Canto XV. St. 207.

17. This striking account of the entry of the guards is literally from DAVILA.

"_La mattina del Giovedi duodecimo giorno dì maggio, un' ora innanzi giorno, si sentirono i pifferi e i tamburi degli Suizzeri, che battendo l' ordinanza entrarono nella città per la porta di Sant' Onorato, precedendo il Maresciallo di Birone a cavallo, e conseguentamente sotto i loro capitani entrarono con le corde accese le compagníe de' Francesi."--"All' entrare della milizia, nota a tutta la città per lo strepito de' tamburi, il popolo pieno di spavento, e già certo, che la fama divolgata dell' intenzione del re era più che sicura, cominciò a radunarsi, serrando le porte delle case, e chiudendo l'entrate delle botteghe, che conforme all' uso della città di lavorare innanzi giorno, già s' erano cominciare ad aprire, e ognuno si messe a preparare l'armi, apettando l'ordine di quello si dovesse operare._" Lib. IX.

18. It was a frequent complaint of the tories at this period, that the commons, in zeal for their own privileges and immunities, were apt sometimes to infringe the personal liberties of the subject. This is set forth with some humour in a political pamphlet of the day, called, "A Dialogue betwixt Sam, the ferryman of Datchet, Will, a waterman of London, and Tom, a bargeman of Oxford;" upon the king's calling a parliament to meet at Oxford, London, 1681. "As to their own members, they turned them out, and took others in at their will and pleasure; and if they made any fault, they expelled them; and wherever any stood in competition for any town, him they knew would give his vote along with them was admitted, right or wrong. And then they terrified all the sheriffs, mayors, and bailiffs in the kingdom, besides abundance of gentlemen and other honest countrymen. For, on the least complaint of any man's misdemeanour, or information from any member, immediately a serjeant at arms was sent for them, and so much a mile and hour paid, and down on their marrowbones to their worships, and a sound scolding from Mr Speaker, or else to the Tower or Gatehouse they went. The king, God bless him, never took a quarter of that state on him they did ... It was brought to that pass, that two footboys, boxing one day in the Palace-yard, he that was beaten proved to belong to a member, and told the other boy, if he knew his master, he would cause him to be sent for in custody, for keeping such a rogue as he was, that had committed a breach of privilege in beating a member's servant. The boy replied, if it would do him any kindness, he would beat him again, and tell him his master's name into the bargain; and would lay him a crown, that, though his master should bid the Speaker, and all the House of Commons, kiss, &c. they durst not send a serjeant at arms for him. The beaten boy, much nettled at his speech, laid down his money, as the other did: now, said the boy, my master is the king of France, and I am come over with some of his servants to fetch horses out of England; go, bid thy master and the House of Commons send a serjeant at arms to fetch him over.--_Sam._ Before my heart it was a good answer; I hope he won his monies?--_Will._ So he did; but it was put into a waterman's hands, and when it was demanded, says the beaten boy, Sirrah, give it him, if you dare; if his master be the king of France, I'll make you answer it before the House of Commons. The waterman durst do no other, but gave either their own monies. There's no contending with parliament men, or parliament men's men, nor boys."

Some occasion was given for these reproaches by the summary and arbitrary commitment of many individuals, who had addressed the king in terms expressing their abhorrence of the vehement petitions presented by the other party for the sitting of parliament, and were thence distinguished by the name of Abhorrers. This course was ended by the sturdy resistance of one Stowell, who had, as foreman of the grand jury at Exeter, presented an _abhorring_ address to the king. A serjeant at arms having been sent to apprehend him, he refused to submit, and bid the officer take his course, adding, he knew no law which made him accountable for what he did as a grand juryman. The House were so much embarrassed by his obstinacy, that they hushed up the matter by voting that he was indisposed, and adjourning the debate _sine dic._

19. This famous interview betwixt Grillon and the king deserved to have been brought on the stage, in a nobler strain, and free from the buffoonery, by which the veteran's character is degraded. It is thus told by Davila: _"Trattandosi delle persone, che avessero da eseguire il fatto, il Re elesse di fidarsene nel Maestro di campo della sua guardia Griglione, uomo feroce e ardito e per molte cagioni nemico del Duca di Guisa. Fattolo perciò venire, gli espose con accomodate parole il suo pensiero, e gli significò aver disegnato, che egli fosse quello, che eseguisse l' impresa, nella quale consisteva tutta la sua salute. Griglione rispose con brevi e significanti parole: Sire, Io sono ben servitore a Vostra Maestà di somma fedeltà e divozione, ma faccio professione di soldato, e di cavuliero; s' ella vuoles ch' io vada a sfidare il Duca di Guisa, e che mi ammazzi a corpo a corpo con lui, son pronto a farlo in questo istesso punto; ma ch' io serva di manigoldo, mentre la giustizia sua determina di farlo morire, questo non si conviene a par mio, nè sono per farlo giammai. Il Re non si stupì molto della libertà di Griglione, noto a lui e a tutta la corte per uomo schietto, e che libramente diceva i suoi sensi senza timore alcuno, e però replicò; che gli bastava, che tenesse segreta questo pensiero, perchè non l' aveva communicato ad alcun altro, e divulgandosi egli sarebbe stato colpevole d' averlo palesato. A questo rispose Griglione: Essere servitore di fede, d' onore, nè dover mai ridire i segreti interessi del padrone, e partito lasciò il Re grandemente dubbioso di quello dovesse operare."_ Lib. ix.

20. A similar assemblage of terrific circumstances announces the arrival of a fiend upon a similar errand, in the old play, entitled, the "Merry Devil of Edmonton."

What means the trolling of this fatal chime? O what a trembling horror strikes my heart! My stiffened hair stands upright on my head, As do the bristles of a porcupine. * * * * * Coreb, is't thou? I know thee well; I hear the watchful dogs, With hollow howling, tell of thy approach. The lights burn dim, affrighted with thy presence, And this distempered and tempestuous night Tells me the air is troubled with some devil!

Dryden certainly appears to have had the old play in his memory though he has far excelled it.

21. On the evening previous to the assassination, the Seigneur de Larchant accosted the duke as he passed from his own lodging to the king's, accompanied by a body of soldiers, who, he pretended, were petitioners for the duke's interest, to obtain payment of their arrears, and would attend at the door of the council next day, to remind him of their case. This pretext was to account for the unusual number of guards, which might otherwise have excited G uise's suspicion.

22. _Intanto il Duca entrato nel consiglio, e pustosi in una sedia vicina al fuoco si sentì un poco di svenimento, o che allora, gli sovcenisse il pericolo, net quale si ritrovava, separato e diviso da tutti i suoi, o che natura, come bene spesso avviene, presaga del mal futuro da se medesima allora si risentizze, o come dissero i suoi malevoli, per essere stato la medesima notte con Madama di Marmoutiere amata grandemente da lui, e essersi soverchiamente debilitato._ Davila, Lib. ix.]

23. The murder of Guise was perpetrated in the Anti-chamber, before the door of the king's cabinet. Lognac, a gentleman of the king's chamber, and a creature of the late duke de Joyeuse, commanded the assassins, who were eight in number. The duke never was able to unsheath his sword, being slain with many wounds as he grappled with Lognac. The king himself was in the cabinet, and listened to the murderous scuffle, till the noise of Guise's fall announced its termination. The cardinal of Guise, and the archbishop of Lyons were also within hearing, and were arrested, while they were endeavouring to call their attendants to Guise's assistance. The cardinal was next day murdered by Da Gast, to whose custody he had been commuted.]

24. Literally from Davila: _"Ora comparse il Re, le dimanda egli primo, come ella stava; al quale avendo risposto che si sentisse meglio, egli ripigliò: Ancor io mi trovo ora molto meglio, perchè questa mattina son fatto Re di Francia avendo fatto morire il Re di Parigi. Alle quali parole, replicò la Reina: Voi avete fatto morire il Duca di Guisa, ma Dio voglia che non siate ora fatto Re da niente; avete tagliato bene, non so, se cucirete così bene. Avete voi preveduti i mali, che sono per succedere? Provvedetevi diligentemente. Due cose sono necessarie, prestezza e risoluzione."_ Lib. ix.]

EPILOGUE.

WRITTEN BY MR DRYDEN[1].

SPOKEN BY MRS COOK.

Much time and trouble this poor play has cost; And, 'faith, I doubted once the cause was lost. Yet no one man was meant, nor great, nor small; Our poets, like frank gamesters, threw at all. They took no single aim:-- But, like bold boys, true to their prince, and hearty, Huzza'd, and fired broadsides at the whole party. Duels are crimes; but, when the cause is right, In battle every man is bound to fight. For what should hinder me to sell my skin, } Dear as I could, if once my hand were in? } _Se defendendo_ never was a sin. } 'Tis a fine world, my masters! right or wrong, The Whigs must talk, and Tories hold their tongue. They must do all they can, But we, forsooth, must bear a christian mind; And fight, like boys, with one hand tied behind; Nay, and when one boy's down, 'twere wond'rous wise, To cry,--box fair, and give him time to rise. When fortune favours, none but fools will dally; } Would any of you sparks, if Nan, or Mally, } Tip you the inviting wink, stand, shall I, shall I? } A Trimmer cried, (that heard me tell this story) Fie, mistress Cook, 'faith you're too rank a Tory! Wish not Whigs hanged, but pity their hard cases; You women love to see men make wry faces.-- Pray, sir, said I, don't think me such a Jew; I say no more, but give the devil his due.-- Lenitives, says he, suit best with our condition.-- Jack Ketch, says I, is an excellent physician.-- I love no blood.--Nor I, sir, as I breathe; But hanging is a fine dry kind of death.-- We Trimmers are for holding all things even.-- Yes; just like him that hung 'twixt hell and heaven.-- Have we not had men's lives enough already?-- Yes, sure: but you're for holding all things steady. Now since the weight hangs all on one side, brother, You Trimmers should, to poize it, hang on t'other. Damned neuters, in their middle way of steering, Are neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red-herring: Not Whigs, nor Tories they; nor this, nor that; Not birds, nor beasts; but just a kind of bat: A twilight animal, true to neither cause, With Tory wings, but Whigish teeth and claws[2].

Footnotes: 1. There is in Mr Bindley's collection another Epilogue, which appears to have been originally subjoined to the "Duke of Guise." It is extremely coarse; and as the author himself suppressed it, the editor will not do his better judgment the injustice to revive it.

2. The Trimmers, a body small and unpopular, as must always be the case with those, who in violent times declare for moderate and temporising measures, were headed by the ingenious and politic Halifax. He had much of the confidence, at least of the countenance of Charles, who was divided betwixt tenderness for Monmouth, and love of ease, on the one hand, and, on the other, desire of arbitrary power, and something like fear of the duke of York. Halifax repeatedly prevented each of these parties from subjugating the other, and his ambidexter services seem to have been rewarded by the sincere hatred of both. In 1688 was published a vindication of this party, entitled, "the Character of a Trimmer;" and his opinion of,--I. The laws of government. II. Protestant Religion. III. Foreign affairs. By the Hon. Sir William Coventry.

THE

VINDICATION:

OR, THE

PARALLEL

OF THE

FRENCH HOLY LEAGUE,

AND THE

ENGLISH LEAGUE AND COVENANT,

TURNED INTO A SEDITIOUS LIBEL AGAINST THE KING

AND HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS,

BY

THOMAS HUNT,

AND THE AUTHORS OF THE REFLECTIONS UPON THE

PRETENDED PARALLEL IN THE PLAY CALLED

THE DUKE OF GUISE.

_Turno tempus erit magno cum optaverit emptum Intactum Pallanta: et cum spolia ista, diemque Oderit.--_

VINDICATION OF THE DUKE OF GUISE.

It was easy to foresee, that a play, which professed to be a _broadside_ discharged at the whole popular party, would not long remain uncensured. The satire being derived from a historical parallel of some delicacy, offered certain facilities of attack to the critics. It was only stretching the resemblance beyond the bounds to which Dryden had limited it, and the comparison became odious, if not dangerous. The whig writers did not neglect this obvious mode of attack, now rendered more popular by the encroachment lately attempted by the court upon the freedom of the city, whose magistrates had been exposed to ridicule in the play.

Our readers cannot but remember, that, in order to break the spirit of the city of London, a writ of _quo warranto_ was issued against the incorporation, by which was instituted a vexatious and captious inquiry into the validity of the charter of London. The purpose of this process was to compel the city to resign their freedom and immunities into the king's hands, and to receive a new grant of them, so limited, as might be consistent with the views of the crown, or otherwise to declare them forfeited. One Thomas Hunt, a lawyer of some eminence, who had been solicitor for the Viscount Stafford when that unfortunate nobleman was tried for high treason, and had written upon the side of the tories, but had now altered his principles, stepped forward upon this occasion as the champion of the immunities of the city of London[1]. The ludicrous light in which the sheriffs are placed, during the scene with Grillon in the third act, gave great offence to this active partizan; and he gives vent to his displeasure in the following attack upon the author, and the performance.

"They have already condemned the charter and city, and have executed the magistrates in effigy upon the stage, in a play called "The Duke of Guise," frequently acted and applauded; intended most certainly, to provoke the rabble into tumults and disorder. The Roman priest had no success, (God be thanked,) when he animated the people not to suffer the same sheriffs to be carried through the city to the Tower, prisoners. Now the poet hath undertaken, for their being kicked three or four times a-week about the stage to the gallows, infamously rogued and rascalled, to try what he can do towards making the charter forfeitable, by some extravagancy and disorder of the people, which the authority of the best governed cities have not been able to prevent, sometimes under far less provocations.

"But this ought not to move the citizens, when he hath so maliciously and mischievously represented the king, and the king's son, nay, and his favourite the duke too, to whom he gives the worst strokes of his unlucky fancy.

"He puts the king under the person of Henry III. of France, who appeared in the head of the _Parisian_ massacre; the king's son under the person of the Duke of Guise, who concerted it with the Queen-mother of France, and was slain in that very place, by the righteous judgment of God, where he and his mother had first contrived it.

"The Duke of Guise ought to have represented a great prince, that had inserved to some most detestable villany, to please the rage, or lust, of a tyrant.

"Such great courtiers have been often sacrificed, to appease the furies of the tyrant's guilty conscience, to expiate for his sin, and to atone the people.

"Besides, that a tyrant naturally stands in fear of ministers of mighty wickedness; he is always obnoxious to them, he is a slave to them, as long as they live they remember him of his guilt, and awe him. These wicked slaves become most imperious masters: they drag him to greater evils for their own impunity, than they first perpetrated for his pleasure, and their own ambition.

"But such are best given up to public justice, but by no means to be assassinated. Until this age, never before was an assassination invited, commended, and encouraged upon a public theatre.

"It is no wonder that _Trimmers_ (so they call men of some moderation of that party) displease them; for they seem to have designs for which it behoves them to know their men; they must be perfectly wicked, or perfectly deceived; of the Catiline make; bold, and without understanding; that can adhere to men that publicly profess murders, and applaud the design.

"Caius Cæsar (to give unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's) was in the Catiline conspiracy; and then the word was, _he that is not for us is against us;_ for the instruments of wickedness must be men that are resolute and forward, and without consideration; or they will deceive the design, and relent when they enterprize.

"But when he was made dictator, and had some pretences, and a probability by means less wicked and mischievous to arrive at the government, his words were, _he that is not against us is with us._ But to Pompey only it belonged, and to his cause, or the like cause, to the defenders of ancient established governments, of the English monarchy and liberties, to say, they that are not with us are against us. _In internecino bello,_ in attacks upon government, _medii pro hostibus habentur,_ neutral men are traitors, and assist, by their indifferency, to the destruction of the government. As many as applaud this play, ought to be put under sureties of the peace; and yet not one warrant, that we hear of yet, granted by the Lord Chief Justice.

"But it is not a Duke of Guise to be assassinated, a turbulent, wicked, and haughty courtier; but an innocent and gentle prince, as well as brave, and renowned for noble achievements: a prince, that hath no fault, but that he is the king's son; and the best too of all his sons; such a son, as would have made the best of emperors happy.

"Except it be, that the people honour him and love him, and every where publicly and loudly show it: But this they do, for that the best people of England have no other way left to show their loyalty to the king, and love to their religion and government, in long intervals of Parliament, than by prosecuting his son, for the sake of the king and his own merit, with all the demonstrations of the highest esteem.

"But he hath not used his patron Duke much better; for he hath put him under a most dismal and unfortunate character of a successor, excluded from the crown by act of state for his religion, who fought his way to the crown, changed his religion, and died by the hand of a Roman assassinate.

"It is enough to make his great duke's courage quail, to find himself under such an unlucky and disastrous representation, and thus personated; besides, he hath offered a justification of an act of exclusion against a popish successor, in a Protestant kingdom, by remembering what was done against the king of Navarre.

"The Popish religion, in France, did, _de facto,_ by act of state, exclude a Protestant prince, who is under no obligation, from his religion, to destroy his Popish subjects.

"Though a Popish prince is, to destroy his Protestant subjects.

"A Popish prince, to a Protestant kingdom, without more, must be the most insufferable tyrant, and exceed the character that any story can furnish for that sort of monster: And yet all the while to himself a religious and an applauded prince; discharged from the tortures that ordinarily tear and rend the hearts of the most cruel princes, and make them as uneasy to themselves as they are to their subjects, and sometimes prevail so far as to lay some restraints upon their wicked minds.

"But this his patron will impute to his want of judgment; for this poet's heroes are commonly such monsters as Theseus and Hercules are, renowned throughout all ages for destroying.

"But to excuse him, this man hath forsaken his post, and entered upon another province. To "The Observator"[2] it belongs to confound truth and falsehood; and, by his false colours and impostures, to put out the eyes of the people, and leave them without understanding.

"But our poet hath not so much art left him as to frame any thing agreeable, or _verisimilar_, to amuse the people, or wherewith to deceive them.

"His province is to corrupt the manners of the nation, and lay waste their morals; his understanding is clapt, and his brains are vitiated, and he is to rot the age.

"His endeavours are more happily applied, to extinguish the little remains of the virtue of the age by bold impieties, and befooling religion by impious and inept rhymes, to confound virtue and vice, good and evil, and leave us without consciences.

"And thus we are prepared for destruction.

"But to give the world a taste of his atheism and impiety, I shall recite two of his verses, as recited upon the stage, viz.

For conscience, and heaven's fear, religious rules, They are all state-bells to toll in pious fools;

which I have done the rather, that some honest judge, or justice, may direct a process against this bold impious man; or some honest surrogate, or official, may find leisure to proceed, _ex officio,_ against him, notwithstanding at present they are so encumbered with the dissenters.

"Such public blasphemies against religion, never were unpunished in any country, or age, but this.

"But I have made too long a digression, but that it carries with it some instructions towards the preserving of the honour of your august city, viz.

"That you do not hereafter authorise the stage to expose and revile your great officers, and offices, by the indignities yourselves do them; whilst the Papists clap their hands, and triumph at your public disgraces, and in the hopes they conceive thereby of the ruin of your government, as if that were as sure and certain to them, as it is to us, without doubt, that they once fired it.

"And further, for that it was fit to set forth to the world, of what spirit our enemies are, how they intend to attack us; as also, how bold they are with his majesty, what false and dishonourable representations they make of him, and present to the world upon a public theatre; which, I must confess, hath moved me with some passion."

