TO MRS. GWATKIN. DEAR MADAM, As the following poem turns chiefly on the danger of delay or error in the important article of Education, I know not to whom I can, with more propriety, dedicate it than to you, as the subject it inculcates has been one of the principal objects of your attention in your own family. Let not the name of Dedication aların you; I am not going to offend you by making your eulogium. Panegyric is only necessary to suspicious characters Virtue will not accept it; Delicacy will not offer it. The friendship with which you have honoured me from my childhood, will, I flatter myself, induce you to pardon me for venturing to lay before yo": this public testimony of my esteem, and to assure you how much I am, Dear Madam, Your obedient and obliged humble servant, THE AUTHOR PREFACE. THE object of the following poem, which was written in very early youth, was an earnest wish to furnish a substitute for the very improper custom, which then prevailed, of allowing plays, and those not always of the purest kind, to be acted by young Ladies in boarding schools. And it has afforded a serious satisfaction to the author to learn that this little poem, and the preceding Sacred Dramas, have very frequently been adopted, to supply the place of those more dangerous amusements. If it may be still happily instrumental in promoting a regard to religion and virtue in the minds of young persons, and afford them an innocent, and perhaps not altogether unuseful, amusement in the exercise of recitation, the end for which it was originally composed, and the author's utmost wish in its republication, will be fully answered. PROLOGUE. SPOKEN BY A YOUNG LADY. IN these grave scenes, and unembellish'd strains, And shall we then transplant these noxious scenes In either case, your blame we justly raise, They stamp'd one useful thought, one lasting truth, "Twould be a fairer tribute to her name, Than loud applauses, or an empty fame. |