Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/256

246 From care and bus’neſs, and mankind remove, All but the Muſes, and inſpiring love: How ſweet the morn, how gentle is the night! How calm the evening, and the day how bright! From thence, as from a hill, I view below The crowded world, a mighty wood in ſhew, Where ſeveral wand’rers travel day and night, By different paths, and none are in the right.

In 1696 his Comedy called the She Gallants was acted at the Theatre-Royal in Lincoln’s-inn Fields. He afterwards altered this Comedy, and publiſhed it among his other works, under the title of Once a Lover and Always a Lover, which, as he obſerves in the preface, is a new building upon an old foundation.

"‘It appeared firſt under the name of the She-Gallants, and by the preface then prefixed to it, is ſaid to have been the Child of a Child. By taking it ſince under examination, ſo many years after, the author flatters himſelf to have made a correct Comedy of it; he found it regular to his hand; the ſcene conſtant to one place, the time not exceeding the bounds preſcribed, and the action entire. It remained only to clear the ground, and to plant as it were freſh flowers in the room of thoſe which were grown into weeds or were faded by time; to retouch and vary the characters; enliven the painting, retrench the ſuperfluous; and animate the action, where it appeared the young author ſeemed to aim at more than he had ſtrength to perform.’"

The ſame year alſo his Tragedy, intitled Heroic Love, was acted at the Theatre. Mr. Gildon obſerves, ‘that this Tragedy is written after the manner of the antients, which is much more natural and