time, that this address were exempted from the common pretence of
all dedications; and that as I can distinguish your lordship even
among the most deserving, so this offering might become remarkable
by some particular instance of respect, which should assure your
lordship that I am, with all due sense of your extreme worthiness
and humanity, my lord, your lordship's most obedient and most
obliged humble servant,

WILL. CONGREVE.



PROLOGUE--Spoken by Mr. Betterton.



Of those few fools, who with ill stars are curst,
Sure scribbling fools, called poets, fare the worst:
For they're a sort of fools which fortune makes,
And, after she has made 'em fools, forsakes.
With Nature's oafs 'tis quite a diff'rent case,
For Fortune favours all her idiot race.
In her own nest the cuckoo eggs we find,
O'er which she broods to hatch the changeling kind:
No portion for her own she has to spare,
So much she dotes on her adopted care.

Poets are bubbles, by the town drawn in,
Suffered at first some trifling stakes to win:
But what unequal hazards do they run!