EPILOGUE
GHOST.
The play once done, the epilogue, by rule,
Should come and turn it all to ridicule;
Should tell the ladies that the tragic bards,
Who prate of Virtue and her vast rewards,
Are all in jest, and only fools should heed 'em;
For all wise women flock to mother Needham.
This is the method epilogues pursue,
But we to-night in everything are new.
Our author then, in jest throughout the play,
Now begs a serious word or two to say.
Banish all childish entertainments hence;
Let all that boast your favour have pretence,
If not to sparkling wit, at least to sense.
With soft Italian notes indulge your ear;
But let those singers, who are bought so dear,
Learn to be civil for their cheer at least,
Nor use like beggars those who give the feast.
And though while musick for herself may carve,
Poor Poetry, her sister-art, must starve;
Starve her at least with shew of approbation,
Nor slight her, while you search the whole creation
For all the tumbling-skum of every nation.
Can the whole world in science match our soil?
Have they a LOCKE, a NEWTON, or a BOYLE?
Or dare the greatest genius of their stage
With SHAKSPEARE or immortal BEN engage?
Content with nature's bounty, do not crave
The little which to other lands she gave;
Nor like the cock a barley corn prefer
To all the jewels which you owe to her.
* * * * *
AN ESSAY ON CONVERSATION.
Man is generally represented as an animal formed for, and delighted in, society; in this state alone, it is said, his various talents can be exerted, his numberless necessities relieved, the dangers he is exposed to can be avoided, and many of the pleasures he eagerly affects enjoyed. If these assertions be, as I think they are, undoubtedly and obviously certain, those few who have denied man to be a social animal have left us these two solutions of their conduct; either that there are men as bold in denial as can be found in assertion—and as Cicero says there is no absurdity which some philosopher or other hath not asserted, so we may say there is no truth so glaring that some have not denied it;—or else that these rejectors of society borrow all their information from their own savage dispositions, and are, indeed, themselves, the only exceptions to the above general rule.
But to leave such persons to those who have thought them more worthy of an answer; there are others who are so seemingly fond of this social state, that they are understood absolutely to confine it to their own species; and entirely excluding the tamer and gentler, the herding and flocking parts of the creation, from all benefits of it, to set up this as one grand general distinction between the human and the brute species.
Shall we conclude this denial of all society to the nature of brutes, which seems to be in defiance of every day's observation, to be as bold as the denial of it to the nature of men? or, may we not more justly derive the error from an improper understanding of this word society in too confined and special a sense? in a word, do those who utterly deny it to the brutal nature mean any other by society than conversation?
Now, if we comprehend them in this sense, as I think we very reasonably may, the distinction appears to me to be truly just; for though other animals are not without all use of society, yet this noble branch of it seems, of all the inhabitants of this globe, confined to man only; the narrow power of communicating some few ideas of lust, or fear, or anger, which may be observable in brutes, falling infinitely short of what is commonly meant by conversation, as may be deduced from the origination of the word itself, the only accurate guide to knowledge. The primitive and literal sense of this word is, I apprehend, to turn round together; and in its more copious usage we intend by it that reciprocal interchange of ideas by which truth is examined, things are, in a manner, turned round and sifted, and all our knowledge communicated to each other.