To the Reader

Courteous Reader--for to such I write--
With native candour view this chequer'd white,
Be truly candid to a candidate
Whom importunings force to antedate
The travails of his quill, and, like a grape
Ere ripened, press it. Yet if I escape
The censure of these times, this critic age,
My muse (like parrots) in a wire cage
Shall not do penance; but I'll not promise it,
'Cause 't doth too much o' th' lips of greatness sit.
And 'tis a fault for me to sympathize,
I bring no antic mask in strange disguise,
No sharp invective, nor no comic mirth
Which may to laughter give an easy birth.
Though 'tis in use with them that seek to please
These humorous times (it being a disease
Half epidemical to keep a phrase
Or fancy at stave's end; nought merits praise
Unless with quibbles every staff does end--
Conceited jests which unto lightness tend)
Though every page swells with ingenuous plots,
Yet, cry our carps, the authors are but sots.
An elbow-pillow or a motley coat
With them are now the chiefest men of note.
But I nor am, nor hope that name to gain
Of pantomimic: yet did nature deign
The optic-glass of humours to descry
Each man's rank humour only by the eye,
I would have tun'd my muse, that every page
Might swell with humours suiting to this age;
This leaf should talk of love and that of state,
This of alarums, that of wonders prate,
This of knights errant, of enchantment that,
This to the itching ears of novels chat.
But ... since my starv'd Fortunes missed that, I have drawn
A picture shadowed o'er with double lawn,
Lest some quick Lyncist with a piercing eye,
Should the young footsteps of a truth espy,
Yet something, I confess, was born of late
Which makes me age it with an ancient date,
But let no antic-hunter post to Stow,
To trace out truth upon his even snow.
Annals are dumb of such and such a lord,
Nor of our amorous pair speak half a word,
Monastic writs do not Bellama limn,
Nor abbey-rolls do teem a line of him,
This story has no sires (as 'tis the use)
But weak invention and a feeble muse.
These are the parents that abortive birth
Give to this embryon of desired mirth,
Which in the author's name does humbly crave
A charitable censure or a grave.
The purest-bolted flour that is has bran,
Venus her naeve, Helen her stain, nor can
I think these lines are censure-free, impal'd
By th' muses and 'gainst envy's javelins mail'd.
Yet where the faults but whisper, use thy pen
With the quod non vis of the heathen men;
And, if the crimes do in loud echoes speak,
Thy sponge; but not with lashing satires break
That sacred bond of friendship, for 't may be
I may hereafter do as much for thee.
Nor do thou think to trample on my muse;
Nor in thy lofty third-air braves accuse
My breast of faintness, or the ballad-whine.
For know my heart is full as big as thine,
And as pure fire heats my octavo bulk
As the grand-folio, or the Reamish hulk,
If but oppos'd with envy, but unless
I truly am what these few words express.
Thy ready friend,