Now pox on those who fhew a Court in wax! See! where the British youth, engag'd no more As the fair fields they fold to look so fine. "That's velvet for a King!" the flatt'rer fwears; "Tis true, for ten days hence 'twill be King Lear's. Our Court may justly to our stage give rules, 229 That helps it both to fools-coats and to fools. And why not players ftrut in courtiers cloaths? For these are actors too, as well as those : Wants reach all states; they beg but better dret, And all is fplendid poverty at best. NQTES. 225 young ing-houfe: Fig's, a Prize-fighter's Academy, where the Nobility receiv'd instruction in those days: It was also cuftomary for the nobility and gentry to vifit the condemned crimi nals in Newgate. P VER. 220. our ftage give rules,] Alluding to the Chamber lain's Authority. VOL. IV. U At stage, as courts; all are players. Whoe'er looks (For themselves dare not go) o'er Cheapfide books, Shall find their wardrobes inventory. Now The Ladies come. As pirates (which do know Their beauties; they the mens wits; both are bought. Wouldn't Heraclitus laugh to see Macrine From hat to fhoe, himself at door refine, As if the Prefence were a Mofque: and lift Great ftains and holes in them, but venial NOTES. i. e. Arrive to worship and magiftracy. The reason he gives is, that thofe who have wit are forced to fell their stock, inftead of trading with it. This thought, tho' not amifs, our Poet has not paraphrafed. It is obfcurely expreffed, and poffibly it efcaped him. i. c. Concious that both her complexion and her hair are 230 Painted for fight, and effenc'd for the smell, Like frigates fraught with spice and cochine'l, Sail in the Ladies: how each pyrate eyes So weak a veffel, and fo rich a prize! Top-gallant he, and fhe in all her trim, He boarding her, she striking fail to him: "Dear Countess! you have charms all hearts to hit!". And "Sweet Sir Fopling! you have fo much wit!" Such wits and beauties are not prais'd for nought, For both the beauty and the wit are bought. 235 'Twou'd burft ev'n Heraclitus with the spleen, To see those anticks, Fopling and Courtin : The Presence seems, with things fo richly odd, The mofque of Mahound, or fome queer Pa-god. See them furvey their limbs by Durer's rules, 240 Of all beau-kind the best proportion'd fools! Adjust their cloaths, and to confeffion draw Thofe venial fins, an atom, or a straw; NOTES. borrowed, fhe fufpects that, when, in the common cant of atterers, he calls her beauty lime-twigs, and her hair a net tö catch lovers, he means to infinuate that her colours are coarfely laid on, and her borrowed hair loosely woven. VER. 240. Durer's rules,] Albert Durer, Of his each limb, and with strings the odds tries So much as at Rome would ferve to have thrown And whispers by Jesu so oft, that a Purfuevant would have ravifh'd him away That they each other plague, they merit it. Call a rough carelefnefs, good fashion Whose cloak his fpurs tear, or whom he spits on, He meant to cry; and though his face be as ill NOTES. f Because all the lines drawn from the centre to the circumference are equal. 245 But oh! what terrors must distract the foul They march, to prate their hour before the Fair. Let but the Ladies fmile, and they are blest : Prodigious! how the things protest, proteft: 255 Peace, fools, or Gonfon will for Papists feize you, If once he catch you at your Jesu! Jesu! Nature made ev'ry Fop to plague his brother, Juft as one Beauty mortifies another. But here's the Captain that will plague them both, |