damn the French, who made it.' 10 By running goods these graceless owlers gain; Theirs are the rules of France, the plots of Spain; But wit, like wine, from happier climates brought, Dash'd by these rogues, turns English common draught. They pall Moliere's and Lopez' sprightly strain, And teach dull harlequins to grin in vain. How shall our author hope a gentler fate, Who dares most impudently not translate? It had been civil, in these ticklish times, To fetch his fools and knaves from foreign climes; 20 Spaniards and French abuse to the world's end, But spare old England, lest you hurt a friend. If any fool is by our satire bit, Let him hiss loud, to show you all he's hit. Poets make characters, as salesmen clothes; We take no measure of your fops and beaux; But here all sizes and all shapes you meet, And fit yourselves, like chaps in Monmouth Street.