Note 8 — Front matter
Reading edition
"If any author of prolific brains In this good company feels labour-pains; If any gentle poet big with rhyme Has run his reckoning out and gone his time: Know such that at our hospital of muses He may lie-in in private if he chuses; We've single lodgings there for secret sinners With good encouragement for your beginners." Prologue to the Fashionable Lover.
It is indeed now plain enough that Roscius has given great encouragement to secret sinners; but I would advise none of our poets to lie in again in private; but to remember the fate of a late tragedy and farce. Poor Clementina, and the lady An hour before marriage, both privately lay-in and miscarried.