This angry barrister was not the only adversary whom Dryden had to encounter on this occasion. Thomas Shadwell, a man of some talents for comedy, and who professed to tread in the footsteps of Ben Jonson, had for some time been at variance with Dryden and Otway. He was probably the author of a poem, entitled, "A Lenten Prologue, refused by the Players;" which is marked by Mr Luttrel, 11th April, 1683, and contains the following direct attack on "The Duke of Guise," and the author:

Our prologue wit grows flat; the nap's worn off, And howsoe'er we turn and trim the stuff, The gloss is gone that looked at first so gaudy; 'Tis now no jest to hear young girls talk bawdry. But plots and parties give new matters birth, And state distractions serve you here for mirth. At England's cost poets now purchase fame; While factious heats destroy us, without shame, These wanton Neroes fiddle to the flame; The stage, like old rump-pulpits, is become The scene of news, a furious party's drum: Here poets beat their brains for volunteers, And take fast hold of asses by their ears; Their jingling rhimes for reason here you swallow, Like Orpheus' music, it makes beasts to follow. What an enlightening grace is want of bread! How it can change a libeller's heart, and clear a laureat's head; Open his eyes, till the mad prophet see _Plots working in a future power to be!_ (Medal, p. 14.) Traitors unformed to his second sight are clear. And squadrons here and squadrons there appear; Rebellion is the burden of the seer. To Bayes, in vision, were of late revealed, _Whig armies, that at Knightsbridge lay concealed;_ And though no mortal eye could see't before, _The battle just was entering at the door._ A dangerous association, signed by none, The joiner's plot to seize the king alone. Stephen with College[3] made this dire compact; The watchful Irish took them in the fact. Of riding armed; O traitorous overt act! With each of them an ancient Pistol sided, Against the statute in that case provided. But, why was such a host of swearers pressed? Their succour was ill husbandry at best. Bayes's crowned muse, by sovereign right of satire, Without desert, can dub a man a traitor; And tories, without troubling law or reason, By loyal instinct can find plots and treason.

A more formal attack was made in a pamphlet, entitled, "Some Reflections on the pretended parallel in the Play called the Duke of Guise." This Dryden, in the following Vindication, supposes to have been sketched by Shadwell, and finished by a gentleman of the Temple[4]. In these Reflections, the obvious ground of attack, occupied by Hunt, is again resumed. The general indecency of a theatrical exhibition, which alluded to state-transactions of a grave and most important nature; the indecorum of comparing the king to such a monarch as Henry III., infamous for treachery, cruelty, and vices of the most profligate nature; above all, the parallel betwixt the Dukes of Monmouth and Guise, by which the former is exhibited as a traitor to his father, and recommended as no improper object for assassination--are topics insisted on at some length, and with great vehemence.

Our author was not insensible to these attacks, by which his loyalty to the king, and the decency of his conduct towards Monmouth, the king's offending, but still beloved, son, and once Dryden's own patron, stood painfully compromised. Accordingly, shortly after these pamphlets had appeared, the following advertisement was annexed to "The Duke of Guise:"

"There was a preface intended to this play in vindication of it, against two scurrilous libels lately printed; but it was judged, that a defence of this nature would require more room than a preface reasonably could allow. For this cause, and for the importunities of the stationers, who hastened their impression, it is deferred for some little time, and will be printed by itself. Most men are already of opinion, that neither of the pamphlets deserve an answer, because they are stuffed with open falsities, and sometimes contradict each other; but, for once, they shall have a day or two thrown away upon them, though I break an old custom for their sakes, which was,--to scorn them."

The resolution, thus announced, did not give universal satisfaction to our author's friends; one of whom published the following remonstrance, which contains some good sense, in very indifferent poetry:

_An Epode to his worthy Friend_ JOHN DRYDEN, _to advise him not to answer two malicious Pamphlets against his Tragedy called_ "The Duke of Guise." (_Marked by Luttrel, 10 March, 1683/4._)

Can angry frowns rest on thy noble brow For trivial things; Or, can a stream of muddy water flow From the Muses' springs; Or great Apollo bend his vengeful bow 'Gainst popular stings? Desist thy passion then; do not engage Thyself against the wittols of the age.

Should we by stiff Tom Thimble's faction fall, Lord, with what noise The Coffee throats would bellow, and the Ball O' the Change rejoice, And with the company of Pinner's Hall Lift up their voice! Once the head's gone, the good cause is secure; The members cannot long resist our power.

Crop not their humours; let the wits proceed Till they have thrown Their venom up; and made themselves indeed Rare fops o'ergrown: Let them on nasty garbage prey and feed, Till all is done; And, by thy great resentment, think it fit To crush their hopes, as humble as their wit.

Consider the occasion, and you'll find Yourself severe, And unto rashness much more here inclined, By far, than they're: Consider them as in their proper kind, 'Tween rage and fear, And then the reason will appear most plain,-- A worm that's trod on will turn back again.

What if they censure without brain or sense, 'Tis now the fashion; Each giddy fop endeavours to commence A reformation. Pardon them for their native ignorance, And brainsick passion; For, after all, true men of sense will say,-- Their works can never parallel thy play.

'Twere fond to pamper spleen, 'cause owls detest The light of day; Or real nonsense, which endures no test, Condemns thy play. Lodge not such petty trifles in thy breast, But bar their sway; And let them know, that thy heroic bays Can scorn their censure, as it doth their praise.

Think not thy answer will their nice reclaim, Whose heads are proof Against all reason, and in spite of shame Will stand aloof; 'Twould cherish further libels on thy fame, Should these thee move. Stand firm, my Dryden, maugre all their plots, Thy bays shall flourish when their ivy rots.

But if you are resolved to break your use, And basely sin, In answer; I'll be sworn some haggard muse Has you in her gin; Or in a fit you venture to abuse Your Polyhymn', You may serve him so far: But if you do, All your true friends, sir, will reflect on you.

The remonstrance of this friendly poet was unavailing; Dryden having soon after published the following Vindication.

Footnotes: 1. "A Defence of the Charter and Municipal Rights of the City of London, and the Rights of other Municipal Cities and Towns of England. Directed to the Citizens of London, by Thomas Hunt.

_Si populus vult decipi, decipiatur._

London, printed, and to be sold, by Richard Baldwin." 4to, pages 46.

Wood informs us, that Thomas Hunt, the author, was educated at Queen's College, Cambridge, and was esteemed a person of quick parts, and of a ready fluency in discourse, but withal too pert and forward. He was called to the bar, and esteemed a good lawyer. In 1659 he became clerk of the assizes at Oxford circuit, but was ejected from the office at the Restoration, to his great loss, to make room for the true owner. He wrote, "An Argument for the Bishops' right of judging in capital Cases in Parliament, &c.;" for which he expected (says Anthony) no less than to be made lord chief baron of the exchequer in Ireland. But falling short of that honourable office, which he too ambitiously catched at, and considering the loss of another place, which he unjustly possessed, he soon after appeared one of the worst and most inveterate enemies to church and state that was in his time, and the most malicious, and withal the most ignorant, scribbler of the whole herd; and was thereupon stiled, by a noted author, (Dryden, in the following Vindication,) _Magni nominis umbra_. Hunt also published, "Great and weighty Considerations on the Duke of York, &c." in favour of the exclusion. He had also the boldness to republish his high church tract in favour of the bishops' jurisdiction, with a whig postscript tending to destroy his own arguments.--_Ath. Ox._ II, p. 728.

2. A tory paper, then conducted with great zeal, and some controversial talent, by Sir Roger L'Estrange.

3. Alluding to the fate of Stephen College, the Protestant joiner; a meddling, pragmatical fellow, who put himself so far forward in the disputes at Oxford, as to draw down the vengeance of the court. He was very harshly treated during his trial; and though in the toils, and deprived of all assistance, defended himself with right English manliness. He was charged with the ballad on page 6. and with coming to Oxford armed to attack the guards. He said he did not deny he had pistols in his holsters at Oxford; to which Jefferies answered, indecently, but not unaptly, he "thought a chissel might have been more proper for a joiner." Poor College was executed; a vengeance unworthy of the king, who might have apostrophised him as Hamlet does Polonius:

Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell; I took thee for thy betters--take thy fortune. Thou findst, to be too busy is some danger.

4. Anthony Wood is followed by Mr Malone in supposing, that Hunt himself is the Templar alluded to. But Dryden seems obviously to talk of the author of the Defence, and the two Reflectors, as three separate persons. He calls them, "the sputtering triumvirate, Mr Hunt, and the two Reflectors;" and again, "What says my lord chief baron (i.e. Hunt) to the business? What says the livery-man Templar? What says Og, the king of Basan (i.e. Shadwell) to it?" The Templar may be discovered, when we learn, who hired a livery-gown to give a vote among the electors.

THE

VINDICATION

OF

THE DUKE OF GUISE.

In the year of his majesty's happy Restoration, the first play I undertook was the "Duke of Guise;" as the fairest way, which the Act of Indemnity had then left us, of setting forth the rise of the late rebellion; and by exploding the villainies of it upon the stage, to precaution posterity against the like errors.

As this was my first essay, so it met with the fortune of an unfinished piece; that is to say, it was damned in private, by the advice of some friends to whom I shewed it; who freely told me, that it was an excellent subject; but not so artificially wrought, as they could have wished; and now let my enemies make their best of this confession.

The scene of the Duke of Guise's return to Paris, against the king's positive command, was then written. I have the copy of it still by me, almost the same which it now remains, being taken verbatim out of Davila; for where the action is remarkable, and the very words related, the poet is not at liberty to change them much; and if he will be adding any thing for ornament, it ought to be wholly of a piece. This do I take for a sufficient justification of that scene, unless they will make the pretended parallel to be a prophecy, as well as a parallel of accidents, that were twenty years after to come.[1] Neither do I find, that they can suggest the least colour for it in any other part of the tragedy.

But now comes the main objection,--why was it stopt then? To which I shall render this just account, with all due respects to those who were the occasion of it.

Upon a wandering rumour (which I will divide betwixt malice and mistake) that some great persons were represented, or personated in it, the matter was complained of to my Lord Chamberlain; who, thereupon, appointed the play to be brought to him, and prohibited the acting of it until further order; commanding me, after this, to wait upon his lordship; which I did, and humbly desired him to compare the play with the history, from whence the subject was taken, referring to the first scene of the fourth act, whereupon the exception was grounded, and leaving Davila (the original) with his lordship. This was before midsummer; and about two months after, I received the play back again from his lordship, but without any positive order whether it should be acted or not; neither was Mr Lee, or myself, any way solicitous about it. But this indeed I ever said, that it was intended for the king's service; and his majesty was the best judge, whether it answered that end or no; and that I reckoned it my duty to submit, if his majesty, for any reason whatsoever, should deem it unfit for the stage. In the interim, a strict scrutiny was made, and no parallel of the great person designed, could be made out. But this push failing, there were immediately started some terrible insinuations, that the person of his majesty was represented under that of Henry the Third; which if they could have found out, would have concluded, perchance, not only in the stopping of the play, but in the hanging up of the poets. But so it was, that his majesty's wisdom and justice acquitted both the one, and the other; and when the play itself was almost forgotten, there were orders given for the acting of it.

This is matter of fact; and I have the honour of so great witnesses to the truth of what I have delivered, that it will need no other appeal. As to the exposing of any person living, our innocency is so clear, that it is almost unnecessary to say, it was not in my thought; and, as far as any one man can vouch for another, I do believe it was as little in Mr Lee's. And now since some people have been so busy as to cast out false and scandalous surmises, how far we two agreed upon the writing of it, I must do a common right both to Mr Lee and myself, to declare publicly, that it was at his earnest desire, without any solicitation of mine, that this play was produced betwixt us. After the writing of OEdipus, I passed a promise to join with him in another; and he happened to claim the performance of that promise, just upon the finishing of a poem,[2] when I would have been glad of a little respite before the undertaking of a second task. The person, that passed betwixt us, knows this to be true; and Mr Lee himself, I am sure, will not disown it; So that I did not "seduce him to join with me," as the malicious authors of the Reflections are pleased to call it; but Mr Lee's loyalty is above so ridiculous a slander. I know very well, that the town did ignorantly call and take this to be my play; but I shall not arrogate to myself the merits of my friend. Two-thirds of it belonged to him; and to me only the first scene of the play; the whole fourth act, and the first half, or somewhat more, of the fifth.

The pamphleteers, I know, do very boldly insinuate, that, "before the acting of it, I took the whole play to myself; but finding afterwards how ill success it had upon the stage, I threw as much of it as possibly I could upon my fellow." Now here are three damned lies crowded together into a very little room; first, that I assumed any part of it to myself, which I had not written; wherein I appeal, not only to my particular acquaintance, but to the whole company of actors, who will witness for me, that, in all the rehearsals, I never pretended to any one scene of Mr Lee's, but did him all imaginable right, in his title to the greater part of it. I hope I may, without vanity, affirm to the world, that I never stood in need of borrowing another man's reputation; and I have been as little guilty of the injustice, of laying claim to any thing which was not my own. Nay, I durst almost refer myself to some of the angry poets on the other side, whether I have not rather countenanced and assisted their beginnings, than hindered them from rising.[3] The two other falsities are, the "ill success of the play," and "my disowning it." The former is manifestly without foundation; for it succeeded beyond my very hopes, having been frequently acted, and never without a considerable audience; and then it is a thousand to one, that, having no ground to disown it, I did not disown it; but the universe to a nutshell that I did not disown it for want of success, when it succeeded so much beyond my expectation. But my malignant adversaries are the more excusable for this coarse method of breaking in upon truth and good manners, because it is the only way they have to gratify the genius and the interest of the faction together; and never so much pains taken neither, to so very, very little purpose. They decry the play, but in such a manner, that it has the effect of a recommendation. They call it "a dull entertainment;" and that is a dangerous word, I must confess, from one of the greatest masters in human nature, of that faculty. Now I can forgive them this reproach too, after all the rest; for this play does openly discover the original and root of the practices and principles, both of their party and cause; and they are so well acquainted with all the trains and mazes of rebellion, that there is nothing new to them in the whole history. Or what if it were a little insipid, there was no conjuring that I remember in "Pope Joan;" and the "Lancashire Witches" were without doubt the most insipid jades that ever flew upon a stage; and even these, by the favour of a party, made a shift to hold up their heads.[4] Now, if we have out-done these plays in their own dull way, their authors have some sort of privilege to throw the first stone; but we shall rather chuse to yield the point of dulness, than contend for it, against so indisputable a claim.

But "matters of state (it seems) are canvassed on the stage, and things of the gravest concernment there managed;" and who were the aggressors, I beseech you, but a few factious, popular hirelings, that by tampering the theatres, and by poisoning the people, made a play-house more seditious than a conventicle; so that the loyal party crave only the same freedom of defending the government, which the other took beforehand of exposing and defaming it. There was no complaint of any disorders of the stage, in the bustle that was made (even to the forming of a party) to uphold a farce of theirs.[5] Upon the first day, the whole faction (in a manner) appeared; but after one sight of it, they sent their proxies of serving-men and porters, to clap in the right of their patrons; and it was impossible ever to have gotten off the nonsense of three hours for half-a-crown, but for the providence of so congruous an audience. Thus far, I presume, the reckoning is even, for bad plays on both sides, and for plays written for a party. I shall say nothing of their poets' affection to the government; unless upon an absolute and an odious necessity. But to return to the pretended Parallel.

I have said enough already to convince any man of common sense, that there neither was, nor could be, any Parallel intended; and it will farther appear, from the nature of the subject; there being no relation betwixt Henry the Third and the Duke of Guise, except that of the king's marrying into the family of Lorraine. If a comparison had been designed, how easy had it been either to have found a story, or to have invented one, where the ties of nature had been nearer? If we consider their actions, or their persons, a much less proportion will be yet found betwixt them; and if we bate the popularity, perhaps none at all. If we consider them in reference to their parties, the one was manifestly the leader; the other, at the worst, is but misled. The designs of the one tended openly to usurpation; those of the other may yet be interpreted more fairly; and I hope, from the natural candour and probity of his temper, that it will come to a perfect submission and reconcilement at last. But that which perfectly destroys this pretended Parallel is, that our picture of the Duke of Guise is exactly according to the original in the history; his actions, his manners, nay, sometimes his very words, are so justly copied, that whoever has read him in Davila, sees him the same here. There is no going out of the way, no dash of a pen to make any by-feature resemble him to any other man; and indeed, excepting his ambition, there was not in France, or perhaps in any other country, any man of his age vain enough to hope he could be mistaken for him.[6] So that if you would have made a Parallel, we could not. And yet I fancy, that where I make it my business to draw likeness, it will be no hard matter to judge who sate for the picture. For the Duke of Guise's return to Paris contrary to the king's order, enough already has been said; it was too considerable in the story to be omitted, because it occasioned the mischiefs that ensued. But in this likeness, which was only casual, no danger followed. I am confident there was none intended; and am satisfied that none was feared. But the argument drawn from our evident design is yet, if possible, more convincing. The first words of the prologue spake the play to be a Parallel, and then you are immediately informed how far that Parallel extended, and of what it is so: "The Holy League begot the Covenant, Guisards got the Whig, &c." So then it is not, (as the snarling authors of the Reflections tell you) a Parallel of the men, but of the times; a Parallel of the factions, and of the leaguers. And every one knows that this prologue was written before the stopping of the play. Neither was the name altered on any such account as they insinuate, but laid aside long before, because a book called the Parallel had been printed, resembling the French League to the English Covenant; and therefore we thought it not convenient to make use of another man's title.[7] The chief person in the tragedy, or he whose disasters are the subject of it, may in reason give the name; and so it was called the "Duke of Guise." Our intention therefore was to make the play a Parallel betwixt the Holy League, plotted by the house of Guise and its adherents, with the Covenant plotted by the rebels in the time of king Charles I. and those of the new Association, which was the spawn of the old Covenant.

But this parallel is plain, that the exclusion of the lawful heir was the main design of both parties; and that the endeavours to get the lieutenancy of France established on the head of the League, is in effect the same with offering to get the militia out of the king's hand (as declared by parliament,) and consequently, that the power of peace and war should be wholly in the people. It is also true that the tumults in the city, in the choice of their officers, have had no small resemblance with a Parisian rabble: and I am afraid that both their faction and ours had the same good lord. I believe also, that if Julian had been written and calculated for the Parisians, as it was for our sectaries, one of their sheriffs might have mistaken too, and called him Julian the Apostle.[8] I suppose I need not push this point any further; where the parallel was intended, I am certain it will reach; but a larger account of the proceedings in the city may be expected from a better hand, and I have no reason to forestall it.[9] In the mean time, because there has been no actual rebellion, the faction triumph in their loyalty; which if it were out of principle, all our divisions would soon be ended, and we the happy people, which God and the constitution of our government have put us in condition to be; but so long as they take it for a maxim, that the king is but an officer in trust, that the people, or their representatives, are superior to him, judges of miscarriages, and have power of revocation, it is a plain case, that whenever they please they may take up arms; and, according to their doctrine, lawfully too. Let them jointly renounce this one opinion, as in conscience and law they are bound to do, because both scripture and acts of parliament oblige them to it, and we will then thank their obedience for our quiet, whereas now we are only beholden to them for their fear. The miseries of the last war are yet too fresh in all men's memory; and they are not rebels, only because they have been so too lately. An author of theirs has told us roundly the west-country proverb; _Chud eat more cheese, and chad it;_ their stomach is as good as ever it was; but the mischief on't is, they are either muzzled, or want their teeth. If there were as many fanatics now in England, as there were christians in the empire, when Julian reigned, I doubt we should not find them much inclined to passive obedience; and, "Curse ye Meroz"[10] would be oftener preached upon, than "Give to Cæsar," except in the sense Mr Hunt means it.

Having clearly shewn wherein the parallel consisted, which no man can mistake, who does not wilfully, I need not justify myself, in what concerns the sacred person of his majesty. Neither the French history, nor our own, could have supplied me, nor Plutarch himself, were he now alive, could have found a Greek or Roman to have compared to him, in that eminent virtue of his clemency; even his enemies must acknowledge it to be superlative, because they live by it. Far be it from flattery, if I say, that there is nothing under heaven, which can furnish me with a parallel; and that, in his mercy, he is of all men the truest image of his Maker.

