9e. 8bre. 1773. à ferney.
Sr.
Thanks to yr muse a foreign copper shines Turn’d in to gold, and coin’d in sterling lines. You have done to much honour to an old sick man of eighty.
I am with the most sincere esteem and gratitude
Sr.
Yr. obdt. Servt. Voltaire.
A Monsieur Monsieur J. Cradock.
The text of the prologue is here given as printed in Cradock’s Memoirs, 1828, iii. 8–9. It is unnecessary to specify the variations between this and the earlier issue of 1771.
[In these bold times, etc.] The reference is to Cook, who, on June 12, 1771, had returned to England in the Endeavour, after three years’ absence, having gone to Otaheite to observe the transit of Venus (l. 4).
[Botanists.] Mr. (afterward Sir Joseph) Banks and Dr. Solander, of the British Museum, accompanied Cook.
[go simpling,] i.e. gathering simples, or herbs. Cf. Merry Wives of Windsor, Act iii, Sc. 3:—
‘—These lisping hawthorn buds that ... smell like Bucklersbury in simple-time.’
In the caricatures of the day Solander figured as ‘The simpling Macaroni.’ (See note, p. 247, l. 31.)
[With Scythian stores.] The scene of the play was laid in Scythia (v. supra).