The Way of the World by William Congreve - HTML preview

Epilogue

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.