cepts which it contains are exact and just; and that it is therefore, at once, a book of entertainment and of science. This I was told by Miller, the great gardener and botanist, whose expression was, that "there were many books written on the same subject in prose, which do not contain so much truth as that poem."

In the disposition of his matter, so as to intersperse precepts relating to the culture of trees with sentiments more generally alluring, and in easy and graceful transitions from one subject to another, he has very diligently imitated his master; but he unhappily pleased himself with blank verse, and supposed that the numbers of Milton, which impress the mind with veneration, combined as they are with subjects of inconceivable grandeur, could be sustained by images, which, at most, can rise only to elegance. Contending angels may shake the regions of heaven in blank verse: but the flow of equal measures, and the embellishment of rhyme, must recommend to our attention the art of engrafting, and decide the merit of the redstreak and pearmain.

What study could confer, Philips had obtained: but natural deficiency cannot be supplied. He seems not born to greatness and elevation. He is never lofty, nor does he often surprise with unexpected excellence; but, perhaps, to his last poem may be applied what Tully said of the work of Lucretius, that it is written with much art, though with few blazes of genius.

The following fragment written by Edmund
Smith, upon the works of Philips, has been
transcribed from the Bodleian manuscripts.
"A Prefatory Discourse to the poem on Mr.
Philips, with a character of his writings.

"It is altogether as equitable some account should be given of those who have distinguished themselves by their writings, as of those who are renowned for great actions. It is but reasonable they, who contribute so much to the immortality of others, should have some share in it themselves; and since their genius only is discovered by their works, it is just that their virtues should be recorded by their friends. For no modest men (as the person I write of was in perfection) will write their own penegyrics; and it is very hard that they should go without reputation, only because they the more deserve it. The end of writing lives is for the imitation of the readers. It will be in the power of very few to imitate the Duke of Marlborough; we must be content with admiring his great qualities and actions, without hopes of following them. The private and social virtues are more easily transcribed. The life of Cowley is more instructive, as well as more fine, than any we have in our language. And it is to be wished, since Mr. Philips had so many of the good qualities of that poet, that I had some of the abilities of his historian.

"The Grecian philosophers have had their lives written, their morals commended, and their sayings recorded. Mr. Philips had all the virtues to which most of them only pretended, and all their integrity without any of their affec

tation.

"The French are very just to eminent men

in this point; not a learned man nor a poet can die, but all Europe must be acquainted with his accomplishments. They give praise and expect it in their turns; they commend their Patrus and Molieres, as well as their Condés and Turennes; their Pellisons and Racines have their eulogies, as well as the Prince whom they celebrate; and their poems, their mercuries, and orations, nay, their very gazettes, are filled with the praises of the learned.

"I am satisfied, had they a Philips among them, and known how to value him; had they one of his learning, his temper, but above all of that particular turn of humour, that altogether new genius, he had been an example to their poets, and a subject of their panegyrics, and perhaps set in competition with the ancients, to whom only he ought to submit.

"I shall therefore endeavour to do justice to his memory, since nobody else undertakes it. And indeed I can assign no cause why so many of his acquaintance (that are as willing and more able than myself to give an account of him) should forbear to celebrate the memory of one so dear to them, but only that they look upon it as a work entirely belonging to me.

"I shall content myself with giving only a character of the person and his writings, with out meddling with the transactions of his life, which was altogether private. I shall only make this known observation of his family, that there was scarcely so many extraordinary men in any one. I have been acquainted with five of his brothers (of which three are still living), all men of fine parts, yet all of a very unlike temper and genius. So that their fruitful mother, like the mother of the gods, seems to have produced a numerous offspring, all of different though uncommon faculties. Of the living, neither their modesty, nor the humour of the present age, permits me to speak of the dead, I may say something.

"One of them had made the greatest progress in the study of the law of nature and nations of any one I know. He had perfectly mastered, and even improved, the notions of Grotius, and the more refined ones of Puffendorf. He could refute Hobbes with as much solidity as some of greater name, and expose him with as much wit as Echard. That noble study which requires the greatest reach of reason and nicety of distinction, was not at all difficult to him. "Twas a national loss to be deprived of one who understood a science so necessary, and yet so unknown in England. I shall add only, he had the same honesty and sincerity as the person I write of, but more heat; the former was more inclined to argue, the latter to divert; one employed his reason more, the other his imagination: the former had been well qualified for those posts, which the modesty of the latter made him refuse. His other dead brother would have been an ornament to the College of which he was a member. He had a genius either for poetry or oratory; and, though very young, composed several very agreeable pieces. In all probability he would have written as finely as his brother did nobly. He might have been the Waller, as the other was the Milton of his time, The one might celebrate Marlborough, the other his beautiful offspring. This had not been so fit to describe the actions of heroes as the

