How tragic most the Stories you relate.
Is it that most are wretched, or have we
The evil fate to live with Misery?”—
“Not so perhaps, but Men of common Lives,
Who live contented with themselves and Wives,
Afford no Subject for the Muse than Mirth.
“Their [lowly] comforts, or a day’s delight, 10
Do not afford [us] matter when we write;
[Though] all the strange prodigious things they do