Henry III. was a prince of a mixed character; he had, as an old historian says of another, _magnas virtutes, nec minora vitia;_ but amongst those virtues, I do not find his forgiving qualities to be much celebrated. That he was deeply engaged in the bloody massacre of St Bartholomew, is notoriously known; and if the relation printed in the memoirs of Villeroy be true, he confesses there that the Admiral having brought him and the queen-mother into suspicion with his brother then reigning, for endeavouring to lessen his authority, and draw it to themselves, he first designed his accuser's death by Maurevel, who shot him with a carbine, but failed to kill him; after which, he pushed on the king to that dreadful revenge, which immediately succeeded. It is true, the provocations were high; there had been reiterated rebellions, but a peace was now concluded; it was solemnly sworn to by both parties, and as great an assurance of safety given to the protestants, as the word of a king and public instruments could make it. Therefore the punishment was execrable, and it pleased God, (if we may dare to judge of his secret providence,) to cut off that king in the very flower of his youth, to blast his successor in his undertakings, to raise against him the Duke of Guise, the complotter and executioner of that inhuman action, (who, by the divine justice, fell afterwards into the same snare which he had laid for others,) and, finally, to die a violent death himself, murdered by a priest, an enthusiast of his own religion.[11] From these premises, let it be concluded, if reasonably it can, that we could draw a parallel, where the lines were so diametrically opposite. We were indeed obliged, by the laws of poetry, to cast into shadows the vices of this prince; for an excellent critic has lately told us, that when a king is named, a hero is supposed;[12] it is a reverence due to majesty, to make the virtues as conspicuous, and the vices as obscure, as we can possibly; and this, we own, we have either performed, or at least endeavoured. But if we were more favourable to that character than the exactness of history would allow, we have been far from diminishing a greater, by drawing it into comparison. You may see, through the whole conduct of the play, a king naturally severe, and a resolution carried on to revenge himself to the uttermost on the rebellious conspirators. That this was sometimes shaken by reasons of policy and pity, is confessed; but it always returned with greater force, and ended at last in the ruin of his enemies. In the mean time we cannot but observe the wonderful loyalty on the other side; that the play was to be stopped, because the king was represented. May we have many such proofs of their duty and respect! but there was no occasion for them here. It is to be supposed, that his majesty himself was made acquainted with this objection; if he were so, he was the supreme and only judge of it; and then the event justifies us. If it were inspected only by those whom he commanded, it is hard if his own officers and servants should not see as much ill in it as other men, and be as willing to prevent it; especially when there was no solicitation used to have it acted. It is known that noble person,[13] to whom it was referred, is a severe critic on good sense, decency, and morality; and I can assure the world, that the rules of Horace are more familiar to him, than they are to me. He remembers too well that the _vetus comædia_ was banished from the Athenian theatre for its too much licence in representing persons, and would never have pardoned it in this or any play.

What opinion Henry III. had of his successor, is evident from the words he spoke upon his deathbed: "he exhorted the nobility," says Davila, "to acknowledge the king of Navarre, to whom the kingdom of right belonged; and that they should not stick at the difference of religion; for both the king of Navarre, a man of a sincere noble nature, would in the end return into the bosom of the church, and the pope, being better informed, would receive him into his favour, to prevent the ruin of the whole kingdom." I hope I shall not need in this quotation to defend myself, as if it were my opinion, that the pope has any right to dispose of kingdoms; my meaning is evident, that the king's judgment of his brother-in-law, was the same which I have copied; and I must farther add from Davila, that the arguments I have used in defence of that succession were chiefly drawn from the king's answer to the deputies, as they may be seen more at large in pages 730, and 731, of the first edition of that history in English. There the three estates, to the wonder of all men, jointly concurred in cutting off the succession; the clergy, who were managed by the archbishop of Lyons and cardinal of Guise, were the first who promoted it; and the commons and nobility afterwards consented, as referring themselves, says our author, to the clergy; so that there was only the king to stand in the gap; and he by artifice diverted that storm which was breaking upon posterity.

The crown was then reduced to the lowest ebb of its authority; and the king, in a manner, stood single, and yet preserved his negative entire; but if the clergy and nobility had been on his part of the balance, it might reasonably be supposed, that the meeting of those estates at Blois had healed the breaches of the nation, and not forced him to the _ratio ultima regum_, which is never to be praised, nor is it here, but only excused as the last result of his necessity. As for the parallel betwixt the king of Navarre, and any other prince now living, what likeness the God of Nature, and the descent of virtues in the same channel have produced, is evident; I have only to say, that the nation certainly is happy, where the royal virtues of the progenitors are derived on their descendants.[14]

In that scene, it is true, there is but one of the three estates mentioned; but the other two are virtually included; for the archbishop and cardinal are at the head of the deputies: And that the rest are mute persons every critic understands the reason, _ne quarta loqui persona laboret_. I am never willing to cumber the stage with many speakers, when I can reasonably avoid it, as here I might. And what if I had a mind to pass over the clergy and nobility of France in silence, and to excuse them from joining in so illegal, and so ungodly a decree? Am I tied in poetry to the strict rules of history? I have followed it in this play more closely than suited with the laws of the drama, and a great victory they will have, who shall discover to the world this wonderful secret, that I have not observed the unities of place and time; but are they better kept in the farce of the "Libertine destroyed?"[15] It was our common business here to draw the parallel of the times, and not to make an exact tragedy. For this once we were resolved to err with honest Shakespeare; neither can "Catiline" or "Sejanus," (written by the great master of our art,) stand excused, any more than we, from this exception; but if we must be criticised, some plays of our adversaries may be exposed, and let them reckon their gains when the dispute is ended. I am accused of ignorance, for speaking of the third estate, as not sitting in the same house with the other two. Let not those gentlemen mistake themselves; there are many things in plays to be accommodated to the country in which we live; I spoke to the understanding of an English audience. Our three estates now sit, and have long done so, in two houses; but our records bear witness, that they, according to the French custom, have sate in one; that is, the lords spiritual and temporal within the bar, and the commons without it. If that custom had been still continued here, it should have been so represented; but being otherwise, I was forced to write so as to be understood by our own countrymen. If these be errors, a bigger poet than either of us two has fallen into greater, and the proofs are ready, whenever the suit shall be recommenced.

Mr Hunt, the Jehu of the party, begins very furiously with me, and says, "I have already condemned the charter and city, and have executed the magistrates in effigy upon the stage, in a play called the Duke of Guise, frequently acted and applauded, &c.[16]"

Compare the latter end of this sentence with what the two authors of the Reflections, or perhaps the Associating Club of the Devil-tavern[17] write in the beginning of their libel:--"Never was mountain delivered of such a mouse; the fiercest Tories have been ashamed to defend this piece; they who have any sparks of wit among them are so true to their pleasure, that they will not suffer dulness to pass upon them for wit, nor tediousness for diversion; which is the reason that this piece has not met with the expected applause: I never saw a play more deficient in wit, good characters, or entertainment, than this is."

For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time. You see, my lord chief baron[18] has delivered his opinion, that the play was frequently acted and applauded; but you of the jury have found _Ignoramus_, on the wit and the success of it. Oates, Dugdale and Turberville, never disagreed more than you do; let us know at last, which of the witnesses are true Protestants, and which are Irish[19]. But it seems your authors had contrary designs: Mr Hunt thought fit to say, "it was frequently acted and applauded, because," says he, "it was intended to provoke the rabble into tumults and disorder." Now, if it were not seen frequently, this argument would lose somewhat of its force. The Reflector's business went another way; it was to be allowed no reputation, no success; but to be damned root and branch, to prevent the prejudice it might do their party: accordingly, as much as in them lay, they have drawn a bill of exclusion for it on the stage. But what rabble was it to provoke? Are the audience of a play-house, which are generally persons of honour, noblemen, and ladies, or, at worst, as one of your authors calls his gallants, men of wit and pleasure about the town[20],--are these the rabble of Mr Hunt? I have seen a rabble at Sir Edmundbury Godfrey's night, and have heard of such a name as true Protestant meeting-houses; but a rabble is not to be provoked, where it never comes. Indeed, we had one in this tragedy, but it was upon the stage; and that's the reason why your Reflectors would break the glass, which has shewed them their own faces. The business of the theatre is to expose vice and folly; to dissuade men by examples from one, and to shame them out of the other. And however you may pervert our good intentions, it was here particularly to reduce men to loyalty, by shewing the pernicious consequences of rebellion, and popular insurrections. I believe no man, who loves the government, would be glad to see the rabble in such a posture, as they were represented in our play; but if the tragedy had ended on your side, the play had been a loyal witty poem; the success of it should have been recorded by immortal Og or Doeg[21], and the rabble scene should have been true Protestant, though a whig-devil were at the head of it.

In the mean time, pray, where lies the relation betwixt the "Tragedy of the Duke of Guise," and the charter of London? Mr Hunt has found a rare connection, for he tacks them together, by the kicking of the sheriff's. That chain of thought was a little ominous, for something like a kicking has succeeded the printing of his book; and the charter of London was the quarrel. For my part, I have not law enough to state that question, much less decide it; let the charter shift for itself in Westminster-hall the government is somewhat wiser than to employ my ignorance on such a subject. My promise to honest Nat. Lee, was the only bribe I had, to engage me in this trouble; for which he has the good fortune to escape Scot-free, and I am left in pawn for the reckoning, who had the least share in the entertainment. But the rising, it seems, should have been on the true protestant side; "for he has tried," says ingenious Mr Hunt, "what he could do, towards making the charter forfeitable, by some extravagancy and disorder of the people." A wise man I had been, doubtless, for my pains, to raise the rabble to a tumult, where I had been certainly one of the first men whom they had limbed, or dragged to the next convenient sign-post.

But on second thought, he says, this ought not to move the citizens. He is much in the right; for the rabble scene was written on purpose to keep his party of them in the bounds of duty. It is the business of factious men to stir up the populace: Sir Edmond on horseback, attended by a swinging pope in effigy, and forty thousand true protestants for his guard to execution, are a show more proper for that design, than a thousand stage-plays[22].

Well, he has fortified his opinion with a reason, however, why the people should not be moved; "because I have so maliciously and mischievously represented the king, and the king's son; nay, and his favourite," saith he, "the duke too; to whom I give the worst strokes of my unlucky fancy."

This need not be answered; for it is already manifest that neither the king, nor the king's son, are represented; neither that son he means, nor any of the rest, God bless them all. What strokes of my unlucky fancy I have given to his royal highness, will be seen; and it will be seen also, who strikes him worst and most unluckily.

"The Duke of Guise," he tells us, "ought to have represented a great prince, that had inserved to some most detestable villainy, to please the rage or lust of a tyrant; such great courtiers have been often sacrificed, to appease the furies of the tyrant's guilty conscience; to expiate for his sin, and to attone the people. For a tyrant naturally stands in fear of such wicked ministers, is obnoxious to them, awed by them, and they drag him to greater evils, for their own impunity, than they perpetrated for his pleasure, and their own ambition[23]."

Sure, he said not all this for nothing. I would know of him, on what persons he would fix the sting of this sharp satire? What two they are, whom, to use his own words, he "so maliciously and mischievously would represent?" For my part, I dare not understand the villainy of his meaning; but somebody was to have been shown a tyrant, and some other "a great prince, inserving to some detestable villainy, and to that tyrant's rage and lust;" this great prince or courtier ought to be sacrificed, to atone the people, and the tyrant is persuaded, for his own interest, to give him up to public justice. I say no more, but that he has studied the law to good purpose. He is dancing on the rope without a metaphor; his knowledge of the law is the staff that poizes him, and saves his neck. The party, indeed, speaks out sometimes, for wickedness is not always so wise as to be secret, especially when it is driven to despair. By some of their discourses, we may guess at whom he points; but he has fenced himself in with so many evasions, that he is safe in his sacrilege; and he, who dares to answer him, may become obnoxious. It is true, he breaks a little out of the clouds, within two paragraphs; for there he tells you, that "Caius Cæsar (to give into Cæsar the things that were Cæsar's,) was in the catiline conspiracy;" a fine insinuation this, to be sneered at by his party, and yet not to be taken hold of by public justice. They would be glad now, that I, or any man, should bolt out their covert treason for them; for their loop-hole is ready, that the Cæsar, here spoken of, was a private man. But the application of the text declares the author's to be another Cæsar; which is so black and so infamous an aspersion, that nothing less than the highest clemency can leave it unpunished. I could reflect on his ignorance in this place, for attributing these words to Cæsar, "He that is not with us, is against us:" He seems to have mistaken them out of the New-Testament, and that is the best defence I can make for him; for if he did it knowingly, it was impiously done, to put our Saviour's words into Cæsar's mouth. But his law and our gospel are two things; this gentleman's knowledge is not of the bible, any more than his practice is according to it. He tells you, he will give the world a taste of my atheism and impiety; for which he quotes these following verses, in the second or third act of the "Duke of Guise."

For conscience or heaven's fear, religious rules, Are all state bells, to toll in pious fools.

In the first place, he is mistaken in his man, for the verses are not mine, but Mr Lee's: I asked him concerning them, and have this account,--that they were spoken by the devil; now, what can either whig or devil say, more proper to their character, than that religion is only a name, a stalking-horse, as errant a property as godliness and property themselves are amongst their party? Yet for these two lines, which, in the mouth that speaks them, are of no offence, he halloos on the whole pack against me: judge, justice, surrogate, and official are to be employed, at his suit, to direct process; and boring through the tongue for blasphemy, is the least punishment his charity will allow me.

I find it is happy for me, that he was not made a judge, and yet I had as lieve have him my judge as my council, if my life were at stake. My poor Lord Stafford was well helped up with this gentleman for his solicitor: no doubt, he gave that unfortunate nobleman most admirable advice towards the saving of his life; and would have rejoiced exeedingly, to have seen him cleared[24]. I think, I have disproved his instance of my atheism; it remains for him to justify his religion, in putting the words of Christ into a Heathen's mouth; and much more in his prophane allusion to the scripture, in the other text,--"Give unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's;" which, if it be not a profanation of the bible, for the sake of a silly witticism, let all men, but his own party, judge. I am not malicious enough to return him the names which he has called me; but of all sins, I thank God, I have always abhorred atheism; and I had need be a better Christian than Mr Hunt has shown himself, if I forgive him so infamous a slander.

But as he has mistaken our Saviour for Julius Cæsar, so he would Pompey too, if he were let alone; to him, and to his cause, or to the like cause it belonged, he says, to use these words:--"he that is not for us is against us." I find he cares not whose the expression is, so it be not Christ's. But how comes Pompey the Great to be a whig? He was, indeed, a defender of the ancient established Roman government; but Cæsar was the whig who took up arms unlawfully to subvert it. Our liberties and our religion both are safe; they are secured to us by the laws; and those laws are executed under an established government, by a lawful king. The Defender of our Faith is the defender of our common freedom; to cabal, to write, to rail against this administration are all endeavours to destroy the government; and to oppose the succession, in any private man, is a treasonable practice against the foundation of it. Pompey very honourably maintained the liberty of his country, which was governed by a common-wealth: so that there lies no parallel betwixt his cause and Mr Hunt's, except in the bare notion of a common-wealth, as it is opposed to monarchy; and that's the thing he would obliquely slur upon us. Yet on these premises, he is for ordering my lord chief justice to grant out warrants against all those who have applauded the "Duke of Guise;" as if they committed a riot when they clapped. I suppose they paid for their places, as well as he and his party did, who hissed. If he were not half distracted, for not being lord chief baron, methinks he should be lawyer enough to advise my lord chief justice better. To clap and hiss are the privileges of a free-born subject in a playhouse: they buy them with their money, and their hands and mouths are their own property. It belongs to the Master of the Revels to see that no treason or immorality be in the play; but when it is acted, let every man like or dislike freely: not but that respect should be used too, in the presence of the king; for by his permission the actors are allowed: it is due to his person, as he is sacred; and to the successors, as being next related to him: there are opportunities enow for men to hiss, who are so disposed, in their absence; for when the king is in sight, though but by accident, a malefactor is reprieved from death. Yet such is the duty, and good manners of these good subjects, that they forbore not some rudeness in his majesty's presence; but when his Royal Highness and his court were only there, they pushed it as far as their malice had power; and if their party had been more numerous, the affront had been greater.

The next paragraph of our author's is a panegyric on the Duke of Monmouth, which concerns not me, who am very far from detracting from him. The obligations I have had to him, were those of his countenance, his favour, his good word, and his esteem; all which I have likewise had, in a greater measure, from his excellent duchess, the patroness of my poor unworthy poetry. If I had not greater, the fault was never in their want of goodness to me, but in my own backwardness to ask, which has always, and, I believe, will ever, keep me from rising in the world. Let this be enough, with reasonable men, to clear me from the imputation of an ungrateful man, with which my enemies have most unjustly taxed me. If I am a mercenary scribbler, the lords commissioners of the treasury best know: I am sure, they have found me no importunate solicitor; for I know myself, I deserved little, and, therefore, have never desired much. I return that slander, with just disdain, on my accusers: it is for men who have ill consciences to suspect others; I am resolved to stand or fall with the cause of my God, my king, and country; never to trouble myself for any railing aspersions, which I have not deserved; and to leave it as a portion to my children,--that they had a father, who durst do his duty, and was neither covetous nor mercenary.

As little am I concerned at that imputation of my back-friends, that I have confessed myself to be put on to write as I do. If they mean this play in particular, that is notoriously proved against them to be false; for the rest of my writings, my hatred of their practices and principles was cause enough to expose them as I have done, and will do more. I do not think as they do; for, if I did, I must think treason; but I must in conscience write as I do, because I know, which is more than thinking, that I write for a lawful established government, against anarchy, innovation, and sedition: but "these lies (as prince Harry said to Falstaff) are as gross as he that made them[25]." More I need not say, for I am accused without witness. I fear not any of their evidences, not even him of Salamanca; who though he has disowned his doctorship in Spain, yet there are some allow him to have taken a certain degree in Italy; a climate, they say, more proper for his masculine constitution[26]. To conclude this ridiculous accusation against me, I know but four men, in their whole party, to whom I have spoken for above this year last past; and with them neither, but casually and cursorily. We have been acquaintance of a long standing, many years before this accursed plot divided men into several parties; I dare call them to witness, whether the most I have at any time said will amount to more than this, that "I hoped the time would come, when these names of whig and tory would cease among us; and that we might live together, as we had done formerly." I have, since this pamphlet, met accidentally with two of them; and I am sure, they are so far from being my accusers, that they have severally owned to me, that all men, who espouse a party, must expect to be blackened by the contrary side; that themselves knew nothing of it, nor of the authors of the "Reflections." It remains, therefore, to be considered, whether, if I were as much a knave as they would make me, I am fool enough to be guilty of this charge; and whether they, who raised it, would have made it public, if they had thought I was theirs inwardly. For it is plain, they are glad of worse scribblers than I am, and maintain them too, as I could prove, if I envied them their miserable subsistence. I say no more, but let my actions speak for me: _Spectemur agendo,_--that is the trial.

Much less am I concerned at the noble name of Bayes; that is a brat so like his own father, that he cannot be mistaken for any other body[27]. They might as reasonably have called Tom Sternhold, Virgil, and the resemblance would have held as well.

As for knave, and sycophant, and rascal, and impudent, and devil, and old serpent, and a thousand such good morrows, I take them to be only names of parties; and could return murderer, and cheat, and whig-napper, and sodomite; and, in short, the goodly number of the seven deadly sins, with all their kindred and relations, which are names of parties too; but saints will be saints, in spite of villainy. I believe they would pass themselves upon us for such a compound as mithridate, or Venice-treacle; as if whiggism were an admirable cordial in the mass, though the several ingredients are rank poisons.