expose all this stuff, but so arrogant to defend it
with an epistle; like a saucy booth-keeper, that,
when he had put a cheat upon the people, would
wrangle and fight with any that would not like
it, or would offer to discover it; for which arro-
gance our poet receives this correction; and, to
jerk him a little the sharper, I will not transpose
his verse, but by the help of his own words
transnonsense sense, that by my stuff people
may judge the better what his is:

Great Boy, thy tragedy and sculptures done,
From press and plates, in flects do homeward run;
And in ridiculous and humble pride,
Their course in ballad-singers' baskets guide,
Whose greasy twigs do all new beauties take,
From the gay shows thy dainty sculptures make.
Thy lines a mess of rhyming nonsense yield,
A senseless tale with flattering fustian fill'd
No grain of sense does in one line appear.
Thy words big bulks of boisterous bombast bear.

With noise they move, and from players' mouths rebound,
When their tongues dance to thy words' empty sound,
By thee inspir'd, the rumbling verses roll,
As if that rhyme and bombast lent a soul;
And with that sou! they seem taught duty too;
To huffing words does humble nonsense bow,
As if it would thy worthless worth enhance,
To th' lowest rank of fops thy praise advance,
To whom, by instinct, all thy stuff is dear:
Their loud claps echo to the theatre.
From breaths of fools thy commendation spreads,
Fame sings thy praise with mouths of logger-heads.
With noise and laughing each thy fustian greets,
'Tis clapt by choirs of empty-headed cits,
Who have their tribute sent, and homage given,
As men in whispers send loud noise to heaven.

"Thus I have daubed him with his own
dle and now we are come from aboard his
dancing, masking, rebounding, breathing fleet:
and, as if we had landed at Gotham, we meet
nothing but fools and nonsense.”

they, who accuse me of thefts, would steal him plays like mine;" and then relates how much labour he spends in fitting for the English stage what he borrows from others.

"Tyrannic Love, or the Virgin Martyr," (1672) was another tragedy in rhyme, conspicuous for many passages of strength and elegance, and many of empty noise and ridiculous turbulence. The rants of Maximin have been always the sport of criticism; and were at length, if his own confession may be trusted, the shame of the writer.

Of this play he has taken care to let the reader know, that it was contrived and written in seven weeks. Want of time was often his excuse, or perhaps shortness of time was his private boast in the form of an apology.

It was written before "The Conquest of Granada," but published after it. The design is to recommend piety. "I considered that pleasure was not the only end of poesy; and that even the instructions of morality were not so wholly the business of a poet, as that the precepts and examples of piety were to be omitted; for to leave that employment altogether to the clergy, were to forget that religion was first taught in verse, which the laziness or dullness of succeeding priesthood turned afterwards into prose." Thus foolishly could Dryden write, rather than not show his malice to the parsons.

The two parts of "The Conquest of Granada" (1672) are written with a seeming determipud-nation to glut the public with dramatic wonders, to exhibit in its highest elevation a theatrical meteor of incredible love and impossible valour, and to leave no room for a wilder flight to the extravagance of posterity. All the rays of roSuch was the criticism to which the genius of mantic heat, whether amorous or warlike, glow Dryden could be reduced between rage and ter-in Almanzor by a kind of concentration. He is ror; rage with little provocation, and terror above all laws; he is exempt from all restraints; with little danger. To see the highest mind thus he ranges the world at will, and governs wherlevelled with the meanest, may produce some ever he appears. He fights without inquiring solace to the consciousness of weakness, and the cause, and loves in spite of the obligations of some mortification to the pride of wisdom. But justice, of rejection by his mistress, and of prolet it be remembered that minds are not levelled hibition from the dead. Yet the scenes are, for in their powers but when they are first levelled the most part, delightful; they exhibit a kind of in their desires. Dryden and Settle had both illustrious depravity, and majestic madness, such placed their happiness in the claps of multi-as, if it is sometimes despised, is often revetudes.

"An Evening's Love, or the Mock Astrologer," a comedy, (1671,) is dedicated to the illustrious Duke of Newcastle, whom he courts by adding to his praises those of his lady, not only as a lover, but a partner of his studies. It is unpleasing to think how many names, once celebrated, are since forgotten. Of Newcastle's works nothing is now known but his Treatise on Horsemanship.

renced, and in which the ridiculous is mingled with the astonishing.

