Epilogue--Spoken by Mrs. Bracegirdle.

The Way of the World

by William Congreve

After our Epilogue this crowd dismisses,
I'm thinking how this
play'll be pulled to pieces.
But pray consider, e'er you doom its
fall,
How hard a thing 'twould be to please you all.
There
are some critics so with spleen diseased,
They scarcely come
inclining to be pleased:
And sure he must have more than mortal
skill
Who pleases anyone against his will.
Then, all bad
poets we are sure are foes,
And how their number's swelled the
town well knows
In shoals, I've marked 'em judging in the
pit;
Though they're on no pretence for judgment fit,
But that
they have been damned for want of wit.
Since when, they, by their
own offences taught,
Set up for spies on plays, and finding
fault.
Others there are whose malice we'd prevent:
Such, who
watch plays, with scurrilous intent
To mark out who by characters
are meant:
And though no perfect likeness they can trace,
Yet
each pretends to know the copied face.
These, with false glosses,
feed their own ill-nature,
And turn to libel what was meant a
satire.
May such malicious fops this fortune find,
To think
themselves alone the fools designed:
If any are so arrogantly
vain,
To think they singly can support a scene,
And furnish
fool enough to entertain.
For well the learned and the judicious
know,
That satire scorns to stoop so meanly low,
As any one
abstracted fop to show.
For, as when painters form a matchless
face,
They from each fair one catch some diff'rent grace,
And
shining features in one portrait blend,
To which no single beauty
must pretend:
So poets oft do in one piece expose
Whole
BELLES ASSEMBLEES of coquettes and beaux.