_With our old Plays, as with dull Wife it fares, To whom you have been marry’d tedious Years. You cry--She’s wondrous good, it is confessed, | But still ‘tis_ Chapon Boüillé _at the best; | That constant Dish can never make a Feast: | Yet the pall’d Pleasure you must still pursue, You give so small Incouragement for new; And who would drudge for such a wretched Age, Who want the Bravery to support one Stage? The wiser Wits have now new Measures set, And taken up new Trades that they may hate. No more your nice fantastick Pleasures serve, Your Pimps you pay, but let your Poets starve, They long in vain for better Usage hop’d, Till quite undone and tir’d, they dropt and dropt; Not one is left will write for thin third Day, Like desperate Pickeroons, no Prize no Pay; And when they have done their best, the Recompence Is, Damn the Sot, his Play wants common Sense, Ill-natured Wits, who can so ill requite The drudging Slaves, who for your Pleasure write. Look back on flourishing_ Rome, _ye proud Ingrates, And see how she her thriving Poets treats: Wisely she priz’d ‘em at the noblest Rate, | As necessary Ministers of State, | And Contributions rais’d to make ‘em great. | They from the publick Bank she did maintain, And freed from want, they only writ for Fame; And were as useful in a City held, As formidable Armies in the Field. They but a Conquest over Men pursued, While these by gentle force the Soul subdu’d. Not_ Rome _in all her happiest Pomp cou’d show | A greater_ Caesar _than we boast of now_; | Augustus _reigns, but Poets still are low. | May Caesar live, and while his mighty Hand Is scattering Plenty over all the Land; With God-like Bounty recompensing all, Some fruitful drops may on the Muses fall; Since honest Pens do his just cause afford Equal Advantage with the useful Sword_. NOTES ON THE TEXT. THE TOWN FOP. p. 7 _Dramatis Personae_. I have added ‘Page to _Bellmour_; Page to Lord _Plotwell_; Sir _Timothy’s_ Page; Guests; Fiddlers; Ladies.’ p. 12, l. 36 _honoured_. 1724 ‘honourable’. p. 13, l. 2 _answered the Civility_. 1724 ‘answered her the Civility’. p. 13, l. 23 _whats_. 1724 ‘what’. p. 13, l. 26 _any thing in Life_. 1724 ‘any thing in this Life’. p. 14, l. 3 _God forbid it_; 1724 omits ‘it’. p. 15, l. 11 _you speak well_. 1724 omits ‘well’. p. 15, l. 20 _Mrs. Celinda Dresswell_. Following 4to 1677 and 1724 I have retained the name Dresswell although it should obviously be Friendlove. In the first draft Friendlove was called Dresswell, and in altering the nomenclature of the character Mrs. Behn forgot to make the change here. The same slip occurs in this same scene (p. 20, l. 23) when Friendlove is alluded to as Dresswell. p. 16, l. 2 _help_. 1724 ‘help’d’. p. 16, l. 30 _me to_. 1724 omits ‘to’. p. 17, l. 9 _and Allurements_. 1724 omits ‘and’. p. 19, l. 29 _beholding_. 1724 ‘beholden’. p. 19, l. 31 _belong’d_. 1724 ‘belongs’.