But if I think either Mr Hunt a villain, or know any of my Reflectors to be ungrateful rogues, I do not owe them so much kindness as to call them so; for I am satisfied that to prove them either, would but recommend them to their own party. Yet if some will needs make a merit of their infamy, and provoke a legend of their sordid lives, I think they must be gratified at last; and though I will not take the scavenger's employment from him, yet I may be persuaded to point at some men's doors, who have heaps of filth before them. But this must be when they have a little angered me; for hitherto I am provoked no further than to smile at them. And indeed, to look upon the whole faction in a lump, never was a more pleasant sight than to behold these builders of a new Babel, how ridiculously they are mixed, and what a rare confusion there is amongst them. One part of them is carrying stone and mortar for the building of a meeting-house; another sort understand not that language; they are for snatching away their work-fellows' materials to set up a bawdy-house: some of them blaspheme, and others pray; and both, I believe, with equal godliness at bottom: some of them are atheists, some sectaries, yet all true protestants. Most of them love all whores, but her of Babylon. In few words, any man may be what he will, so he be one of them. It is enough to despise the King, to hate the Duke, and rail at the succession: after this it is no matter how a man lives; he is a saint by infection; he goes along with the party, has their mark upon him; his wickedness is no more than frailty; their righteousness is imputed to him: so that, as ignorant rogues go out doctors when a prince comes to an university, they hope, at the last day, to take their degree in a crowd of true protestants, and thrust unheeded into heaven[28].

It is a credit to be railed at by such men as these. The charter-man, in the very title-page, where he hangs out the cloth of the city before his book, gives it for his motto, _Si populus vult decipi, decipiatur_[29]; as if he should have said, "you have a mind to be cozened, and the devil give you good on't." If I cry a sirreverence, and you take it for honey, make the best of your bargain. For shame, good Christians, can you suffer such a man to starve, when you see his design is upon your purses? He is contented to expose the ears representative of your party on the pillory, and is in a way of doing you more service than a worn-out witness, who can hang nobody hereafter but himself. He tells you, "The papists clap their hands, in the hopes they conceive of the ruin of your government:" Does not this single syllable _your_ deserve a pension, if he can prove the government to be yours, and that the king has nothing to do in your republic? He continues, as if that were as sure and certain to them, as it is to us, without doubt, that they (the papists) once fired the city, just as certain in your own consciences. I wish the papists had no more to answer for than that accusation. Pray let it be put to the vote, and resolved upon the question, by your whole party, that the North-east wind is not only ill-affected to man and beast, but is also a tory or tantivy papist in masquerade[30]. I am satisfied, not to have "so much art left me, as to frame any thing agreeable, or verisimilar;" but it is plain that he has, and therefore, as I ought in justice, I resign my laurel, and my bays too, to Mr Hunt; it is he sets up for the poet now, and has the only art to amuse and to deceive the people. You may see how profound his knowledge is in poetry; for he tells you just before, "that my heroes are commonly such monsters as Theseus and Hercules; renowned throughout all ages for destroying[31]." Now Theseus and Hercules, you know, have been the heroes of all poets, and have been renowned through all ages, for destroying monsters, for succouring the distressed, and for putting to death inhuman arbitrary tyrants. Is this your oracle? If he were to write the acts and monuments of whig heroes, I find they should be quite contrary to mine: Destroyers indeed,--but of a lawful government; murderers,--but of their fellow-subjects; lovers, as Hercules was of Hylas; with a journey at last to hell, like that of Theseus.

But mark the wise consequences of our author. "I have not," he says, "so much art left me to make any thing agreeable, or verisimilar, wherewith to amuse or deceive the people." And yet, in the very next paragraph, "my province is to corrupt the manners of the nation, and lay waste their morals, and my endeavours are more happily applied, to extinguish the little remainders of the virtue of the age." Now, I am to perform all this, it seems, without making any thing verisimilar or agreeable! Why, Pharaoh never set the Israelites such a task, to build pyramids without brick or straw. If the fool knows it not, verisimilitude and agreeableness are the very tools to do it; but I am willing to disclaim them both, rather than to use them to so ill purpose as he has done.

Yet even this their celebrated writer knows no more of stile and English than the Northern dictator; as if dulness and clumsiness were fatal to the name of _Tom_. It is true, he is a fool in three languages more than the poet; for, they say, "he understands Latin, Greek, and Hebrew," from all which, to my certain knowledge, I acquit the other. Og may write against the king, if he pleases, so long as he drinks for him, and his writings will never do the government so much harm, as his drinking does it good; for true subjects will not be much perverted by his libels; but the wine-duties rise considerably by his claret. He has often called me an atheist in print; I would believe more charitably of him, and that he only goes the broad way, because the other is too narrow for him. He may see, by this, I do not delight to meddle with his course of life, and his immoralities, though I have a long bead-roll of them. I have hitherto contented myself with the ridiculous part of him, which is enough, in all conscience, to employ one man; even without the story of his late fall at the Old Devil, where he broke no ribs, because the hardness of the stairs could reach no bones; and, for my part, I do not wonder how he came to fall, for I have always known him heavy: the miracle is, how he got up again. I have heard of a sea captain as fat as he, who, to escape arrests, would lay himself flat upon the ground, and let the bailiffs carry him to prison, if they could. If a messenger or two, nay, we may put in three or four, should come, he has friendly advertisement how to escape them. But to leave him, who is not worth any further consideration, now I have done laughing at him,--would every man knew his own talent, and that they, who are only born for drinking, would let both poetry and prose alone[32]!

I am weary with tracing the absurdities and mistakes of our great lawyer, some of which indeed are wilful; as where he calls the _Trimmers_ the more moderate sort of tories. It seems those politicians are odious to both sides; for neither own them to be theirs. We know them, and so does he too in his conscience, to be secret whigs, if they are any thing; but now the designs of whiggism are openly discovered, they tack about to save a stake; that is, they will not be villains to their own ruin. While the government was to be destroyed, and there was probability of compassing it, no men were so violent as they; but since their fortunes are in hazard by the law, and their places at court by the king's displeasure, they pull in their horns, and talk more peaceably; in order, I suppose, to their vehemence on the right side, if they were to be believed. For in laying of colours, they observe a medium; black and white are too far distant to be placed directly by one another, without some shadowings to soften their contrarieties. It is Mariana, I think, (but am not certain) that makes the following relation; and let the noble family of Trimmers read their own fortune in it. "Don Pedro, king of Castile, surnamed the Cruel, who had been restored by the valour of our Edward the Black Prince, was finally dispossessed by Don Henry, the bastard, and he enjoyed the kingdom quietly, till his death; which when he felt approaching, he called his son to him, and gave him this his last counsel. I have (said he,) gained this kingdom, which I leave you, by the sword; for the right of inheritance was in Don Pedro; but the favour of the people, who hated my brother for his tyranny, was to me instead of title. You are now to be the peaceable possessor of what I have unjustly gotten; and your subjects are composed of these three sorts of men. One party espoused my brother's quarrel, which was the undoubted lawful cause; those, though they were my enemies, were men of principle and honour: Cherish them, and exalt them into places of trust about you, for in them you may confide safely, who prized their fidelity above their fortune. Another sort, are they who fought my cause against Don Pedro; to those you are indeed obliged, because of the accidental good they did me; for they intended only their private benefit, and helped to raise me, that I might afterwards promote them: you may continue them in their offices, if you please; but trust them no farther than you are forced; for what they did was against their conscience. But there is a third sort, which, during the whole wars, were neuters; let them be crushed on all occasions, for their business was only their own security. They had neither courage enough to engage on my side, nor conscience enough to help their lawful sovereign: _Therefore let them be made examples, as the worst sort of interested men, which certainly are enemies to both, and would be profitable to neither._"

I have only a dark remembrance of this story, and have not the Spanish author by me, but, I think, I am not much mistaken in the main of it; and whether true or false, the counsel given, I am sure, is such, as ought, in common prudence, to be practised against Trimmers, whether the lawful or unlawful cause prevail. Loyal men may justly be displeased with this party, not for their moderation, as Mr Hunt insinuates, but because, under that mask of seeming mildness, there lies hidden either a deep treachery, or, at best, an interested luke-warmness. But he runs riot into almost treasonable expressions, as if "Trimmers were hated because they are not perfectly wicked, or perfectly deceived; of the Catiline make, bold, and without understanding; that can adhere to men that publicly profess murders, and applaud the design:" by all which villainous names he opprobriously calls his majesty's most loyal subjects; as if men must be perfectly wicked, who endeavour to support a lawful government; or perfectly deceived, who on no occasion dare take up arms against their sovereign: as if acknowledging the right of succession, and resolving to maintain it in the line, were to be in a Catiline conspiracy; and at last, (which is ridiculous enough, after so much serious treason) as if "to clap the Duke of Guise" were to adhere to men that publicly profess murders, and applaud the design of the assassinating poets.

But together with his villainies, pray let his incoherences be observed. He commends the Trimmers, (at least tacitly excuses them) for men of some moderation; and this in opposition to the instruments of wickedness of the Catiline make, that are resolute and forward, and without consideration. But he forgets all this in the next twenty lines; for there he gives them their own, and tells them roundly, _in internecino bello, medii pro hostibus habentur._ Neutral men are traitors, and assist by their indifferency to the destruction of the government. The plain English of his meaning is this; while matters are only in dispute, and in machination, he is contented they should be moderate; but when once the faction can bring about a civil war, then they are traitors, if they declare not openly for them.

"But it is not," says he, "the Duke of Guise who is to be assassinated, a turbulent, wicked, and haughty courtier, but an innocent and gentle prince." By his favour, our Duke of Guise was neither innocent nor gentle, nor a prince of the blood royal, though he pretended to descend from Charlemagne, and a genealogy was printed to that purpose, for which the author was punished, as he deserved; witness Davila, and the journals of Henry III. where the story is at large related. Well, who is it then? why, "it is a prince who has no fault, but that he is the king's son:" then he has no fault by consequence; for I am certain, that is no fault of his. The rest of the compliment is so silly, and so fulsome, as if he meant it all in ridicule; and to conclude the jest, he says, that "the best people of England have no other way left, to shew their loyalty to the king, their religion and government, in long intervals of parliament, than by prosecuting his son, for the sake of the king, and his own merit, with all the demonstrations of the highest esteem."

Yes, I can tell them one other way to express their loyalty, which is, to obey the king, and to respect his brother, as the next lawful successor; their religion commands them both, and the government is secured in so doing. But why in intervals of parliament? How are they more obliged to honour the king's son out of parliament, than in it? And why this prosecution of love for the king's sake? Has he ordered more love to be shewn to one son, than to another? Indeed, his own quality is cause sufficient for all men to respect him, and I am of their number, who truly honour him, and who wish him better than this miserable sycophant; for I wish him, from his father's royal kindness, what justice can make him, which is a greater honour than the rabble can confer upon him.

But our author finds, that commendation is no more his talent, than flattery was that of Æsop's ass; and therefore falls immediately, from pawing with his fore-feet, and grinning upon one prince, to downright braying against another.

He says, I have not used "my patron duke much better; for I have put him under a most dismal and unfortunate character of a successor, excluded from the crown by act of state, for his religion; who fought his way to the crown, changed his religion, and died by the hand of a Roman assassinate."

If it please his Royal Highness to be my patron, I have reason to be proud of it; because he never yet forsook any man, whom he has had the goodness to own for his. But how have I put him under an unfortunate character? the authors of the Reflections, and our John-a-Nokes, have not laid their noddles together about this accusation. For it is their business to prove the king of Navarre to have been a most successful, magnanimous, gentle, and grateful prince; in which character they have followed the stream of all historians. How then happens this jarring amongst friends, that the same man is put under such dismal circumstances on one side, and so fortunate on the other, by the writers of the same party? The answer is very plain; that they take the cause by several handles. They, who will not have the Duke resemble the king of Navarre, have magnified the character of that prince, to debase his Royal Highness; and therein done what they can to shew the disparity. Mr Hunt, who will have it to be the Duke's character, has blackened that king as much as he is able, to shew the likeness. Now this would be ridiculous pleading at a bar, by lawyers retained for the same cause; and both sides would call each other fools, because the jury betwixt them would be confounded, and perhaps the judges too.

But this it is to have a bad cause, which puts men of necessity upon knavery; and that knavery is commonly found out. Well, Mr Hunt has in another place confessed himself to be in passion, and that is the reason he is so grosly mistaken in opening of the cause. For, first, the king of Navarre was neither under dismal, nor unfortunate circumstances: before the end of that very sentence, our lawyer has confessed, that he fought his way to the crown; that is, he gloriously vanquished all his rebels, and happily possessed his inheritance many years after he had regained it. In the next place, he was never excluded from the crown by act of state. He changed his religion indeed, but not until he had almost weathered the storm, recovered the best part of his estate, and gained some glorious victories in pitched battles; so that his changing cannot without injustice be attributed to his fear. Monsieur Chiverny, in his Memoirs of those times, plainly tells us, that he solemnly promised to his predecessor Henry III. then dying, that he would become a Romanist; and Davila, though he says not this directly, yet denies it not. By whose hands Henry IV. died, is notoriously known; but it is invidiously urged, both by Mr Hunt and the Reflectors: for we may, to our shame, remember, that a king of our own country was barbarously murdered by his subjects, who professed the same religion; though I believe, that neither Jaques Clement, nor Ravaillac, were better papists, than the independents and presbyterians were protestants; so that their argument only proves, that there are rogues of all religions: _Iliacos infra muros peccatur, et extra._ But Mr Hunt follows his blow again, that I have "offered a justification of an act of exclusion against a popish successor in a protestant kingdom, by remembering what was done against the king of Navarre, who was _de facto_ excluded by an act of state." My gentleman, I perceive, is very willing to call that an act of exclusion, and an act of state, which is only, in our language, called a bill; for Henry III. could never be gained to pass it, though it was proposed by the three estates at Blois. The Reflectors are more modest; for they profess, (though I am afraid it is somewhat against the grain,) that a vote of the House of Commons is not an act; but the times are turned upon them, and they dare speak no other language. Mr Hunt, indeed, is a bold republican, and tells you the bottom of their meaning. Yet why should it make the "courage of his Royal Highness quail, to find himself under this representation," which; by our author's favour, is neither dismal, nor disastrous? Henry IV. escaped this dreadful machine of the League; I say dreadful, for the three estates were at that time composed generally of Guisards, factious, hot-headed, rebellious interested men. The king in possession was but his brother-in-law, and at the time publicly his enemy; for the king of Navarre was then in arms against him; and yet the sense of common justice, and the good of his people so prevailed, that he withstood the project of the states, which he also knew was levelled at himself; for had the exclusion proceeded, he had been immediately laid by, and the lieutenancy of France conferred on Guise; after which the rebel would certainly have put up his title for the crown. In the case of his Royal Highness, only one of the three estates have offered at the exclusion, and have been constantly opposed by the other two, and by his majesty. Neither is it any way probable, that the like will ever be again attempted; for the fatal consequences, as well as the illegality of that design, are seen through already by the people; so that, instead of offering a justification of an act of exclusion, I have exposed a rebellious, impious, and fruitless contrivance tending to it. If we look on the parliament of Paris, when they were in their right wits, before they were intoxicated by the League, (at least wholly) we shall find them addressing to king Henry III. in another key, concerning the king of Navarre's succession, though he was at that time, as they called it, a relapsed heretic. And to this purpose I will quote a passage out of the journals of Henry III. so much magnified by my adversaries.

Towards the end of September, 1585, there was published at Paris a bull of excommunication against the king of Navarre, and the prince of Condé. The parliament of Paris made their remonstrance to the king upon it, which was both grave, and worthy of the place they held, and of the authority they have in this kingdom; saying for conclusion, that "their court had found the stile of this bull so full of innovation, and so distant from the modesty of ancient Popes, that they could not understand in it the voice of an Apostle's successor; forasmuch, as they found not in their records, nor in the search of all antiquity, that the princes of France had ever been subject to the justice or jurisdiction of the Pope, and they could not take it into consideration, until first he made appear the right which he pretended in the translation of kingdoms, established and ordained by Almighty God, before the name of Pope was heard of in the world." It is plain by this, that the parliament of Paris acknowledged an inherent right of succession in the king of Navarre, though of a contrary religion to their own. And though, after the duke of Guise's murder at Blois, the city of Paris revolted from their obedience to their king, pretending, that he was fallen from the crown, by reason of that and other actions, with which they charged him; yet the sum of all their power to renounce him, and create the duke of Mayenne lieutenant-general, depended ultimately on the Pope's authority; which, as you see, but three years before, they had peremptorily denied.

The college of Sorbonne began the dance, by their determination, that the kingly right was forfeited; and, stripping him of all his dignities, they called him plain Henry de Valois: after this, says my author, "sixteen rascals (by which he means the council of that number) having administered the oath of government to the duke of Mayenne, to take in quality of lieutenant-general of the estate and crown of France, the same ridiculous dignity was confirmed to him by an imaginary parliament, the true parliament being detained prisoners, in divers of the city gaols, and two new seals were ordered to be immediately made, with this inscription,--the Seal of the Kingdom of France." I need not enlarge on this relation: it is evident from hence, that the Sorbonnists were the original, and our Schismatics in England were the copiers of rebellion; that Paris began, and London followed.

The next lines of my author are, that "a gentleman of Paris made the duke of Mayenne's picture to be drawn, with a crown imperial on his head;" and I have heard of an English nobleman, who has at this day a picture of old Oliver, with this motto underneath it,--_Utinam vixeris._ All this while, this cannot be reckoned an act of state, for the deposing king Henry III., because it was an act of overt rebellion in the Parisians; neither could the holding of the three estates at Paris, afterwards, by the same duke of Mayenne, devolve any right on him, in prejudice of king Henry IV.; though those pretended states declared his title void, on the account of his religion; because those estates could neither be called nor holden, but by, and under the authority of, the lawful king. It would take more time than I have allowed for this Vindication, or I could easily trace from the French history, what misfortunes attended France, and how near it was to ruin, by the endeavours to alter the succession. For first, it was actually dismembered, the duke of Mercæur setting up a principality in the dutchy of Bretagne, independent of the crown. The duke of Mayenne had an evident design to be elected king, by the favour of the people and the Pope: the young dukes of Guise and of Nemours aspired, with the interest of the Spaniards, to be chosen, by their marriage with the Infanta Isabella. The duke of Lorraine was for cantling out some part of France, which lay next his territories; and the duke of Savoy had, before the death of Henry III., actually possessed himself of the marquisate of Saluces. But above all, the Spaniards fomented these civil wars, in hopes to reduce that flourishing kingdom under their own monarchy. To as many, and as great mischiefs, should we be evidently subject, if we should madly engage ourselves in the like practices of altering the succession, which our gracious king in his royal wisdom well foresaw, and has cut up that accursed project by the roots; which will render the memory of his justice and prudence immortal and sacred to future ages, for having not only preserved our present quiet, but secured the peace of our posterity.

It is clearly manifest, that no act of state passed, to the exclusion of either the King of Navarre, or of Henry the fourth, consider him in either of the two circumstances; but Oracle Hunt, taking this for granted, would prove _à fortiori_, "that if a protestant prince were actually excluded from a popish kingdom, then a popish successor is more reasonably to be excluded from a protestant kingdom; because," says he, "a protestant prince is under no obligation to destroy his popish subjects, but a popish prince is to destroy his protestant subjects:" Upon which bare supposition, without farther proof, he calls him insufferable tyrant, and the worst of monsters.

Now, I take the matter quite otherwise, and bind myself to maintain that there is not, nor can be any obligation, for a king to destroy his subjects of a contrary persuasion to the established religion of his country; for, _quatenus_ subjects, of what religion soever he is infallibly bound to preserve and cherish, and not to destroy them; and this is the first duty of a lawful sovereign, as such, antecedent to any tie or consideration of his religion. Indeed, in those countries where the Inquisition is introduced, it goes harder with protestants, and the reason is manifest; because the protestant religion has not gotten footing there, and severity is the means to keep it out; but to make this instance reach England, our religion must not only be changed, (which in itself is almost impossible to imagine,) but the council of Trent received, and the Inquisition admitted, which many popish countries have rejected. I forget not the cruelties, which were exercised in Queen Mary's time against the protestants; neither do I any way excuse them; but it follows not, that every popish successor should take example by them, for every one's conscience of the same religion is not guided by the same dictates in his government; neither does it follow, that if one be cruel, another must, especially when there is a stronger obligation, and greater interest to the contrary: for, if a popish king in England should be bound to destroy his protestant people, I would ask the question, over whom he meant to reign afterwards? And how many subjects would be left?

