EPILOGUE'

Spoken by Mrs. Bulkley.

As puffing quacks some caitiff wretch procure
To swear the pill, or drop, has wrought a cure;
Thus, on the stage, our playwrights still depend,
For Epilogues and Prologues on some friend,
Who knows each art of coaxing up the town,
And make full many a bitter pill go down.
Conscious of this, our bard has gone about,
And teaz'd each rhyming friend to help him out.
An Epilogue, things can't go on without it;
It could not fail, would you but set about it.
Young man, cries one (a bard laid up in clover),
Alas! young man, my writing days are over;
Let boys play tricks, and kick the straw, not I;
Your brother Doctor there, perhaps, may try.
What I dear Sir, the Doctor interposes;
What, plant my thistle, Sir, among his roses!
No, no, I've other contests to maintain;
To-night I head our troops at Warwick-lane.'
Go ask your manager-Who, me! Your pardon;
Those things are not our forte at Covent Garden.
Our author's friends, thus plac'd at happy distance,
Give him good words indeed, but no assistance.
As some unhappy wight at some new play,
At the pit door stands elbowing away;
While oft, with many a smile, and many a shrug,
He eyes the centre, where his friends sit snug;

1 The author, in expectation of an Epilogue from a friend at Oxford, deferred writing one himself till the very last hour. What is here offered owes all its success to the graceful manner of the Actress who spoke it.-GOLDSMITH.

2 Where the College of Physicians then stood.

His simpering friends, with pleasure in their eyes,
Sink as he sinks, and as he rises rise:

He nods, they nod; he cringes, they grimace;
But not a soul will budge to give him place.
Since then, unhelp'd, our bard must now conform
"To 'bide the pelting of this pittiless storm,'
Blame where you must, be candid where you can,
And be each critic the Good-natur'd Man.

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER;

OR

THE MISTAKES OF A NIGHT.

A COMEDY.

London: Printed for F. Newbery, in St. Paul's Church-yard, 1773.
Price 1s. 6d.

P

VOL. I.

8vo.

"She Stoops to Conquer; or, the Mistakes of a Night, a Comedy," was acted for the first time at Covent Garden Theatre (then under the management of the elder Colman), on the 15th of March, 1773, and ran twelve nights, the theatre closing for the season with it on the 31st of May. The leading incident of the piece, the mistaking a gentleman's house for an inn, is said to have been borrowed from a blunder of the author himself, while travelling to school at Edge. worthstown. Its first MS. title was "The Old House a New Inn," but this was soon rejected. The title, it is suggested (Forster ii. 374), may have originated in one of Dryden's well-known couplets:

"The prostrate loon, when he lowest lies,

But kneels to conquer, and but stoops to rise."