EPILOGUE BY DR. GARTH. SPOKEN BY MRS. PORTER. What odd fantastic things we women do! To give you pain, themselves they punish most. Too oft they're cancelled, though in convents made. Our hearts are form'd as you yourselves would choose, Blame not our conduct, since we but pursue But wicked wealth usurps the power of charms; T What pains to get the gaudy thing you hate! And every Lucia find a Cato's son. PREFACE. HAVING recommended this play to the town, and delivered the copy of it to the bookseller, I think myself obliged to give some account of it. It had been some years in the hands of the author, and falling under my perusal, I thought so well of it, that I persuaded him to make some additions and alterations to it, and let it appear upon the stage. I own I was very highly pleased with it, and liked it the better, for the want of those studied similes and repartees which we, who have writ before him, have thrown into our plays, to indulge and gain upon a false taste that has prevailed for many years in the British theatre. I believe the author would have condescended to fall into this way a little more than he has, had he, before the writing of it, been often present at theatrical representations. I was confirmed in my thoughts of the play, by the opinion of better judges to whom it was communicated, who observed that the scenes were drawn after Moliere's manner, and that an easy and natural vein of humour ran through the whole. I do not question but the reader will discover this, and see many beauties that escaped the audience; the touches being too delicate for every taste in a popular assembly. My brother-sharers were of opinion, at the first reading of |