There are but two decent prologues in our tongue--Pope's to 'Cato'
[3]--Johnson's to Drury-Lane [4].
These, with the epilogue to 'The Distrest Mother' [5] and, I think, one
of Goldsmith's [6], and a prologue of old Colman's to Beaumont and
Fletcher's 'Philaster' [7], are the best things of the kind we have.
P.S.--I am diluted to the throat with medicine for the stone; and
Boisragon wants me to try a warm climate for the winter--but I won't.
[Footnote 1:
"Such are the names that here your plaudits sought,
When Garrick acted, and when Brinsley wrote."
At present the couplet stands thus:
"Dear are the days that made our annals bright,
Ere Garrick fled, or Brinsley ceased to write."]
[Footnote 2:
"I am almost ashamed," writes Lord Holland to Rogers, October 22, 1812
(Clayden's 'Rogers and his Contemporaries', vol. i. p. 115), "of
having induced Lord Byron to write on so ungrateful a theme
(ungrateful in all senses) as the opening of a theatre; he was so
good-humoured, took so much pains, corrected so good-humouredly, and
produced, as I thought and think, a prologue so superior to the common
run of that sort of trumpery, that it is quite vexatious to see him
attacked for it. Some part of it is a little too much laboured, and
the whole too long; but surely it is good and poetical.... You cannot
imagine how I grew to like Lord Byron in my critical intercourse with
him, and how much I am convinced that your friendship and judgment
have contributed to improve both his understanding and his
happiness.
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