In Queen Mary's time, the protestant religion had scarcely taken root; and it is reasonable to be supposed, that she found the number of papists equalling that of the protestants, at her entrance to the kingdom; especially if we reckon into the account those who were the Trimmers of the times; I mean such, who privately were papists, though under her protestant predecessor they appeared otherwise; therefore her difficulties in persecuting her reformed subjects, were far from being so insuperable as ours now are, when the strength and number of the papists is so very inconsiderable. They, who cast in the church of England as ready to embrace popery, are either knaves enough to know they lie, or fools enough not to have considered the tenets of that church, which are diametrically opposite to popery; and more so than any of the sects.

Not to insist on the quiet and security, which protestant subjects at this day enjoy in some parts of Germany, under popish princes; where I have been assured, that mass is said, and a Lutheran sermon preached in different parts of the same church, on the same day, without disturbance on either side; nor on the privileges granted by Henry the fourth of France to his party, after he had forsaken their opinions, which they quietly possessed for a long time after his death.

The French histories are full of examples, manifestly proving, that the fiercest of their popish princes have not thought themselves bound to destroy their protestant subjects; and the several edicts, granted under them, in favour of the reformed religion, are pregnant instances of this truth. I am not much given to quotations, but Davila lies open for every man to read. Tolerations, and free exercise of religion, granted more amply in some, more restrainedly in others, are no sign that those princes held themselves obliged in conscience to destroy men of a different persuasion. It will be said, those tolerations were gained by force of arms. In the first place, it is no great credit to the protestant religion, that the protestants in France were actually rebels; but the truth is, they were only Geneva protestants, and their opinions were far distant from those of the church of England, which teaches passive obedience to all her sons, and not to propagate religion by rebellion. But it is further to be considered, that those French kings, though papists, thought the preservation of their subjects, and the public peace, were to be considered, before the gratification of the court of Rome; and though the number of the papists exceeded that of the protestants, in the proportion of three to one, though the protestants were always beaten when they fought, and though the pope pressed continually with exhortations and threatenings to extirpate Calvinism, yet kings thought it enough to continue in their own religion themselves, without forcing it upon their subjects, much less destroying them who professed another. But it will be objected, those edicts of toleration were not kept on the papists' side: they would answer, because the protestants stretched their privileges further than was granted, and that they often relapsed into rebellion; but whether or no the protestants were in fault, I leave history to determine. It is matter of fact, that they were barbarously massacred, under the protection of the public faith; therefore, to argue fairly, either an oath from protestants is not to be taken by a popish prince; or, if taken, ought inviolably to be preserved. For, when we oblige ourselves to any one, it is not his person we so much consider, as that of the Most High God, who is called to witness this our action; and it is to Him we are to discharge our conscience. Neither is there, or can be any tie on human society, when that of an oath is no more regarded; which being an appeal to God, He is immediate judge of it; and chronicles are not silent how often He has punished perjured kings. The instance of Vladislaus King of Hungary, breaking his faith with Amurath the Turk, at the instigation of Julian the Pope's legate, and his miserable death ensuing it, shews that even to infidels, much more to Christians, that obligation ought to be accounted sacred[33]. And I the rather urge this, because it is an argument taken almost _verbatim_ from a papist, who accuses Catharine de Medicis for violating her word given to the protestants during her regency of France. What securities in particular we have, that our own religion and liberties would be preserved though under a popish successor, any one may inform himself at large in a book lately written by the reverend and learned doctor Hicks, called Jovian, in answer to Julian the Apostate[34]; in which that truly Christian author has satisfied all scruples which reasonable men can make, and proved that we are in no danger of losing either; and wherein also, if those assurances should all fail, (which is almost morally impossible,) the doctrine of passive obedience is unanswerably demonstrated; a doctrine delivered with so much sincerity, and resignation of spirit, that it seems evident the assertor of it is ready, if there were occasion, to seal it with his blood.

I have done with mannerly Mr Hunt, who is only _magni nominis umbra_; the most malicious, and withal, the most incoherent ignorant scribbler of the whole party. I insult not over his misfortunes, though he has himself occasioned them; and though I will not take his own excuse, that he is in passion, I will make a better for him, for I conclude him cracked; and if he should return to England, am charitable enough to wish his only prison might be Bedlam. This apology is truer than that he makes for me; for writing a play, as I conceive, is not entering into the Observator's province; neither is it the Observator's manner to confound truth with falsehood, to put out the eyes of people, and leave them without understanding. The quarrel of the party to him is, that he has undeceived the ignorant, and laid open the shameful contrivances of the new vamped Association; that though he is "on the wrong side of life," as he calls it, yet he pleads not his age to be _emeritus_; that, in short, he has left the faction as bare of arguments, as Æsop's bird of feathers; and plumed them of all those fallacies and evasions which they borrowed from jesuits and presbyterians.

Now for my templar and poet in association for a libel, like the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in a fiery sign. What the one wants in wit, the other must supply in law. As for malice, their quotas are indifferently well adjusted; the rough draught, I take for granted, is the poet's, the finishings the lawyer's. They begin,--that in order to one Mr Friend's commands, one of them went to see the play. This was not the poet, I am certain; for nobody saw him there, and he is not of a size to be concealed. But the mountain, they say, was delivered of a mouse. I have been gossip to many such labours of a dull fat scribbler, where the mountain has been bigger, and the mouse less. The next sally is on the city-elections, and a charge is brought against my lord mayor, and the two sheriffs, for excluding true electors. I have heard, that a Whig gentleman of the Temple hired a livery-gown, to give his voice among the companies at Guild-hall; let the question be put, whether or no he were a true elector?--Then their own juries are commended from several topics; they are the wisest, richest, and most conscientious: to which is answered, _ignoramus_. But our juries give most prodigious and unheard-of damages. Hitherto there is nothing but boys-play in our authors: _My mill grinds pepper and spice, your mill grinds rats and mice._ They go on,--"if I may be allowed to judge;" (as men that do not poetize may be judges of wit, human nature, and common decencies;) so then the sentence is begun with _I_; there is but one of them puts in for a judge's place, that is, he in the grey; but presently it is--_men_; two more in buckram would be judges too. Neither of them, it seems, poetize; that is true, but both of them are in at rhime doggrel; witness the song against the bishops, and the Tunbridge ballad[35]. By the way, I find all my scribbling enemies have a mind to be judges, and chief barons. Proceed, gentlemen:--"This play, as I am informed by some, who have a nearer communication with the poets and the players, than I have,--". Which of the two Sosias is it that now speaks? If the lawyer, it is true he has but little communication with the players; if the poet, the players have but little communication with him; for it is not long ago, he said to somebody, "By G----, my lord, those Tory rogues will act none of my plays." Well, but the accusation,--that this play was once written by another, and then it was called the "Parisian Massacre." Such a play I have heard indeed was written; but I never saw it[36]. Whether this be any of it or no, I can say no more than for my own part of it. But pray, who denies the unparalleled villainy of the papists in that bloody massacre? I have enquired, why it was not acted, and heard it was stopt by the interposition of an ambassador, who was willing to save the credit of his country, and not to have the memory of an action so barbarous revived; but that I tempted my friend to alter it, is a notorious whiggism, to save the broader word. The "Sicilian Vespers" I have had plotted by me above these seven years: the story of it I found under borrowed names in Giraldo Cinthio; but the rape in my tragedy of "Amboyna" was so like it, that I forbore the writing. But what had this to do with protestants? For the massacrers and the massacred were all papists.

But it is observable, they say, that "though the massacre could not be acted, as it was first written against papists, yet when it was turned upon protestants, it found reception."

Now all is come out; the scandal of the story turns at last upon the government: that patronizes popish plays, and forbids protestant[37]. Ours is to be a popish play; why? Because it exposes the villainy of sectaries and rebels. Prove them first to be protestants, and see what you will get by it when you have done. Your party are certainly the men whom the play attacks, and so far I will help you; the designs and actions, represented in the play, are such as you have copied from the League; for though you have wickedness enough, yet you wanted the wit to make a new contrivance. But for shame, while you are carrying on such palpable villainy, do not assume the name of protestants. You will tell us, you are friends to the government, and the king's best subjects; but all the while you are aspersing both it and him. Who shall be judges, whether you are friends or not? The government or you? Have not all rebels always sung the same song? Was ever thief or murderer fool enough to plead guilty? For your love and loyalty to the king, they, who mean him best among you, are no better subjects than Duke Trinculo; they would be content he should be viceroy, so they may be viceroys over him[38].

The next accusation is particular to me,--"that I, the said Bayes, would falsely and feloniously have robbed Nat. Lee of his share in the representation of OEdipus." Now I am culprit; I writ the first and third acts of OEdipus, and drew the scenery of the whole play: whenever I have owned a farther proportion, let my accusers speak: this was meant mischievously, to set us two at variance. Who is the old serpent and Satan now? When my friends help my barren fancy, I am thankful for it: I do not use to receive assistance, and afterwards ungratefully disown it.

Not long after, "exemplary punishment" is due to me for this most "devilish parallel." It is a devilish one indeed; but who can help it? If I draw devils like one another, the fault is in themselves for being so: I neither made their horns nor claws, nor cloven feet. I know not what I should have done, unless I had drawn the devil a handsome proper gentleman, like the painter in the fable, to have made a friend of him[39]; but I ought to be exemplarily punished for it: when the devil gets uppermost, I shall expect it. "In the mean time, let magistrates (that respect their oaths and office)"--which words, you see, are put into a parenthesis, as if (God help us) we had none such now,--let them put the law in execution against lewd scribblers; the mark will be too fair upon a pillory, for a turnip or a rotten egg to miss it. But, for my part, I have not malice enough to wish him so much harm,--not so much as to have a hair of his head perish, much less that one whole side of it should be dismantled. I am no informer, who writ such a song, or such a libel; if the dulness betrays him not, he is safe for me. And may the same dulness preserve him ever from public justice; it is a sufficient thick mud-wall betwixt him and law; it is his guardian angel, that protects him from punishment, because, in spite of him, he cannot deserve it. It is that which preserves him innocent when he means most mischief, and makes him a saint when he intends to be a devil. He can never offend enough, to need the mercy of government, for it is beholden to him, that he writes against it; and he never offers at a satire, but he converts his readers to a contrary opinion.

Some of the succeeding paragraphs are intended for very Ciceronian: there the lawyer flourishes in the pulpit, and the poet stands in socks among the crowd to hear him. Now for narration, resolution, calumniation, aggravation, and the whole artillery of tropes and figures, to defend the proceedings at Guild-hall. The most minute circumstances of the elections are described so lively, that a man, who had not heard he was there in a livery-gown, might suspect there was a _quorum pars magna fui_ in the case; and multitudes of electors, just as well qualified as himself, might give their party the greater number: but throw back their gilt shillings, which were told for guineas, and their true sum was considerably less. Well, there was no rebellion at this time; therefore, says my adversary, there was no parallel. It is true there was no rebellion; but who ever told him that I intended this parallel so far? if the likeness had been throughout, I may guess, by their good will to me, that I had never lived to write it. But, to show his mistake, which I believe wilful, the play was wholly written a month or two before the last election of the sheriffs. Yet it seems there was some kind of prophecy in the case; and, till the faction gets clear of a riot, a part of the comparison will hold even there; yet, if he pleases to remember, there has been a king of England forced by the inhabitants from his imperial town. It is true, the son has had better fortune than the father; but the reason is, that he has now a stronger party in the city than his enemies; the government of it is secured in loyal and prudent hands, and the party is too weak to push their designs farther. "They rescued not their beloved sheriffs at a time (he tells you) when they had a most important use of them." What the importancy of the occasion was, I will not search: it is well if their own consciences will acquit them. But let them be never so much beloved, their adherents knew it was a lawful authority that sent them to the Tower; and an authority which, to their sorrow, they were not able to resist: so that, if four men guarded them without disturbance, and, to the contempt of their strength, at broad noon-day and at full exchange-time, it was no more their honesty to stand looking on with their hands in their pockets, than it is of a small band of robbers to let a caravan go by, which is too strong for them to assault.

After this, I am called, after the old rate, loose and infamous scribbler; and it is well I escape so cheap. Bear your good fortune moderately, Mr Poet; for, as loose and infamous as I am, if I had written for your party, your pension would have been cut off as useless. But they must take up with Settle, and such as they can get: Bartholomew-fair writers[40], and Bartholemew-close printers; there is a famine of wit amongst them, they are forced to give unconscionable rates, and, after all, to have only carrion for their money.

Then, I am "an ignorant fellow for not knowing there were no juries in Paris." I do not remember to have written any such thing; but whoever did, I am confident it was not his ignorance. Perhaps he had a mind to bring the case a little nearer home: If they had not juries in Paris, we had them from the Normans, who were Frenchmen; and, as you managed them, we had as good have had none in London. Let it satisfy you we have them now; and some of your loose and infamous scribblers may come to understand it a little better.

The next is, the justification of a noble peer deceased; the case is known, and I have no quarrel to his memory: let it sleep; he is now before another judge. Immediately after, I am said to have intended an "abuse to the House of Commons;" which is called by our authors "the most august assembly of Europe." They are to prove I have abused that House; but it is manifest they have lessened the House of Lords, by owning the Commons to be the "more august assembly."--"It is an House chosen (they say) by every protestant who has a considerable inheritance in England;" which word _considerable_ signifies forty shillings _per annum_ of free land. For the interest of the loyal party, so much under-valued by our authors, they have long ago confessed in print, that the nobility and gentry have disowned them; and the yeomanry have at last considered, _queis hæc consevimus arva_? They have had enough of unlawful and arbitrary power; and know what an august assembly they had once without a King and House of Peers.

But now they have me in a burning scent, and run after me full cry: "Was ever such licence connived at, in an impious libeller and scribbler, that the succession, so solemn a matter, that is not fit to be debated of but in parliament, should be profaned so far as to be played with on the stage?"

Hold a little, gentlemen, hold a little; (as one of your fellow citizens says in "The Duke of Guise,") is it so unlawful for me to argue for the succession in the right line upon the stage; and is it so very lawful for Mr Hunt, and the scribblers of your party, to oppose it in their libels off the stage? Is it so sacred, that a parliament only is suffered to debate it, and dare you run it down both in your discourses, and pamphlets out of parliament? In conscience, what can you urge against me, which I cannot return an hundred times heavier on you? And by the way, you tell me, that to affirm the contrary to this, is a _præmunire_ against the statute of the 13th of Elizabeth. If such _præmunire_ be, pray, answer me, who has most incurred it? In the mean time, do me the favour to look into the statute-book, and see if you can find the statute; you know yourselves, or you have been told it, that this statute is virtually repealed, by that of the 1st of king James, acknowledging his immediate lawful and undoubted right to this imperial crown, as the next lineal heir; those last words are an implicit anti-declaration to the statute in queen Elizabeth, which, for that reason, is now omitted in our books. The lawful authority of an House of Commons I acknowledge; but without fear and trembling, as my Reflectors would have it. For why should I fear my representatives? they are summoned to consult about the public good, and not to frighten those who chose them. It is for you to tremble, who libel the supreme authority of the nation. But we knavish coxcombs and villains are to know, say my authors, that "a vote is the opinion of that House." Lord help our understandings, that know not this without their telling! What Englishman, do you think, does not honour his representatives, and wish a parliament void of heat and animosities, to secure the quiet of the nation? You cite his majesty's declaration against those that dare trifle with parliaments; a declaration, by the way, which you endeavoured not to have read publicly in churches, with a threatening to those that did it. "But we still declare (says his majesty) that no irregularities of parliament shall make us out of love with them." Are not you unfortunate quoters? why now should you rub up the remembrance of those irregularities mentioned in that declaration, which caused, as the king informs us, its dissolution?

The next paragraph is already answered; it is only a clumsy commendation of the Duke of Monmouth, copied after Mr Hunt, and a proof that he is unlike the Duke of Guise.

After having done my drudgery for me, and having most officiously proved, that the English duke is no parallel for the French, which I am sure he is not, they are next to do their own business, which is, that I meant a parallel betwixt Henry III. and our most gracious sovereign. But, as fallacies are always couched in general propositions, they plead the whole course of the drama, which, they say, seems to insinuate my intentions. One may see to what a miserable shift they are driven, when, for want of any one instance, to which I challenge them, they have only to allege, that the play SEEMS to insinuate it. I answer, it does not seem; which is a bare negative to a bare affirmative; and then we are just where we were before. Fat Falstaff was never set harder by the Prince for a reason, when he answered, "that, if reasons grew as thick as blackberries, he would not give one." Well, after long pumping, lest the lie should appear quite barefaced, they have found I said, that, at king Henry's birth, there shone a regal star; so there did at king Charles the Second's; therefore I have made a parallel betwixt Henry III. and Charles II. A very concluding syllogism, if I should answer it no farther.

Now, let us look upon the play; the words are in the fourth act. The conjurer there is asking his devil, "what fortune attended his master, the Guise, and what the king?" The familiar answers concerning the king,--"He cannot be deposed, he may be killed; a violent fate attends him; but, at his birth, there shone a regal star."--_Conj._ "My master had a stronger."--_Devil._ "No, not a stronger, but more popular." Let the whole scene, (which is one of the best in the tragedy, though murdered in the acting) be read together, and it will be as clear as day light, that the Devil gave an astrological account of the French king's _horoscope_; that the regal star, then culminating, was the sun in the tenth house, or mid-heaven; which, _cæteris paribus,_ is a regal nativity in that art. The rest of the scene confirms what I have said; for the Devil has taken the position of the heavens, or scheme of the world, at the point of the sun's entrance into Aries. I dispute not here the truth or lawfulness of that art; but it is usual with poets, especially the Italians, to mix astrology in their poems. Chaucer, amongst us, is frequent in it: but this revolution particularly I have taken out of Luigi Pulci; and there is one almost the same in Boiardo's "_Orlando Inamorato._" Now, if these poets knew, that a star were to appear at our king's birth, they were better prophets than Nostradamus, who has told us nothing of it. Yet this they say "is treason with a witness," and one of the crimes for which they condemned me to be hanged, drawn and quartered. I find they do not believe me to be one of their party at the bottom, by their charitable wishes to me; and am proud enough to think, I have done them some little mischief, because they are so desirous to be rid of me. But if Jack Ketch must needs have the handling of us poets, let him begin first where he may take the deepest say[41]; let me be hanged, but in my turn; for I am sure I am neither the fattest scribbler, nor the worst; I'll be judged by their own party. But, for all our comforts, the days of hanging are a little out of date; and I hope there will be no more treason with a witness or witnesses; for now there is no more to be got by swearing, and the market is overstocked besides.

But are you in earnest when you say, I have made Henry III. "fearful, weak, bloody, perfidious, hypocritical, and fawning, in the play?" I am sure an unbiassed reader will find a more favourable image of him in the tragedy, whatever he was out of it. You would not have told a lie so shameless, but that you were resolved to second it with a worse--that I made a parallel of that prince. And now it comes to my turn, pray let me ask you,--why you spend three pages and a half in heaping up all the villainies, true or false, which you can rake together, to blast his memory? Why is all this pains taken to expose the person of king Henry III.? Are you leaguers, or covenanters, or associators? What has the poor dead man done to nettle you? Were his rebels your friends or your relations? Were your Norman ancestors of any of those families, which were conspirators in the play? I smell a rat in this business; Henry III. is not taken thus to task for nothing. Let me tell you, this is little better than an implicit confession of the parallel I intended. This gentleman of Valois sticks in your stomachs; and, though I do not defend his proceedings in the States, any otherwise than by the inevitable necessity which caused them, yet acknowledging his crime does not extenuate their guilt that forced him to it. It was bad on both sides, but the revenge was not so wicked as the treason; for it was a voluntary act of theirs, and a compelled one of his. The short on't is, he took a violent course to cut up the Covenant by the roots; and there is your quarrel to him.

