Nell Gwyn; she lies stone-dead upon
the stage, but, upon those gentlemen's offering to remove her body,
whose business it is to carry off the slain in our English tragedies,
she breaks out into that abrupt beginning of what was a very
ludicrous, but at the same time thought a very good epilogue:--

"'Hold: are you mad? you damn'd confounded dog!
I am to rise and speak the epilogue.'

[Footnote A: "Tyrannic Love; or, the Royal Martyr." By Dryden.]

"This diverting manner was always practised by Mr. Dryden, who, if he
was not the best writer of tragedies in his time, was allowed by every
one to have the happiest turn for a prologue or an epilogue. The
epilogues to 'Cleomenes,' 'Don Sebastian,' the 'Duke of Guise,'
'Aurengezebe,' and 'Love Triumphant,' are all precedents of this
nature.

"I might further justify this practice by that excellent epilogue
which was spoken, a few years since, after the tragedy of 'Phaedra and
Hippolitus;'[A] with a great many others, in which the authors have
endeavoured to make the audience merry. If they have not all succeeded
so well as the writer of this, they have however shown that it was not
for want of good will.

[Footnote A: By Edmund Neal.]

"I must further observe, that the gaiety of it may be still the more
proper, as it is at the end of a French play; since every one knows
that nation, who are generally esteemed to have as polite a taste as
any in Europe, always close their tragic entertainments with what they
call a _petite piece_, which is purposely designed to raise mirth, and
send away the audience well pleased. The same person who has supported
the chief character in the tragedy, very often plays the principal
part in the _petite piece_; so that I have myself seen, at Paris,
Orestes and Lubin acted the same night by the same man.

"Tragi-comedy, indeed, you have yourself, in a former speculation,
found fault with very justly, because it breaks the tide of the
passions, while they are yet flowing; but this is nothing at all to
the present case, where they have already had their full course.

"As the new epilogue is written conformably to the practice of our
best poets, so it is not such an one, which, as the Duke of Buckingham
says in his 'Rehearsal,' might serve for any other play; but wholly
rises out of the occurrences of the piece it was composed for.

"The only reason your mournful correspondent gives against this
facetious epilogue, as he calls it, is, th