Prologue To "Sophonisba,"

ACTED AT OXFORD, 1680.     WRITTEN BY NATHAN LEE.         Thespis,[1] the first professor of our art,         At country wakes sung ballads from a cart.         To prove this true, if Latin be no trespass,         "Dicitur et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis."         But schylus, says Horace in some page,         Was the first mountebank that trod the stage:         Yet Athens never knew your learned sport         Of tossing poets in a tennis-court.         But 'tis the talent of our English nation,         Still to be plotting some new reformation:         And few years hence, if anarchy goes on,         Jack Presbyter shall here erect his throne,         Knock out a tub with preaching once a day,         And every prayer be longer than a play.         Then all your heathen wits shall go to pot,         For disbelieving of a Popish plot:         Your poets shall be used like infidels,         And worst, the author of the Oxford bells:         Nor should we 'scape the sentence, to depart,         Even in our first original, a cart.         No zealous brother there would want a stone         To maul us cardinals, and pelt Pope Joan:         Religion, learning, wit, would be suppress'd--         Rags of the whore, and trappings of the beast:         Scot, Suarez, Tom of Aquin, must go down,         As chief supporters of the triple crown;         And Aristotle's for destruction ripe;         Some say he call'd the soul an organ-pipe,         Which by some little help of derivation,         Shall then be proved a pipe of inspiration.