Now for a long-winded panegyric of the king of Navarre; and here I am sure they are in earnest, when they take such overpains to prove there is no likeness where they say I intended it. The hero, at whom their malice is levelled, does but laugh at it, I believe; and, amongst the other virtues of that predecessor, wants neither his justice nor his clemency, to forgive all the heads of the League, as fast as they submit. As for obliging them, (which our author would fain hook in for an ingredient) let them be satisfied, that no more enemies are to be bought off with places and preferments; the trial which has been made in two kings reigns, will warn the family from so fruitless and dangerous an expedient. The rest is already answered, in what I have said to Mr Hunt; but I thank them, by the way, for their instance of the fellow whom the king of Navarre had pardoned and done good to, "yet he would not love him;" for that story reaches home somewhere.

I must make haste to get out of hearing from this Billingsgate oratory; and, indeed, to make an end with these authors, except I could call rogue and rascal as fast as they. Let us examine the little reason they produce concerning the Exclusion.

"Did the pope, the clergy, the nobility and commonalty of France think it reasonable to exclude a prince for professing a different religion; and will the papists be angry if the protestants be of the same opinion? No, sure, they cannot have the impudence."

First, here is the difference of religion taken for granted, which was never proved on one side, though in the king of Navarre it was openly professed. Then the pope, and the three estates of France had no power to alter the succession, neither did the king in being consent to it: or afterwards, did the greater part of the nobility, clergy, and gentry adhere to the Exclusion, but maintained the lawful king successfully against it; as we are bound to do in England, by the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, made for the benefit of our kings, and their successors? the objections concerning which oath are fully answered by Dr Hicks, in his preface to Jovian; and thither I refer the reader.

They tell us, that what it concerns protestants to do in that case, enough has been heard by us in parliament debates.

I answer, that debates coming not by an act to any issue, conclude, that there is nothing to be done against a law established, and fundamental of the monarchy. They dare not infer a right of taking up arms, by virtue of a debate or vote, and yet they tacitly insinuate this. I ask them, what it does concern protestants to do in this case, and whether they mean anything by that expression? They have hampered themselves before they were aware; for they proceed in the very next lines to tell us, they believe "the crown of England being hereditary, the next in blood have an undoubted right to succeed, unless God make them, or they make themselves uncapable of reigning." So that according to them, if either of those two impediments shall happen, then it concerns the protestants of England to do that something, which, if they had spoken out, had been direct treason. Here is fine legerdemain amongst them: they have acknowledged a vote to be no more than the opinion of an house, and yet from a debate, which was abortive before it quickened into a vote, they argue after the old song, "that there is something more to be done, which you cannot chuse but guess." In the next place, there is no such thing as incapacity to be supposed, in the immediate successor of the crown. That is, the rightful heir cannot be made uncapable on any account whatsoever to succeed. It may please God, that he may be _inhabilis_, or _inidoneus ad gerendam rempublicam_,--unfit or unable to govern the kingdom; but this is no impediment to his right of reigning: he cannot either be excluded or deposed for such imperfection; for the laws which have provided for private men in this case, have also made provision for the sovereign, and for the public; and the council of state, or the next of blood, is to administer the kingdom for him. Charles the Sixth of France, (for I think we have no English examples which will reach it) forfeited not his kingdom by his lunacy, though a victorious king of England was then knocking at his gates; but all things under his name, and by his authority were managed. The case is the same, betwixt a king _non compos mentis_, and one who is _nondum compos mentis_; a distracted or an infant-king. Then the people cannot incapacitate the king, because he derives not his right from them, but from God only; neither can any action, much less opinion of a sovereign, render him uncapable, for the same reason; excepting only a voluntary resignation to his immediate heir, as in the case of Charles the Fifth: for that of our Richard the Second was invalid, because forced, and not made to the next successor.

Neither does it follow, as our authors urge, that an unalterable succession supposes England to be the king's estate, and the people his goods and chattels on it. For the preservation of his right destroys not our propriety, but maintains us in it. He has tied himself by law, not to invade our possessions; and we have obliged ourselves as subjects to him, and all his lawful successors: by which irrevocable act of ours, both for ourselves and our posterity, we can no more exclude the successor, than we can depose the present king. The estate of England is indeed the king's; and I may safely grant their supposition, as to the government of England: but it follows not, that the people are his goods and chattels on it; for then he might sell, alienate, or destroy them as he pleased: from all which he has tied himself by the liberties and privileges which he has granted us by laws.

There is little else material in this pamphlet: for to say, "I would insinuate into the king a hatred to his capital city," is to say, he should hate his best friends, the last, and the present Lord Mayor, our two honourable Sheriffs, the Court of Aldermen, the worthy and loyal Mr Common Serjeant, with the rest of the officers, who are generally well affected and who have kept out their factious members from its government. To say, I would insinuate a scorn of authority in the city, is, in effect, to grant the parallel in the play: for the authority of tumults and seditions is only scorned in it,--an authority which they derived not from the crown, but exercised against it. And for them to confess I exposed this, is to confess, that London was like Paris.

They conclude with a prayer to Almighty God, in which I therefore believe, the poet did not club. To libel the king through all the pamphlet, and to pray for him in the conclusion, is an action of more prudence in them than of piety. Perhaps they might hope to be forgiven, as one of their predecessors was by king James; who, after he had railed at him abundantly, ended his lampoon with these two verses:

Now God preserve our king, queen, prince and peers, And grant the author long may wear his ears[42].

To take a short review of the whole.--It is manifest, that there is no such parallel in the play, as the faction have pretended; that the story would not bear one where they have placed it; and that I could not reasonably intend one, so contrary to the nature of the play, and so repugnant to the principles of the loyal party. On the other side, it is clear that the principles and practices of the public enemies, have both formerly resembled those of the League, and continue to hold the same resemblance. It appears by the outcry of the party before the play was acted, that they dreaded and foresaw the bringing of the faction upon the stage: and by the hasty printing of Mr Hunt's libel, and the Reflections, before the tragedy was published, that they were infinitely concerned to prevent any farther operation of it. It appears from the general consent of the audiences, that their party were known to be represented; and themselves owned openly, by their hissings, that they were incensed at it, as an object which they could not bear. It is evident by their endeavours to shift off this parallel from their side, that their principles are too shameful to be maintained. It is notorious, that they, and they only, have made the parallel betwixt the Duke of Guise and the Duke of Monmouth, and that in revenge for the manifest likeness they find in the parties themselves, they have carried up the parallel to the heads of the parties, where there is no resemblance at all; under which colour, while they pretend to advert upon one libel, they set up another. For what resemblance could they suggest betwixt two persons so unlike in their descent, the qualities of their minds, and the disparity of their warlike actions, if they grant not, that there is a faction here, which is like that other which was in France? so that if they do not first acknowledge one common cause, there is no foundation for a parallel. The dilemma therefore lies strong upon them; and let them avoid it if they can,--that either they must avow the wickedness of their designs, or disown the likeness of those two persons. I do further charge those audacious authors, that they themselves have made the parallel which they call mine, and that under the covert of this parallel they have odiously compared our present king with king Henry the Third; and farther, that they have forced this parallel expressly to wound His Majesty in the comparison: for, since there is a parallel (as they would have it) it must be either theirs or mine. I have proved that it cannot possibly be mine: and in so doing, that it must be theirs by consequence. Under this shadow all the vices of the French king are charged by those libellers (by a side-wind) upon ours; and it is indeed the bottom of their design to make the king cheap, his royal brother odious, and to alter the course of the succession.

Now, after the malice of this sputtering triumvirate (Mr Hunt, and the two Reflectors), against the person and dignity of the king, and against all that endeavour to serve him (which makes their hatred to his cause apparent), the very charging of our play to be a libel, and such a parallel as these ignoramuses would render it, is almost as great an affront to His Majesty, as the libellous picture itself, by which they have exposed him to his subjects. For it is no longer our parallel, but the king's, by whose order it was acted, without any shuffling or importunity from the poets. The tragedy (cried the faction) is a libel against such and such illustrious persons. Upon this the play was stopt, examined, acquitted, and ordered to be brought upon the stage: not one stroke in it of a resemblance, to answer the scope and intent of the complaint. There were some features, indeed, that the illustrious Mr Hunt and his brace of beagles (the Reflectors) might see resembling theirs; and no other parallel either found or meant, but betwixt the French leaguers and ours: and so far the agreement held from point to point, as true as a couple of tallies. But when neither the king, nor my lord chamberlain, with other honourable persons of eminent faith, integrity, and understanding, upon a strict perusal of the papers, could find one syllable to countenance the calumny; up starts the defender of the charter, &c. opens his mouth, and says, "What do ye talk of the king? he's abused, he's imposed upon. Is my lord chamberlain, and the scrutineers that succeed him, to tell us, when the king and the duke of York are abused?" What says my lord chief baron of Ireland to the business? What says the livery-man templer? What says Og the king of Basan to it? "We are men that stand up for the king's supremacy in all causes, and over all persons, as well ecclesiastical as civil, next and immediately under God and the people. We are for easing His Royal Highness of his title to the crown, and the cares that attend any such prospect; and we shall see the king and the Royal Family paralleled at this rate, and not reflect upon it?"

But to draw to an end. Upon the laying of matters fairly together, what a king have these balderdash scribblers given us, under the resemblance of Henry the Third! How scandalous a character again, of His Majesty, in telling the world that he is libelled, and affronted to his face, told on't, pointed to it; and yet neither he, nor those about him, can be brought to see or understand it. There needs no more to expound the meaning of these people, than to compare them with themselves: when it will evidently appear, that their lives and conversations, their writings and their practices, do all take the same bias; and when they dare not any longer revile His Majesty or his government point blank, they have an intention to play the libellers in masquerade, and do the same thing in a way of mystery and parable. This is truly the case of the pretended parallel. They lay their heads together, and compose the lewdest character of a prince that can be imagined, and then exhibit that monster to the people, as the picture of the king in the "Duke of Guise." So that the libel passes for current in the multitude, whoever was the author of it; and it will be but common justice to give the devil his due. But the truth is, their contrivances are now so manifest, that their party moulders both in town and country; for I will not suspect that there are any of them left in court. Deluded well-meaners come over out of honesty, and small offenders out of common discretion or fear. None will shortly remain with them, but men of desperate fortunes or enthusiasts: those who dare not ask pardon, because they have transgressed beyond it, and those who gain by confusion, as thieves do by fires: to whom forgiveness were as vain, as a reprieve to condemned beggars; who must hang without it, or starve with it.

Footnotes: 1. As the whole passage from Davila is subjoined to the text in the play, the reader may easily satisfy himself of the accuracy of what is here stated. But, although the scene may have been written in 1661, we must be allowed to believe, that its extreme resemblance to the late events occasioned its being revived and re-presented in 1682.

2. The poem, alluded to, was probably the _Religio Laici_, first published in November l682.

3. Dryden and Shadwell had once been friends. In the preface to "The Humourists," acted, according to Mr Malone, in 1676, Shadwell thus mentions his great contemporary:

"And here I must make a little digression, and take liberty to dissent from my particular friend, for whom I have a very great respect, and whose writings I extremely admire; and, though I will not say, his is the best way of writing, yet, I am sure his manner of writing is much the best that ever was. And I may say of him, as was said of a celebrated poet, _Cui unquam poetarum magis proprium fuit subito astro incalescere? Quis ubi incaluit, fortius et fæclicius debacchatur_? His verse is smoother and deeper, his thoughts more quick and surprising, his raptures more mettled and higher, and he has more of that in his writings, which Plato calls _sôphrona manian_ than any other heroic poet. And those who shall go about to imitate him, will be found to flutter and make a noise, but never to rise."

Such a compliment, from a rival dramatist, could only have been extracted by previous good offices and kindly countenance. Accordingly we find, that Dryden, in 1678-9, wrote a prologue to Shadwell's play, of "The True Widow."

4. "The Female Prelate, or Pope Joan," is a bombast, silly performance of Elkanah Settle; the catastrophe of which consists in the accouchement of the Pope in the streets of Rome. The aid necessary in the conclusion of an English tragedy, (usually loudly called for, but never brought) is of a surgical nature; but here Lucina was the deity to be implored, and the midwife's assistance most requisite.

Shadwell's comedy of "The Lancashire Witches," was popular for many years after the Revolution, chiefly, because the papists were reflected upon in the character of Teague O'Divelly, an Irish Priest, the high-church clergy ridiculed under that of Smerk, and the whole Tory faction generally abused through the play. It is by no means one of Shadwell's happiest efforts. The introduction of the witches celebrating their satanical sabbath on the stage, besides that the scene is very poorly and lamely written, is at variance with the author's sentiments, as delivered through Sir Edward Hartfort, "a worthy, hospitable, true English gentleman, of good understanding and honest principles," who ridicules the belief in witches at all. A different and totally inconsistent doctrine is thus to be collected from the action of the piece and the sentiments expressed by those, whose sentiments are alone marked as worthy of being attended to. This obvious fault, with many others, is pointed out in a criticism on the "Lancashire Witches," published in the Spectator. The paper is said to have been written by Hughes, but considerably softened by Addison.

5. Half-a-crown was then the box price.

You visit our plays and merit the stocks, For paying half-crowns of brass to our box; Nay, often you swear when places are shewn ye, That your hearing is thick, And so by a love trick, You pass through our scenes up to the balcony. _Epilogue to_ "The Man's the Master."

The farce, alluded to, seems to have been "The Lancashire Witches." See Shadwell's account of the reception of that piece, from which it appears, that the charge of forming a party in the theatre was a subject of mutual reproach betwixt the dramatists of the contending parties.

6. This single remark is amply sufficient to exculpate Dryden from having intended any general parallel between Monmouth and the Duke of Guise. To have produced such a parallel, it would have been necessary to unite, in one individual, the daring political courage of Shaftesbury, his capacity of seizing the means to attain his object, and his unprincipled carelessness of their nature, with the fine person, chivalrous gallantry, military fame, and courteous manners of the Duke of Monmouth. Had these talents, as they were employed in the same cause, been vested in the same person, the Duke of Guise must have yielded the palm. The partial resemblance, in one point of their conduct, is stated by our poet, not to have been introduced as an _intended_ likeness, betwixt the Duke of Guise, and the Protestant Duke. We may observe, in the words of Bertran,

The dial spoke not--but it made shrewd signs. _Spanish Friar._

7. Alluding to a book, called "The Parallel," published by J. Northleigh L.L.B. the same who afterwards wrote "the Triumph of the Monarchy," and was honoured by a copy of verses from our author.

8. "Julian the Apostate, with a short account of his life, and a parallel betwixt Popery and Paganism," was a treatise, written by the Rev. Samuel Johnson, chaplain to Lord Russell, for the purpose of forwarding the bill of exclusion, by shewing the consequences to Christianity of a Pagan Emperor attaining the throne. It would seem, that one of the sheriffs had mistaken so grossly, as to talk of Julian the Apostle; or, more probably, such a blunder was circulated as true, by some tory wit. Wood surmises, that Hunt had some share in composing Julian. _Ath. Ox._ II. p. 729.]

9. This probably alludes to L'Estrange, who answered Hunt in the "Lawyer Outlawed."

10. "Curse ye Meroz," was a text much in vogue among the fanatic preachers in the civil wars. It was preached upon in Guildhall, before the Lord Mayor, 9th May, 1630, by Edmund Hickeringill, rector of All Saints, in Colchester:

There's Colchester Hickeringil, the fanatic's delight, Who Gregory Greybeard and Meroz did write, You may see who are saints in a pharisee's sight. _The Assembly of the Moderate Divines, stanza 18._

Gregory Greybeard was probably some ballad, alluding to the execution of Charles I, who was beheaded by a person disguised by a visor and greybeard. The name of the common hangman, at that time, was Gregory.

11. Jaques Clement, a Jacobin Monk, stabbed Henry III. on the 1st of August, 1589. He expired the following day.

12. "All crowned heads by poetical right are heroes. This character is a flower, a prerogative so certain, so inseparably annexed to the crown as by no poet, no parliament of poets, ever to be invaded." _Rymer's Remarks on the Tragedies of the last age_, p. 6l. This critical dogma, although here and else-where honoured by our author's sanction, fell into disuse with the doctrines of passive obedience, and indefeasible right.

13. The Earl of Arlington, Lord Chamberlain.

14. Charles II. and his brother the Duke of York, were grandchildren of Henry IV. of France, by their mother Henrietta Maria.

15. A very poor imitation of Moliere's "Festin de Pierre;" with the story of which the admirers of mute-shew have since been entertained, under the title of Don Juan. In the preface, Shadwell, after railing abundantly at Settle, is at the pains to assure us, there is no act in the piece which cost him above four days writing, and the last two (the play-house having great occasion for a play) were both written in four days. The Libertine, and his companions, travel by sea and land over the whole kingdom of Spain.

16. See the full passage prefixed to the Vindication.

17. The club alluded to seems to be the same which originally met at the King's-Head tavern, of which North gives the following lively account. "The gentlemen of that worthy society held their evening session continually at the King's-Head tavern, over against the Inner Temple gate. But upon occasion of the signal of a green ribbon, agreed to be worn in their hats in the days of secret engagements, like the coats of arms of valiant knights of old, whereby all the warriors of the society might be distinguished, and not mistake friends for enemies, they were called also the Green Ribbon Club. Their seat was in a sort of carrefour, at Chancery-Lane end, a centre of business and company, most proper for such anglers of fools. The house was double-balconied in front, as may be yet seen, for the clubsters to issue forth, in fresco, with hats and no peruques, pipes in their mouths, merry faces, and diluted throats, for vocal encouragement of the canaglia below, at bonfires, on usual and unusual occasions. They admitted all strangers that were confidingly introduced; for, it was a main end of their institution to make proselytes, especially of the raw estated youths newly come to town. This copious society were, to the faction in and about London, a sort of executive power, and by correspondence all over England. The resolves of the more retired councils and ministry of the faction, were brought in here, and orally insinuated to the company, whether it were lies, defamations, commendations, projects, &c. and so, like water diffused, spread over all the town; whereby that which was digested at the club over night, was, like nourishment, at every assembly, male and female, the next day. And thus the younglings tasted of political administration, and took themselves for notable counsellors." _Examen_, p. 572. The place of meeting is altered by Dryden, from the King's-Head, to the Devil-Tavern, either because he thought the name more appropriate, or wished slightly to disguise what he plainly insinuated.

18. Our author never omits an opportunity of twitting Hunt with his expected preferment of lord chief baron of exchequer in Ireland; L'Estrange, whose ready pen was often drawn for the court, answered Hunt's defence of the charter by a pamphlet entitled "The Lawyer Outlawed," in which he fails not to twit his antagonist with the same disappointment.

19. The foul practice of taking away lives by false witness, casts an indelible disgrace on this period. Oates, Dugdale, and Turberville, were the perjured evidences of the Popish plot. To meet them with equal arms, counter-plots were sworn against Shaftesbury and others, by Haines, Macnamara, and other Irishmen. But the true Protestant juries would only swallow the perjuries which made for their own opinions; nay, although they believed Dugdale, when he zealously forswore himself for the cause of the Protestant faith, they refused him credit when he bore false witness for the crown. "Thus," says Hume, "the two parties, actuated by mutual rage, but cooped up within the narrow limits of the law, levelled with poisoned daggers the most deadly blows against each other's breast, and buried in their factious divisions all regard to truth, honour, and humanity."--

20. In the Dramatis Personæ to Shadwell's play of Epsom-Wells, we have Rains, Bevil, Woodly, described as "men of wit and pleasure."

21. Dryden had already distinguished Shadwell and Settle by those names, which were destined to consign the poor wights to a painful immortality, in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel, published in 1682.

22. See note on p. 222. Vol. VI. describing this famous procession.

23. This passage, in Hunt's defence of the charter, obviously alludes to the Duke of York, whom he elsewhere treats with little ceremony, and to the king, whose affection for his brother was not without a mixture of fear, inspired by his more stubborn and resolved temper.

