Prologue to The Spanish Fryar, or the Double Discovery

NOW, Luck for us, and a kind hearty Pit,

For he who pleases, never failes of Wit.

Honour is yours:

And you, like Kings at City Treats, bestow it;

The Writer kneels, and is bid rise a Poet.

But you are fickle Sovereigns, to our Sorrow;

You dubb to day, and hang a man tomorrow:

You cry the same Sense up, and down again,

Just like brass Money once a year in Spain:

Take you i’ th’ mood, what e’er base metal come,

You coin as fast as Groats at Bromingam;

Though ’tis no more like Sense in ancient Plays

Than Rome’s religion like St. Peter’s days.

In short, so swift your Judgments turn and wind,

You cast our fleetest Wits a mile behind.

’Twere well your Judgments but in Plays did range,

But ev’n your Follies and Debauches change

With such a Whirl, the Poets of your Age

Are tyr’d, and cannot score ’em on the Stage,

Unless each Vice in short-hand they indite,

Ev’n as notcht Prentices whole Sermons write.

The heavy Hollanders no Vices know,

But what they us’d a hundred years ago;

Like honest Plants, where they were stuck, they grow;

They cheat, but still from cheating Sires they come;

They drink, but they were christen’d first in Mum.

Their patrimonial Sloth the Spaniards keep,

And Philip first taught Philip how to sleep.

The French and we still change; but here’s the Curse,

They change for better, and we change for worse;

They take up our old trade of Conquering,

And we are taking theirs, to dance and sing:

Our Fathers did for change to France repair,

And they for change will try our English Air.

As Children, when they throw one Toy away,

Straight a more foolish Gugaw comes in play;

So we, grown penitent, on serious thinking,

Leave Whoring, and devoutly fall to Drinking.

Scowring the Watch grows out of fashion wit;

Now we set up for Tilting in the Pit,

Where ’tis agreed by Bullies, chicken-hearted,

To fright the Ladies first, and then be parted.

A fair attempt has twice or thrice been made,

To hire Night-murth’rers, and make Death a Trade.

When Murther’s out, what Vice can we advance?

Unless the new-found Pois’ning Trick of France:

And when their art of Rats-bane we have got,

By way of thanks, we’ll send ’em o’er our Plot.

Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD