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PROLOGUE.
THE Tragick Muse, sublime, delights to show
Princes distrest, and Scenes of Royal Woe;
In awful Pomp, Majestick, to relate
The Fall of Nations, or some Heroe's Fate:
That Scepter'd Chiefs may by Example know
The strange Vicissitude of Things below:
What Dangers on Security attend;
How Pride and Cruelty in Ruin end:
Hence Providence Supream to know; and own
Humanity adds Glory to a Throne.
In ev'ry former Age, and Foreign Tongue,
With Native Grandure thus the Goddess sung.
Upon our Stage indeed, with wish'd Success,
You've sometimes seen her in a humbler Dress;
Great only in Distress. When she complains
In Southern's, Rowe's, or Otway's moving Strains,
The Brillant Drops, that fall from each bright Eye,
The absent Pomp, with brighter Jems, supply.
Forgive us then, if we attempt to show,
In artless Strains, a Tale of private Woe.
A London Prentice ruin'd is our Theme,
Drawn from the fam'd old Song, that bears his Name.
We hope your Taste is not so high to scorn
A moral Tale, esteem'd e'er you were born;
Which for a Century of rolling Years,
Has fill'd a thousand-thousand Eyes with Tears.
If thoughtless Youth to warn, and shame the Age
From Vice destructive, well becomes the Stage;
If this Example Innocence secure,
Prevent our Guilt, or by Reflection cure;
If Millwood's dreadful Guilt, and sad Despair,
Commend the Virtue of the Good and Fair,
Tho' Art be wanting, and our Numbers fail,
Indulge th' Attempt in Justice to the Tale.