24. William Viscount Stafford, the last who suffered for the Popish plot, was tried and executed in 1680. It appears, that his life was foully sworn away by Dugdale and Turberville. The manly and patient deportment of the noble sufferer went far to remove the woful delusion which then pervaded the people. It would seem that Hunt had acted as his solicitor.

25. A quip at his corpulent adversary Shadwell.

26. The infamous Titus Oates pretended, amongst other more abominable falsehoods, to have taken a doctor's degree at Salamanca. In 1679, there was an attempt to bring him to trial for unnatural practices, but the grand jury threw out the bill. These were frequent subjects of reproach among the tory authors. In the Luttrel Collection, there is "An Address from Salamanca to her unknown offspring Dr T.O. concerning the present state of affairs in England." Also a coarse ballad, entitled, "The Venison Doctor, with his brace of Alderman Stags;"

Showing how a Doctor had defiled Two aldermen, and got them both with child, Who longed for venison, but were beguiled.

27. Our author has elsewhere expressed, in the same terms, his contempt for the satire of "The Rehearsal." "I answered not the Rehearsal, because I knew the author sat to himself when he drew the picture, and was the very Bayes of his own farce." _Dedication to Juvenal._--The same idea occurs in a copy of verses on the Duke of Buckingham sometimes ascribed to Dryden:

But when his poet, John Bayes, did appear, 'Twas known to more than one-half that were there, That the great'st part was his Grace's character;

For he many years plagued his friends for their crimes, Repeating his verses in other men's rhymes, To the very same person ten thousand times. _State Poems_, Vol. II, p. 216.

28. Besides those who were alarmed for civil liberty, and those who dreaded encroachment on their religion, the whig party, like every one which promises to effect a great political change, was embraced by many equally careless of the one motive or the other; but who hoped to indulge their licentious passions, repair their broken fortunes, or gratify their inordinate ambition amidst a revolutionary convulsion.

29. The motto to Hunt's pamphlet.

30. _Tantivi_ was a cant phrase for furious tories and high-flyers. In one of College's unlucky strokes of humour, he had invented a print called _Mac Ninny_, in which the Duke of York was represented half-jesuit half-devil; and a parcel of tories, mounted on the church of England, were driving it at full gallop, _tantivy_, to Rome. Hickeringill's poem, called "The Mushroom," written against our author's "Hind and Panther," is prefaced by an epistle to the tories and tantivies.

31. This passage is inaccurately quoted. Mr Hunt wrote, "Such monsters as Theseus and Hercules _are_, renowned throughout all ages for destroying." The learned gentleman obviously meant that Dryden's heroes (whom he accounted tyrants) resembled not the demi-gods, but the monsters whom they destroyed. But the comma is so unhappily placed after _are_, as to leave the sense capable of the malicious interpretation which Dryden has put upon it.

32. Shadwell, as he resembled Ben Jonson in extreme corpulence, and proposed him for the model of dramatic writing, seems to have affected the coarse and inelegant debauchery of his prototype. He lived chiefly in taverns, was a gross sensualist in his habits, and brutal in his conversation. His fine gentlemen all partake of their parent's grossness and vulgarity; they usually open their dialogue, by complaining of the effects of last night's debauch. He is probably the only author, who ever chose for his heroes a set of riotous bloods, or _scowerers_, as they were then termed, and expected the public should sympathise in their brutal orgies. True it is, that the heroes are _whig_ scowerers; and, whilst breaking windows, stabbing watchmen, and beating passengers, do not fail to express a due zeal for the Protestant religion, and the liberty of the subject. Much of the interest also turns, it must be allowed, upon the Protestant scowerers aforesaid baffling and beating, without the least provocation, a set of inferior scowerers, who were Jacobites at least, if not Papists. Shadwell is thus described in the "Sessions of the Poets:"

Next into the crowd Tom Shadwell does wallow, And swears by his guts, his paunch, and his tallow, 'Tis he that alone best pleases the age, Himself and his wife have supported the stage. Apollo, well pleased with so bonny a lad, To oblige him, he told him he should be huge glad, Had he half so much wit as he fancied he had. However, to please so jovial a wit, And to keep him in humour, Apollo thought fit To bid him drink on, and keep his old trick Of railing at poets--

Those, who consult the full passage, will see good reason to think Dryden's censure on Shadwell's brutality by no means too severe.

33. In 1444, Ladislaus king of Hungary, in breach of a treaty solemnly sworn upon the gospel, invaded Bulgaria, at the instigation of the Cardinal Legate. He was slain, and his army totally routed in the bloody battle of Warna, where ten thousand Christians fell before the janissaries of Amurath II. It is said, that while the battle remained undecided, the sultan displayed the solemn treaty, and invoked the God of truth, and the blessed name of Jesus, to revenge the impious infidelity of the Hungarian. This battle would have laid Hungary under the Turkish yoke, had it not been for the exploits of John Corvinus Huniades, the white knight of Walachia, and the more dubious prowess of the famous John Castriot, king of Epirus.

34. In the preface to which the author alleges, that Hunt contributed no small share towards the composition of "Julian the Apostate." See WOOD'S _Ath. Oxon._ v. ii. p. 729.

35. The song against the bishops is probably a ballad, upon their share in throwing out the bill of exclusion, beginning thus:

The grave house of Commons, by hook, or by crook, Resolved to root out both the pope and the duke; Let them vote, let them move, let them do what they will; The bishops, the bishops, have thrown out the bill.

It concludes with the following stanza:

The best of expedients, the law can propose, Our church to preserve, and to quiet our foes, Is not to let lawn sleeves our parliament fill, But throw out the bishops, that threw out the bill. _State Poems_, Vol. III. p. 154.

The Tunbridge ballad, which our author also ascribes to Shadwell or his assistant, I have not found among the numerous libels of the time.

36. The "Massacre of Paris" appears to have been written by Lee, during the time of the Popish plot, and if then brought out, the subject might have been extravagantly popular. It would appear it was suppressed at the request of the French ambassador. Several speeches, and even a whole scene seem to have been transplanted to the "Duke of Guise," which were afterwards replaced, when the Revolution rendered the "Massacre of Paris," again a popular topic. There were, among others, the description of the meeting of Alva and the queen mother at Bayonne; the sentiments expressed concerning the assassination of Cæsar, and especially the whole quarrelling scene between Guise and Grillon, which, in the "Massacre of Paris," passes between Guise and the admiral Chastillon. In the preface to the "Princess of Cleves," which was acted in 1689, Lee gives the following account of the transposition of these passages. "The Duke of Guise, who was notorious for a bolder fault, has wrested two whole scenes from the original, (the Massacre just before mentioned,) which, after the vacation, he will be forced to pay. I was, I confess, through indignation, forced to limb my own child, which time, the true cure for all maladies and injustice, has set together again. The play cost me much pains, the story is true, and, I hope, the object will display treachery in its own colours. But this farce, comedy, tragedy, or mere play, was a revenge for the refusal of the other." This last sentence alludes to the suppression of the "Massacre of Paris," which, according to the author's promise, appeared with all its appurtenances restored in 1690, the year following.]

37. When the days of Whiggish prosperity shone forth, Shadwell did his best to retort upon our poet. In the prologue to "Bury Fair," we find the following lines of exultation, on his having regained possession of the stage:

Those wretched poetitos, who got praise, By writing most _confounded loyal plays_, With viler coarser jests, than at Bear-garden, And silly Grub-street songs, worse than Tom Farthing; If any noble patriot did excel, His own and country's rights defending well, These yelping curs were straight 'looed on to bark, On the deserving man to set a mark; Those abject fawning parasites and knaves. Since they were such, would have all others slaves. 'Twas precious _loyalty_, that was thought fit To atone for want of honesty and wit; No wonder common sense was all cried down, And noise and nonsense swaggered through the town; Our author then opprest would have you know it. Was silenced for a non-conformist poet; Now, sirs, since common sence has won the day, Be kind to this as to his last year's play; His friends stood firmly to him, when distressed, He hopes the number is not now decreast. He found esteem from those he valued most; Proud of his friends, he of his foes could boast.

38. "Know then, to prevent the farther shedding of Christian blood, we are all content Ventoso shall be viceroy, upon condition I may be viceroy over him." Tempest, as altered by Dryden, vol. iii. p. 124.

39. The fable alluded to occurs in the _Pia Hilaria_ of Gazæus, and in Le Grand's _Fabliaux_; it makes the subject of a humorous tale by Mr Robert Southey.

40. Alluding to the well-known catastrophe of poor Settle acting in Bartholomew fair:

"Reduced at last to hiss in his own dragon."

41. The _say_, or _assay_, is the first cut made on the stag when he is killed. The hunter begins at the brisket, and draws the knife downwards. The purpose is, to ascertain how fat he is:

"At the assay kitle him, that Lends may se Anon Fat or lene whether that he be." _Boke of St Alban's._

The allusion in the text is to the cruel punishment of high treason by quartering.

42. "And so thou shalt for me," said James, when he came to the passage; "thou art a biting knave, but a witty one."

* * * * *

ALBION AND ALBANIUS:

AN

OPERA

_Discite justitiam, moniti, et non temnere divos._ VIRG.

ALBION AND ALBANIUS.

This opera, like the play which precedes it, had an avowed political object. It was intended to celebrate the victory of the crown over its opponents, or, as our author would have expressed it, of loyalty over sedition and insurrection. The events, which followed the Restoration, are rapidly, but obviously and distinctly, traced down to the death of Charles, and the quiet accession of his brother, who, after all the storms which had threatened to blast his prospects, found himself enabled to mount the throne, with ease sufficient to encourage him to the measures which precipitated him from that elevation. The leading incidents of the busy and intriguing reign of Charles II. are successively introduced in the following order. The city of London is discovered occupied by the republicans and fanatics, depicted under the allegorical personages Democracy and Zeal. General Monk, as Archon, charms the factions to sleep, and the Restoration is emblematized by the arrival of Charles, and the Duke of York, under the names of Albion and Albanius. The second act opens with a council of the fiends, where the popish plot is hatched, and Democracy and Zeal are dismissed, to propagate it upon earth, with Oates, the famous witness, in their train. The next entry presents Augusta, or London, stung by a snake, to intimate the revival of the popular faction in the metropolis. Democracy and Zeal, under the disguise of Patriotism and Religion, insinuate themselves into the confidence of the city, and are supposed to foment the parliamentary opposition, which, ending on the bill of exclusion, rendered it necessary, that the Duke of York should leave the kingdom. We have then, in allegorical representation, the internal feuds of the parties, which, from different causes, opposed the crown. The adherents of Monmouth, and the favourers of republican tenets, are represented as disputing with each other, until the latter, by the flight of Shaftesbury, obtains a final ascendancy. In the mean while, Charles, or Albion, has recourse to the advice of Proteus; under which emblem an evil minded whig might suppose Halifax, and the party of Trimmers, to be represented; actuated by whose versatile, and time-serving politics, Charles gave way to each wave, but remained buoyant amid the tempest. The Rye-house plot is then presented in allegory,--an unfit subject for exultation, since the dark intrigues of the interior conspirators were made the instruments of the fall of Sidney and Russell. The return of the Duke of York, with his beautiful princess, and the rejoicings which were supposed to take place, in heaven and earth, upon Charles' attaining the pinnacle of uncontrolled power, was originally the intended termination of the opera; which, as first written, consisted of only one act, introductory to the drama of "King Arthur." But the eye and the ear of Charles were never to be regaled by this flattering representation: he died while the opera was in rehearsal. A slight addition, as the author has himself informed us, adapted the conclusion of his piece to this new and unexpected event. The apotheosis of Albion, and the succession of Albanius to the uncontrouled domination of a willing people, debased by circumstances expressing an unworthy triumph over deceased foes, was substituted as the closing scene. Altered as it was, to suit the full-blown fortune of James, an ominous fatality attended these sugared scenes, which were to present the exulting recapitulation of his difficulties and triumph. While the opera was performing, for the sixth time only, news arrived that Monmouth had landed in the west, the audience dispersed, and the players never attempted to revive a play, which seemed to be of evil augury to the crown.

Our author appears to have found it difficult to assign a name for this performance, which was at once to address itself to the eye, the ear, and the understanding. The ballad-opera, since invented, in which part is sung, part acted and spoken, comes nearest to its description. The plot of the piece contains nothing brilliantly ingenious: the deities of Greece and Rome had been long hacknied machines in the masks and operas of the sixteenth century; and it required little invention to paint the duchess of York as Venus, or to represent her husband protected by Neptune, and Charles consulting with Proteus. But though the device be trite, the lyrical diction of the opera is most beautifully sweet and flowing. The reader finds none of these harsh inversions, and awkward constructions, by which ordinary poets are obliged to screw their verses into the fetters of musical time. Notwithstanding the obstacles stated by Dryden himself, every line seems to flow in its natural and most simple order; and where the music required repetition of a line, or a word, the iteration seems to improve the sense and poetical effect. Neither is the piece deficient in the higher requisites of lyric poetry. When music is to be "married to immortal verse," the poet too commonly cares little with how indifferent a yoke-mate he provides her. But Dryden, probably less from a superior degree of care, than from that divine impulse which he could not resist, has hurried along in the full stream of real poetry. The description of the desolation of London, at the opening of the piece, the speech of Augusta, in act second, and many other passages, fully justify this encomium.

The music of the piece was entrusted to Louis Grabut, or Grabu, the master of the king's band, whom Charles, French in his politics, his manners, and his taste, preferred to the celebrated Purcell. "Purcell, however," says an admirable judge, "having infinitely more fancy, and, indeed, harmonical resources, than the Frenchified Tuscan, his predecessor, now offered far greater pleasure and amusement to a liberal lover of music, than can be found, not only in the productions of Cambert and Grabu, whom Charles II., and, to flatter his majesty, Dryden, patronised in preference to Purcell, but in all the noisy monotony of the rhapsodist of Quinault."--_Burney's History of Music_, Vol. III. p. 500.

It seems to be generally admitted, that the music of "Albion and Albanius" was very indifferent. From the preface, as well as the stage directions, it appears that a vast expence was incurred, in shew, dress, and machinery. Downes informs us, that, owing to the interruption of the run of the piece in the manner already mentioned, the half of the expence was never recovered, and the theatre was involved considerably in debt.--_Rosc. Anglic._ p. 40. The whigs, against whom the satire was levelled, the rival dramatists of the day, and the favourers of the English school of music, united in triumphing in its downfall[1].

Mr Luttrell's manuscript note has fixed the first representation of "Albion and Albanius" to the 3d of June, 1685; and the laudable accuracy of Mr Malone has traced its sixth night to Saturday the 13th of the same month, when an express brought the news of Monmouth's landing. The opera was shortly after published. In 1687 Grabut published the music, with a dedication to James II.[2]

Footnotes: 1. The following verses are rather better worthy of preservation than most which have been written against Dryden.

From Father Hopkins, whose vein did inspire him, Bayes sends this raree-show to public view; Prentices, fops, and their footmen admire him, Thanks patron, painter, and Monsieur Grabu.

Each actor on the stage his luck bewailing, Finds that his loss is infallibly true; Smith, Nokes, and Leigh, in a fever with railing, Curse poet, painter, and Monsieur Grabu.

Betterton, Betterton, thy decorations, And the machines, were well written, we knew; But, all the words were such stuff, we want patience, And little better is Monsieur Grabu.

Damme, says Underhill, I'm out of two hundred, Hoping that rainbows and peacocks would do; Who thought infallible Tom[a] could have blundered? A plague upon him and Monsieur Grabu!

Lane, thou hast no applause for thy capers, Though all, without thee, would make a man spew; And a month hence will not pay for the tapers, Spite of Jack Laureat, and Monsieur Grabu.

Bayes, thou wouldst have thy skill thought universal, Though thy dull ear be to music untrue; Then, whilst we strive to confute the Rehearsal, Prithee leave thrashing of Monsieur Grabu.

With thy dull prefaces still thou wouldst treat us, Striving to make thy dull bauble look fair; So the horned herd of the city do cheat us, Still most commending the worst of their ware.

Leave making operas and writing of lyricks, Till thou hast ears, and can alter thy strain; Stick to thy talent of bold panegyricks, And still remember--_breathing the vein_[b].

Yet, if thou thinkest the town will extoll them, Print thy dull notes; but be thrifty and wise: Instead of angels subscribed for the volume, Take a round shilling, and thank my advice.

In imitating thee, this may be charming, Gleaning from laureats is no shame at all; And let this song be sung next performing, Else, ten to one that the prices will fall.

Footnotes: a. Thomas Betterton.

b. An expression in Dryden's poem on the death of Cromwell, which his libeller insisted on applying to the death of Charles I.

2. Langbaine has preserved another jest upon our author's preference of Grabut to the English musicians.

Grabut, his yokemate, ne'er shall be forgot. Whom th' god of tunes upon a muse begot; Bayes on a double score to him belongs, As well for writing, as for setting songs; For some have sworn the intrigue so odd is laid, That Bayes and he mistook each other's trade, Grabut the lines, and he the music made.

THE

PREFACE.

If wit has truly been defined, "a propriety of thoughts and words,[1]" then that definition will extend to all sorts of poetry; and, among the rest, to this present entertainment of an opera. Propriety of thought is that fancy which arises naturally from the subject, or which the poet adapts to it; propriety of words is the clothing of those thoughts with such expressions as are naturally proper to them; and from both these, if they are judiciously performed, the delight of poetry results. An opera is a poetical tale, or fiction, represented by vocal and instrumental music, adorned with scenes, machines, and dancing. The supposed persons of this musical drama are generally supernatural, as gods, and goddesses, and heroes, which at least are descended from them, and are in due time to be adopted into their number. The subject, therefore, being extended beyond the limits of human nature, admits of that sort of marvellous and surprising conduct, which is rejected in other plays. Human impossibilities are to be received as they are in faith; because, where gods are introduced, a supreme power is to be understood, and second causes are out of doors; yet propriety is to be observed even here. The gods are all to manage their peculiar provinces; and what was attributed by the heathens to one power, ought not to be performed by any other. Phoebus must foretel, Mercury must charm with his caduceus, and Juno must reconcile the quarrels of the marriage-bed; to conclude, they must all act according to their distinct and peculiar characters. If the persons represented were to speak upon the stage, it would follow, of necessity, that the expressions should be lofty, figurative, and majestical: but the nature of an opera denies the frequent use of these poetical ornaments; for vocal music, though it often admits a loftiness of sound, yet always exacts an harmonious sweetness; or, to distinguish yet more justly, the recitative part of the opera requires a more masculine beauty of expression and sound. The other, which, for want of a proper English word, I must call the _songish part_, must abound in the softness and variety of numbers; its principal intention being to please the hearing, rather than to gratify the understanding. It appears, indeed, preposterous at first sight, that rhyme, on any consideration, should take place of reason; but, in order to resolve the problem, this fundamental proposition must be settled, that the first inventors of any art or science, provided they have brought it to perfection, are, in reason, to give laws to it; and, according to their model, all after-undertakers are to build. Thus, in epic poetry, no man ought to dispute the authority of Homer, who gave the first being to that masterpiece of art, and endued it with that form of perfection in all its parts, that nothing was wanting to its excellency. Virgil therefore, and those very few who have succeeded him, endeavoured not to introduce, or innovate, any thing in a design already perfected, but imitated the plan of the inventor; and are only so far true heroic poets, as they have built on the foundations of Homer. Thus, Pindar, the author of those Odes, which are so admirably restored by Mr Cowley in our language, ought for ever to be the standard of them; and we are bound, according to the practice of Horace and Mr Cowley, to copy him. Now, to apply this axiom to our present purpose, whosoever undertakes the writing of an opera, which is a modern invention, though built indeed on the foundation of ethnic worship, is obliged to imitate the design of the Italians, who have not only invented, but brought to perfection, this sort of dramatic musical entertainment. I have not been able, by any search, to get any light, either of the time when it began, or of the first author; but I have probable reasons, which induce me to believe, that some Italians, having curiously observed the gallantries of the Spanish Moors at their zambras, or royal feasts, where music, songs, and dancing, were in perfection, together with their machines, which are usual at their _sortija_, or running at the ring, and other solemnities, may possibly have refined upon those moresque divertisements, and produced this delightful entertainment, by leaving out the warlike part of the carousals, and forming a poetical design for the use of the machines, the songs, and dances. But however it began, (for this is only conjectural,) we know, that, for some centuries, the knowledge of music has flourished principally in Italy, the mother of learning and of arts[2]; that poetry and painting have been there restored, and so cultivated by Italian masters, that all Europe has been enriched out of their treasury; and the other parts of it, in relation to those delightful arts, are still as much provincial to Italy, as they were in the time of the Roman empire. Their first operas seem to have been intended for the celebration of the marriages of their princes, or for the magnificence of some general time of joy; accordingly, the expences of them were from the purse of the sovereign, or of the republic, as they are still practised at Venice, Rome, and at other places, at their carnivals. Savoy and Florence have often used them in their courts, at the weddings of their dukes; and at Turin particularly, was performed the "Pastor Fido," written by the famous Guarini, which is a pastoral opera made to solemnise the marriage of a Duke of Savoy. The prologue of it has given the design to all the French; which is a compliment to the sovereign power by some god or goddess; so that it looks no less than a kind of embassy from heaven to earth. I said in the beginning of this preface, that the persons represented in operas are generally gods, goddesses, and heroes descended from them, who are supposed to be their peculiar care; which hinders not, but that meaner persons may sometimes gracefully be introduced, especially if they have relation to those first times, which poets call the Golden Age; wherein, by reason of their innocence, those happy mortals were supposed to have had a more familiar intercourse with superior beings; and therefore shepherds might reasonably be admitted, as of all callings the most innocent, the most happy, and who, by reason of the spare time they had, in their almost idle employment, had most leisure to make verses, and to be in love; without somewhat of which passion, no opera can possibly subsist.

