dBooks desire

Up starts a Monsieur, new come o'er, and warm
In the French stoop and pull-back of the arm:
"Morbleu," dit-il, and cocks, "I am a rogue,
But he has quite spoiled the 'Feigned Astrologue!'"
The poet is supposed to make excuse:
He neither swore, nor stormed, as poets do,
But, most unlike an author, vowed 'twas true;
Yet said he used the French like enemies,
And did not steal their plots but made them prize.
Dryden concludes with a sort of apology for his own productiveness,
and the necessity of borrowing that it involved:
He still must write, and banquier-like, each day
Accept new bills, and he must break or pay.
When through his hands such sums must yearly run,
You cannot think the stock is all his own.
Pepys, who, born in 1633, must have had experiences of youthful
playgoing before the great Civil War, finds evidence afterwards of
"the vanity and prodigality of the age" in the nightly company of
citizens, 'prentices, and others attending the theatre, and holds it a
grievance that there should be so many "mean people" in the pit at two
shillings and sixpence apiece.


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