[Footnote 376: An allusion to Shadwell; who boasted, that he drew his characters from nature, in contempt of regular criticism.]
[Footnote 377: Alluding to the mode in which the emperors were chosen during the decline of the empire, when the soldiers of the Prætorian guards were the electors, without regard to the legal rights of the senate.]
No poor Dutch peasant, winged with all his fear, Flies with more haste, when the French arms draw near, Than we, with our poetic train, come down, For refuge hither, from the infected town: Heaven, for our sins, this summer has thought fit To visit us with all the plagues of wit. A French troop first swept all things in its way; But those hot Monsieurs were too quick to stay: Yet, to our cost, in that short time, we find They left their itch of novelty behind. The Italian merry-andrews took their place, And quite debauched the stage with lewd grimace: Instead of wit, and humours, your delight Was there to see two hobby-horses fight; Stout Scaramoucha with rush lance rode in, And ran a tilt at centaur Arlequin. For love you heard how amorous asses brayed, And cats in gutters gave their serenade. Nature was out of countenance, and each day Some new-born monster shown you for a play. But when all failed, to strike the stage quite dumb, Those wicked engines, called machines, are come. Thunder and lightning now for wit are played, And shortly scenes in Lapland will be laid: Art magic is for poetry profest,[378] And cats and dogs, and each obscener beast, To which Egyptian dotards once did bow, Upon our English stage are worshipped now. Witchcraft reigns there, and raises to renown Macbeth[379] and Simon Magus of the town. Fletcher's despised, your Jonson's out of fashion, And wit the only drug in all the nation. In this low ebb our wares to you are shown, } By you those staple authors' worth is known, } For wit's a manufacture of your own. } When you, who only can, their scenes have praised, We'll back, and boldly say, their price is raised.
[Footnote 378: This and the following lines refer to the success of Shadwell's comedy of "The Lancashire Witches," in which a great deal of machinery is introduced; the witches flying away with the clown's candles, and the priest's bottle of holy water, and converting a country-fellow into a horse upon the stage. Not content with this, the author has introduced upon the stage all that writers upon Dæmonology have rehearsed of the Witches' Sabbath, or Festival, with their infernal master; and has thus, very clumsily, mixed the horrible with the ludicrous. As for the cats and dogs, we have, in one place,--"Enter an Imp, in the shape of a black Shock;" and, in another,