It is almost needless to speak any thing of that noble language, in which this musical drama was first invented and performed. All, who are conversant in the Italian, cannot but observe, that it is the softest, the sweetest, the most harmonious, not only of any modern tongue, but even beyond any of the learned. It seems indeed to have been invented for the sake of poetry and music; the vowels are so abounding in all words, especially in terminations of them, that, excepting some few monosyllables, the whole language ends in them. Then the pronunciation is so manly, and so sonorous, that their very speaking has more of music in it than Dutch poetry and song. It has withal derived, so much copiousness and eloquence from the Greek and Latin, in the composition of words, and the formation of them, that if, after all, we must call it barbarous, it is the most beautiful and most learned of any barbarism in modern tongues; and we may, at least, as justly praise it, as Pyrrhus did the Roman discipline and martial order, that it was of barbarians, (for so the Greeks called all other nations,) but had nothing in it of barbarity. This language has in a manner been refined and purified from the Gothic ever since the time of Dante, which is above four hundred years ago; and the French, who now cast a longing eye to their country, are not less ambitious to possess their elegance in poetry and music; in both which they labour at impossibilities. It is true, indeed, they have reformed their tongue, and brought both their prose and poetry to a standard; the sweetness, as well as the purity, is much improved, by throwing off the unnecessary consonants, which made their spelling tedious and their pronunciation harsh: but, after all, as nothing can be improved beyond its own _species_, or farther than its original nature will allow; as an ill voice, though ever so thoroughly instructed in the rules of music, can never be brought to sing harmoniously, nor many an honest critic ever arrive to be a good poet; so neither can the natural harshness of the French, or their perpetual ill accent, be ever refined into perfect harmony like the Italian. The English has yet more natural disadvantages than the French; our original Teutonic, consisting most in monosyllables, and those incumbered with consonants, cannot possibly be freed from those inconveniencies. The rest of our words, which are derived from the Latin chiefly, and the French, with some small sprinklings of Greek, Italian, and Spanish, are some relief in poetry, and help us to soften our uncouth numbers; which, together with our English genius, incomparably beyond the trifling of the French, in all the nobler parts of verse, will justly give us the pre-eminence. But, on the other hand, the effeminacy of our pronunciation, (a defect common to us and to the Danes,) and our scarcity of female rhymes, have left the advantage of musical composition for songs, though not for recitative, to our neighbours.

Through these difficulties I have made a shift to struggle in my part of the performance of this opera; which, as mean as it is, deserves at least a pardon, because it has attempted a discovery beyond any former undertaker of our nation; only remember, that if there be no north-east passage to be found, the fault is in nature, and not in me; or, as Ben Jonson tells us in "The Alchymist," when projection had failed, and the glasses were all broken, there was enough, however, in the bottoms of them, to cure the itch; so I may thus be positive, that if I have not succeeded as I desire, yet there is somewhat still remaining to satisfy the curiosity, or itch of sight and hearing. Yet I have no great reason to despair; for I may, without vanity, own some advantages, which are not common to every writer; such as are the knowledge of the Italian and French language, and the being conversant with some of their best performances in this kind; which have furnished me with such variety of measures as have given the composer, Monsieur Grabut, what occasions he could wish, to shew his extraordinary talent in diversifying the recitative, the lyrical part, and the chorus; in all which, not to attribute any thing to my own opinion, the best judges and those too of the best quality, who have honoured his rehearsals with their presence, have no less commended the happiness of his genius than his skill. And let me have the liberty to add one thing, that he has so exactly expressed my sense in all places where I intended to move the passions, that he seems to have entered into my thoughts, and to have been the poet as well as the composer. This I say, not to flatter him, but to do him right; because amongst some English musicians, and their scholars, who are sure to judge after them, the imputation of being a Frenchman is enough to make a party, who maliciously endeavour to decry him. But the knowledge of Latin and Italian poets, both which he possesses, besides his skill in music, and his being acquainted with all the performances of the French operas, adding to these the good sense to which he is born, have raised him to a degree above any man, who shall pretend to be his rival on our stage. When any of our countrymen excel him, I shall be glad, for the sake of old England, to be shewn my error; in the mean time, let virtue be commended, though in the person of a stranger[3].

If I thought it convenient, I could here discover some rules which I have given to myself in writing of an opera in general, and of this opera in particular; but I consider, that the effect would only be, to have my own performance measured by the laws I gave; and, consequently, to set up some little judges, who, not understanding thoroughly, would be sure to fall upon the faults, and not to acknowledge any of the beauties; an hard measure, which I have often found from false critics. Here, therefore, if they will criticise, they shall do it out of their own _fond_; but let them first be assured that their ears are nice; for there is neither writing nor judgment on this subject without that good quality. It is no easy matter, in our language, to make words so smooth, and numbers so harmonious, that they shall almost set themselves. And yet there are rules for this in nature, and as great a certainty of quantity in our syllables, as either in the Greek or Latin: but let poets and judges understand those first, and then let them begin to study English. When they have chewed a while upon these preliminaries, it may be they will scarce adventure to tax me with want of thought and elevation of fancy in this work; for they will soon be satisfied, that those are not of the nature of this sort of writing. The necessity of double rhimes, and ordering of the words and numbers for the sweetness of the voice, are the main hinges on which an opera must move; and both of these are without the compass of any art to teach another to perform, unless nature, in the first place, has done her part, by enduing the poet with that nicety of hearing, that the discord of sounds in words shall as much offend him, as a seventh in music would a good composer. I have therefore no need to make excuses for meanness of thought in many places: the Italians, with all the advantages of their language, are continually forced upon it, or, rather, affect it. The chief secret is the choice of words; and, by this choice, I do not here mean elegancy of expression, but propriety of sound, to be varied according to the nature of the subject. Perhaps a time may come when I may treat of this more largely, out of some observations which I have made from Homer and Virgil, who, amongst all the poets, only understood the art of numbers, and of that which was properly called _rhythmus_ by the ancients.

The same reasons, which depress thought in an opera, have a stronger effect upon the words, especially in our language; for there is no maintaining the purity of English in short measures, where the rhime returns so quick, and is so often female, or double rhime, which is not natural to our tongue, because it consists too much of monosyllables, and those, too, most commonly clogged with consonants; for which reason I am often forced to coin new words, revive some that are antiquated, and botch others; as if I had not served out my time in poetry, but was bound apprentice to some doggrel rhimer, who makes songs to tunes, and sings them for a livelihood. It is true, I have not been often put to this drudgery; but where I have, the words will sufficiently shew, that I was then a slave to the composition, which I will never be again: it is my part to invent, and the musician's to humour that invention. I may be counselled, and will always follow my friend's advice where I find it reasonable, but will never part with the power of the militia[4].

I am now to acquaint my reader with somewhat more particular concerning this opera, after having begged his pardon for so long a preface to so short a work. It was originally intended only for a prologue to a play of the nature of "The Tempest;" which is a tragedy mixed with opera, or a drama, written in blank verse, adorned with scenes, machines, songs, and dances, so that the fable of it is all spoken and acted by the best of the comedians; the other part of the entertainment to be performed by the same singers and dancers who were introduced in this present opera. It cannot properly be called a play, because the action of it is supposed to be conducted sometimes by supernatural means, or magic; nor an opera, because the story of it is not sung.--But more of this at its proper time.--But some intervening accidents having hitherto deferred the performance of the main design, I proposed to the actors, to turn the intended Prologue into an entertainment by itself, as you now see it, by adding two acts more to what I had already written. The subject of it is wholly allegorical; and the allegory itself so very obvious, that it will no sooner be read than understood. It is divided, according to the plain and natural method of every action, into three parts. For even Aristotle himself is contented to say simply, that in all actions there is a beginning, a middle, and an end; after which model all the Spanish plays are built.

The descriptions of the scenes, and other decorations of the stage, I had from Mr Betterton, who has spared neither for industry, nor cost, to make this entertainment perfect, nor for invention of the ornaments to beautify it.

To conclude, though the enemies of the composer are not few, and that there is a party formed against him of his own profession, I hope, and am persuaded, that this prejudice will turn in the end to his advantage. For the greatest part of an audience is always uninterested, though seldom knowing; and if the music be well composed, and well performed, they, who find themselves pleased, will be so wise as not to be imposed upon, and fooled out of their satisfaction. The newness of the undertaking is all the hazard. When operas were first set up in France, they were not followed over eagerly; but they gained daily upon their hearers, till they grew to that height of reputation, which they now enjoy. The English, I confess, are not altogether so musical as the French; and yet they have been pleased already with "The Tempest," and some pieces that followed, which were neither much better written, nor so well composed as this. If it finds encouragement, I dare promise myself to mend my hand, by making a more pleasing fable. In the mean time, every loyal Englishman cannot but be satisfied with the moral of this, which so plainly represents the double restoration of His Sacred Majesty.

POSTSCRIPT.

This preface being wholly written before the death of my late royal master, (_quem semper acerbum, semper honoratum, sic dii voluistis, habebo_) I have now lately reviewed it, as supposing I should find many notions in it, that would require correction on cooler thoughts. After four months lying by me, I looked on it as no longer mine, because I had wholly forgotten it; but I confess with some satisfaction, and perhaps a little vanity, that I found myself entertained by it; my own judgment was new to me, and pleased me when I looked on it as another man's. I see no opinion that I would retract or alter, unless it be, that possibly the Italians went not so far as Spain, for the invention of their operas. They might have it in their own country; and that by gathering up the shipwrecks of the Athenian and Roman theatres, which we know were adorned with scenes, music, dances, and machines, especially the Grecian. But of this the learned Monsieur Vossius, who has made our nation his second country, is the best, and perhaps the only judge now living. As for the opera itself, it was all composed, and was just ready to have been performed, when he, in honour of whom it was principally made, was taken from us.

He had been pleased twice or thrice to command, that it should be practised before him, especially the first and third acts of it; and publicly declared more than once, that the composition and choruses were more just, and more beautiful, than any he had heard in England. How nice an ear he had in music, is sufficiently known; his praise therefore has established the reputation of it above censure, and made it in a manner sacred. It is therefore humbly and religiously dedicated to his memory.

It might reasonably have been expected that his death must have changed the whole fabric of the opera, or at least a great part of it. But the design of it originally was so happy, that it needed no alteration, properly so called; for the addition of twenty or thirty lines in the apotheosis of Albion, has made it entirely of a piece, This was the only way which could have been invented, to save it from botched ending; and it fell luckily into my imagination; as if there were a kind of fatality even in the most trivial things concerning the succession: a change was made, and not for the worse, without the least confusion or disturbance; and those very causes, which seemed to threaten us with troubles, conspired to produce our lasting happiness.

Footnotes: 1. This definition occurs in the preface to the "State of Innocence;" but although given by Dryden, and sanctioned by Pope, it has a very limited resemblance to that which is defined. Mr Addison has, however, mistaken Dryden, in supposing that he applied this definition exclusively to what we now properly call _wit_. From the context it is plain, that he meant to include all poetical composition.--_Spectator_, No. 62. The word once comprehended human knowledge in general. We still talk of the wit of man, to signify all that man can devise.

2. The first Italian opera is said to have been that of "Dafne," performed at Florence in 1597.--_See_ BURNEY'S _History of Music_, Vol. iv. p. 17.

3. This passage gave great offence, being supposed to contain an oblique reflection on Purcell and the other English composers.

4. Alluding to the disputes betwixt the King and Parliament, on the important point of the command of the militia.]

PROLOGUE

Full twenty years, and more, our labouring stage Has lost, on this incorrigible age: Our poets, the John Ketches of the nation, Have seemed to lash ye, even to excoriation; But still no sign remains; which plainly notes, You bore like heroes, or you bribed like Oates.-- What can we do, when mimicking a fop, Like beating nut-trees, makes a larger crop? 'Faith, we'll e'en spare our pains! and, to content you, Will fairly leave you what your Maker meant you. Satire was once your physic, wit your food; One nourished not, and t'other drew no blood: We now prescribe, like doctors in despair, The diet your weak appetites can bear. Since hearty beef and mutton will not do, Here's julep-dance, ptisan of song and show: Give you strong sense, the liquor is too heady; You're come to farce,--that's asses milk,--already. Some hopeful youths there are, of callow wit, Who one day may be men, if heaven think fit; Sound may serve such, ere they to sense are grown, Like leading-strings, till they can walk alone.-- But yet, to keep our friends in countenance, know, The wise Italians first invented show; Thence into France the noble pageant past: 'Tis England's credit to be cozened last. Freedom and zeal have choused you o'er and o'er; } Pray give us leave to bubble you once more; } You never were so cheaply fooled before: } We bring you change, to humour your disease; Change for the worse has ever used to please: Then, 'tis the mode of France; without whose rules, None must presume to set up here for fools. In France, the oldest man is always young, Sees operas daily, learns the tunes so long, Till foot, hand, head, keep time with every song: Each sings his part, echoing from pit and box, With his hoarse voice, half harmony, half pox[1]. _Le plus grand roi du monde_ is always ringing, They show themselves good subjects by their singing: On that condition, set up every throat; You whigs may sing, for you have changed your note. Cits and citesses, raise a joyful strain, 'Tis a good omen to begin a reign; Voices may help your charter to restoring, And get by singing, what you lost by roaring.

Footnote: 1. This practice continued at the opera of Paris in the time of Gay. It could hardly have obtained any where else.

"But, hark! the full orchestra strikes the strings, The hero struts, and the whole audience sings; My jarring ear harsh grating murmurs wound. Hoarse and confused, like Babel's mingled sound. Hard chance had placed me near a noisy throat, That, in rough quavers, bellowed every note: "Pray, Sir," said I, "suspend awhile your song, The opera's drowned, your lungs are wondrous strong; I wish to hear your Roland's ranting strain, When he with rooted forests strews the plain."-- "_Monsieur assurement n'aime pas la musique._" Then turning round, he joined the ungrateful noise, And the loud chorus thundered with his voice." _Epistle to the Right Hon. William Pulteney._

Names of the Persons, represented in the same order as they appear first upon the stage.

MERCURY. AUGUSTA. _London._ THAMESIS. DEMOCRACY. ZELOTA. _Feigned Zeal._ ARCHON. _The General._ JUNO. IRIS. ALBION. ALBANIUS. PLUTO. ALECTO. APOLLO. NEPTUNE. NEREIDS. ACACIA. _Innocence._ TYRANNY. ASEBIA. _Atheism,_ or _Ungodliness._ PROTEUS. VENUS. FAME. _A Chorus of Cities._ _A Chorus of Rivers._ _A Chorus of the People._ _A Chorus of Furies._ _A Chorus of Nereids and Tritons._ _A grand Chorus of Heroes, Loves, and Graces._

THE

FRONTISPIECE.

The curtain rises, and a new frontispiece is seen, joined to the great pilasters, which are seen on each side of the stage: on the flat of each basis is a shield, adorned with gold; in the middle of the shield, on one side, are two hearts, a small scroll of gold over them, and an imperial crown over the scroll; on the other hand, in the shield, are two quivers full of arrows saltyre, &c.; upon each basis stands a figure bigger than the life; one represents Peace, with a palm in one, and an olive branch in the other hand; the other Plenty, holding a cornucopia, and resting on a pillar. Behind these figures are large columns of the Corinthian order, adorned with fruit and flowers: over one of the figures on the trees is the king's cypher; over the other, the queen's: over the capitals, on the cornice, sits a figure on each side; one represents Poetry, crowned with laurel, holding a scroll in one hand, the other with a pen in it, and resting on a book; the other, Painting, with a pallet and pencils, &c.: on the sweep of the arch lies one of the Muses, playing on a bass-viol; another of the Muses, on the other side, holding a trumpet in one hand, and the other on a harp. Between these figures, in the middle of the sweep of the arch, is a very large pannel in a frame of gold; in this pannel is painted, on one side, a Woman, representing the city of London, leaning her head on her hand in a dejected posture, showing her sorrow and penitence for her offences; the other hand holds the arms of the city, and a mace lying under it: on the other side is a figure of the Thames, with his legs shackled, and leaning on an empty urn: behind these are two imperial figures; one representing his present majesty; and the other the queen: by the king stands Pallas, (or wisdom and valour,) holding a charter for the city, the king extending his hand, as raising her drooping head, and restoring her to her ancient honour and glory: over the city are the envious devouring Harpies flying from the face of his majesty: By the queen stand the Three Graces, holding garlands of flowers, and at her feet Cupids bound, with their bows and arrows broken, the queen pointing with her sceptre to the river, and commanding the Graces to take off their fetters. Over the king, in a scroll, is this verse of Virgil,

_Discite justitiam, moniti, et non temnere divos._

Over the queen, this of the same author,

_Non ignara mali, miscris succurrere disco._

ALBION AND ALBANIUS.

AN

OPERA.

DECORATIONS OF THE STAGE IN THE FIRST ACT.

_The Curtain rises, and there appears on either side of the Stage, next to the Frontispiece, a Statue on Horseback of Gold, on Pedestals of Marble, enriched with Gold, and bearing the Imperial Arms of England. One of these Statues is taken from that of the late King at Charing-cross; the other from that figure of his present Majesty (done by that noble Artist, Mr. Gibbons) at Windsor._

_The Scene is a Street of Palaces, which lead to the Front of the Royal-Exchange; the great Arch is open, and the view is continued through the open part of the Exchange, to the Arch on the other side, and thence to as much of the Street beyond, as could possibly be taken._

MERCURY DESCENDS IN A CHARIOT DRAWN BY RAVENS.

_He comes to Augusta and Thamesis. They lie on Couches at a distance from each other in dejected postures; She attended by Cities, He by Rivers._

_On the side of Augusta's Couch are painted towers falling, a Scarlet Gown, and a Gold Chain, a Cap of Maintenance thrown down, and a Sword in a Velvet Scabbard thrust through it, the City Arms, a Mace with an old useless Charter, and all in disorder. Before Thamesis are broken Reeds, Bull-rushes, Sedge, &c. with his Urn Reverst._