Earl of Dorset Charles Sackville Poems >>
Satire On A Conceited Playwright

  Thou damn’d antipodes to common-sense,
  Thou foil to Flecknoe, pr’ythee tell from whence
  Does all this mighty stock of dulness spring?
  Is it thy own, or hast it from Snow-hill,
  Assisted by some ballad-making quill?
  No, they fly higher yet, thy plays are such,
  I’d swear they were translated out of Dutch.
  Fain would I know what diet thou dost keep,
  If thou dost always, or dost never sleep?
  Sure hasty-pudding is thy chiefest dish,
  With bullock’s liver, or some stinking fish:
  Garbage, ox-cheeks, and tripes, do feast thy brain,
  Which nobly pays this tribute back again.
  With daisy-roots thy dwarfish Muse is fed,
  A giant’s body with a pigmy’s head.
  Canst thou not find, among thy numerous race
  Of kindred, one to tell thee that thy plays
  Are laught at by the pit, box, galleries, nay, stage?
  Think on’t a while, and thou wilt quickly find
  Thy body made for labour, not thy mind.
  No other use of paper thou shouldst make
  Than carrying loads and reams upon thy back.
  Carry vast burdens till thy shoulders shrink,
  But curst be he that gives thee pen and ink:
  Such dangerous weapons should be kept from fools,
  As nurses from their children keep edg’d tools:
  For thy dull fancy a muckinder is fit
  To wipe the slobberings of thy snotty wit:
  And though ’tis late, if justice could be found,
  Thy plays like blind-born puppies should be drown’d.
  For were it not that we respect afford
  Unto the son of an heroic lord,
  Thine in the ducking-stool should take her seat,
  Drest like herself in a great chair of state;
  Where like a Muse of quality she’d die,
  And thou thyself shalt make her elegy,
  In the same strain thou writ’st thy comedy.

(Earl of Dorset Charles Sackville)

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