The Rover , Epilogue

The banished Cavaliers! a Roving Blade! A polish Carnival! a Masquerade! The Devil’s in’t if this will please the Nation, In these our blessed Times of Reformation, When Conventicling is so much in Fashion. And yet That mutinous Tribe less Factions do beget, Than your continual differing in Wit; Your Judgment’s (as your Passions) a Disease: Nor Muse nor Miss your Appetite can please; You’re grown as nice as queasy Consciences, Whose each Convulsion, when the Spirit moves, Damns every thing that Maggot disapproves. With canting Rule you would’d the Stage refine, And to dull Method all our Sense confine. With th’ Insolence of Common-wealths you rule, Where each gay Fop, and politic brave Fool, On Monarch Wit impose without control
As for the last who seldom sees a Play, Unless it be the old Black-Fryers way, Shaking his empty Noddle o’er Bamboo, He crys—Good Faith, these Plays will never do. Ah, Sir, in my young days, what lofty Wit, What high-strain’d Scenes of Fighting there were writ: These are slight airy Toys. But tell me, pray, What has the House of Commons done to day? Then shews his Politics, to let you see Of State Affairs he’ll judge as notably, As he can do of Wit and Poetry. The younger Sparks, who hither do resort,Cry Pox o’ your gentle things, give us more Sport; Damn me, I’m sure ’twill never please the Court. Such Fops are never pleas’d, unless the Play Be stuff’d with Fools, as brisk and dull as they: Such might the Half-Crown spare, and in a Glass At home behold a more accomplish Ass, Where they may set their Cravats, Wigs and Faces, And practice all their Buffoonry Grimaces; See how this—Huff becomes—this Dammy flare Which they at home may act, because they dare, But must with prudent Caution do elsewhere. Oh that our Nokes, or Tony Lee could show A Fop but half so much to th’ Life as you