His prologue to Vanbrugh's alteration of The Pilgrim (1700) begins: How wretched is the fate of those who write!

"Thus I have spoken the prologue of a play Wherein

This was the last of his literary labours; nor do we hear of his writing any thing for the press in the meanwhile, except such slight compositions as a prologue for a comedy by Mr. Hugh Kelly, and a dedication to the King of the Posthumous Works of Pearce, Bishop of Rochester.

You will see the prologue in most of the morning papers.

II., "The Old Actors," for a description of the luckless first night), and he advised him in the composition of "Faulkener," another tragedy, which failed in 1807 and which also had a prologue by Lamb.

In 1747, he furnished Garrick, who had become joint-patentee and manager of Drury Lane, with a Prologue on the opening of the house.

""Sir, (said Johnson) I will stand by the lines I have written on Shakspeare in my Prologue at the opening of your Theatre."

He said that Dryden had written much better prologues than any of Garrick's, but that Garrick had written more good prologues than Dryden.

Then I know the baby is coming: there never yet was a French prologue without a baby,it seems a French unity; sometimes there are two babies, who always get mixed up.

That poet then opening his dramatic career with the play of the "Loyal Brother," came, as was usual, to request a prologue from Dryden, and to offer him the usual compliment of five guineas.

And keepes as good decorum; his prologue with obedience to the skirt; a rough Sceane of ciuill Warres and a clapping conclusion; perhappes a Jigge; if not, the Tragicomicall tale of Mars and Venus; then must she take the Tale by the end, where he defending Mars, & she Venus, must fall from billing to byting, from byting to blowes, to get the supremacie.

We must, therefore, it seems to me, take the words of the prologue as signifying not that the play was the first work of the author, but that it was his earliest adventure in verse.