Page:An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe.djvu/187

 wit and a witch. I will not dispute the propriety of uniting those characters then; but the man who under the present discouragements ventures to write for the stage now, whatever claim he may have to the appellation of a wit, at least, he has no right to be called a conjuror.

getting a play on even in three or four years, is a privilege reserved only for the happy few who have the arts of courting the manager as well as the muse: who have adulation to please his vanity, powerful patrons to support their merit, or money to indemnify disappointment. The poet must act like our beggars at Christmas, who lay the first shilling on the plate for themselves. Thus all wit is banished from the stage, except it be supported by friends, or fortune, and poets are seldom over-burthened with either.