Classic Poem

DESIGNED FOR THE BRITISH ENCHANTERS .

Wit once, like Beauty, without art or dress,
Naked, and unadorn'd, could find success,
Till by fruition novelty destroy'd,
The nymph must find new charms to be enjoy'd.
As by his equipage the man you prize,
And ladies must have gems beside their eyes;
So fares it too with plays: in vain we write,
Unless the music and the dance invite;
Scarce Hamlet clears the charges of the night.
Would you but fix some standard how to move,
We would transform to any thing you love:
Judge our desire by our cost and pains;
Sure the expense, uncertain are the gains.
But tho' we fetch from Italy and France
Our fopperies of tune, and mode of dance,
Our sturdy Britons scorn to borrow sense.
Howe'er to foreign fashions we submit,
Still ev'ry fop prefers his mother-wit.
In only wit this constancy is shown,
For never was that errant changeling known
Who for another's sense would quit his own.
 Our author would excuse these youthful scenes,
Begotten at his entrance in his teens:
Some childish fancies may approve the toy,
Some like the Muse the more for being a boy;
And ladies should be pleas'd, if not content,
To find so young a thing not wholly impotent.
Our stage-reformers, too, he would disarm,
In charity so cold, in zeal so warm!
And therefore, to atone for stage-abuses,
And gain the church-indulgence for the Muses,
He gives his thirds—to charitable uses.