If yet there be a few that take delight } In that which reasonable men should write, } To them alone we dedicate this night. } The rest may satisfy their curious itch With city-gazettes, or some factious speech,[357] Or whate'er libel, for the public good, Stirs up the shrove-tide crew to fire and blood. Remove your benches, you apostate pit, And take, above, twelve pennyworth of wit; Go back to your dear dancing on the rope, Or see what's worse, the devil and the pope.[358] The plays, that take on our corrupted stage, Methinks, resemble the distracted age; Noise, madness, all unreasonable things, That strike at sense, as rebels do at kings. The style of forty-one our poets write, And you are grown to judge like forty-eight.[359] Such censures our mistaking audience make, That 'tis almost grown scandalous to take. They talk of fevers that infect the brains; But nonsense is the new disease that reigns. Weak stomachs, with a long disease opprest, Cannot the cordials of strong wit digest; Therefore thin nourishment of farce ye choose, Decoctions of a barley-water muse. A meal of tragedy would make ye sick, Unless it were a very tender chick. Some scenes in sippets would be worth our time; Those would go down; some love that's poached in rhime: If these should fail---- We must lie down, and, after all our cost, Keep holiday, like watermen in frost; While you turn players on the world's great stage, And act yourselves the farce of your own age. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 357: The City Gazettes were such publications as the Petition of the City, Mayor, and Aldermen, for the sitting of parliament on the 13th January, 1680, which is printed with the city arms prefixed, by a solemn order of the common council, and an appointment by the Lord Mayor, that Samuel Roycroft, printer to the city, do print the same, pursuant to order, and that no other person presume to do so. The "factious speech" was probably that of Shaftesbury, which was burned by the hands of the common hangman.] [Footnote 358: The Pope-burning, so often mentioned.]