odiously on his wedding-day;
While I, his relict, made, at one bold fling,
Myself a princess, and young Sty a king.

Of this address the reputed author was Eustace Budgell, of the Inner
Temple, whose name is usually found printed in connection with
it--"the worthless Budgell," as Johnson calls him--"the man who calls
me cousin," as Addison used contemptuously to describe him. In
Johnson's Life of Ambrose Philips, however, it is stated that Addison
was himself the real author of the epilogue, but that "when it had
been at first printed with his name he came early in the morning,
before the copies were distributed, and ordered it to be given to
Budgell, that it might add weight to the solicitation which he was
then making for a place." It is probable, moreover, that Addison was
not particularly anxious to own a production which, after all, was but
a following of an example so questionable as Prior's epilogue to
"Phaedra," above mentioned. The controversy in "The Spectator" was,
without doubt, a matter of pre-arrangement between Addison and Steele,
for the entertainment of the public and the increase of the fame of
Philips; and the letter of "Philomedes," which with the epilogue in
question has been often ascribed to Budgell, was probably also the
work of Addison. For all the rather unaccountable zeal of Addison and
Steele on behalf of their friend, however, the reputation of Philips
has not thriven; he is chiefly remembered now by the nickname of
Namby-Pamby, bestowed on him by Pope, who had always vehemently
contested his claims to distinction. As Johnson states the case: "Men
sometimes suffer by injudicious kindness; Philips became ridiculous,
without his own fault, by the absurd admiration of his friends, who
decorated him with honorary garlands which the first breath of
contradiction blasted." Johnson, by-the-way, had at the age of
nineteen written a new epilogue to "The Distressed Mother," for some
young ladies who designed an amateur performance of that still-admired
tragedy. The epilogue was intended to be delivered by "a lady who was
to personate the ghost of Hermione."

But although protests were now and then, as in the case of "The
Distressed Mother," raised against the absurdity of the custom, comic
epilogues to tragic plays long remained in favour with the patrons of
the stage. Pointed reference to this fact is contained in the epilogue
spoken by the beautiful Mrs. Hartley to Murphy's tragedy of "Alz