In the epilogue to the second part of "The Conquest of Granada," Dryden indulges his favourite pleasure of discrediting his predecessors; and this epilogue he has defended by a long postscript. He had promised a second dialogue, in which he should more fully treat of the virtues and faults of the English poets, who have written in the dramatic, epic, or lyric way. This promise was never formally performed; but, with respect to the dramatic writers, he has given us in his prefaces, and in this postscript, something equivalent; but his purpose being to exalt himself by the comparison, he shows faults distinctly, and only praises excellence in general terms.

The preface seems very elaborately written, and contains many just remarks on the fathers of the English drama. Shakspeare's plots, he says, are in the hundred novels of Cinthio; those of Beaumont and Fletcher in Spanish stories; Jonson only made them for himself. His criticisms upon tragedy, comedy, and farce, are judicious and profound. He endeavours to de- A play thus written, in professed defiance of fend the immorality of some of his comedies by probability, naturally drew upon itself the vulthe example of former writers; which is only tures of the theatre. One of the critics that atto say that he was not the first, nor perhaps the tacked it was Martin Clifford, to whom Sprat greatest offender. Against those that accused addressed the life of Cowley, with such venehim of plagiarism, he alleges a favourable ex-ration of his critical powers as might naturally pression of the King: "He only desired that excite great expectations of instruction from his

remarks. But let honest credulity beware of receiving characters from contemporary writers. Clifford's remarks, by the favour of Dr. Percy, were at last obtained; and, that no man may ever want them more, I will extract enough to satisfy all reasonable desire.

In the first letter his observation is only general: "You do live," says he, "in as much ignorance and darkness as you did in the womb; your writings are like a Jack-of-all-trades' shop; they have a variety, but nothing of value; and if thou art not the dullest plant-animal that ever the earth produced, all that I have conversed with are strangely mistaken in thee."

No, like his better fortune I'll appear, With open arms, loose veil, and flowing hair, Just flying forward from my rolling sphere. I wonder if he be so strict, how he dares make so bold with the sphere himself, and be so critical in other men's writings. Fortune is fancied standing on a globe, not on a sphere, as he told us in the first act.

"Because Elkanah's Similes are the most. unlike things to what they are compared in the world,' I'll venture to start a simile in his 'Annus Mirabilis:' he gives this poetical description of the ship called 'The London:

The goodly London in her gallant trim,
The phenix-daughter of the vanquish d'old,
Like a rich bride does on the ocean swim,
And on her shadow rides in floating gold.
Her flag aloft spread ruffling in the wind,
And sanguine streamers seem'd the flood to fire:
The weaver, charm d with what his loom design'd,
Goes on to sea, and knows not to retire.
With roomy decks her guns of mighty strength,
Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves,
Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length,
She seems a sea-wasp flying in the waves.

In the second he tells him that Almanzor is not more copied from Achilles than from ancient Pistol." But I am," says he, "strangely mistaken if I have not seen this very Almanzor of yours in some disguise about this town, and passing under another name. Pr'ythee tell me true, was not this huffcap once the Indian Emperor? and at another time did he not call himself Maximin? Was not Lyndaraxa once called Almeria? I mean, under Montezu-What a wonderful pother is here, to make all ma, the Indian Emperor. I protest and vow they are either the same, or so alike, that I cannot, for my heart, distinguish one from the other. You are, therefore, a strange unconscionable thief; thou art not content to steal from others, but dost rob thy poor wretched self too."

these poetical beautifications of a ship; that is, a phenix in the first stanza, and but a wasp in the last; nay, to make his humble comparison of a wasp more ridiculous, he does not say it flies upon the waves as nimbly as a wasp, or the like, but it seemed a wasp. But our author at the writing of this was not in his altitudes, to comNow was Settle's time to take his revenge. pare ships to floating palaces: a comparison to He wrote a vindication of his own lines; and, the purpose was a perfection he did not arrive if he is forced to yield any thing, makes his re- to till the Indian Emperor's days. But perhaps prisals upon his enemy. To say that his answer his similitude has more in it than we imagine; is equal to the censure, is no high commenda- this ship had a great many guns in her, and they, tion. To expose Dryden's method of analyzing | put all together, made the sting in the wasp's his expressions, he tries the same experiment tail; for this is all the reason I can guess, why upon the same description of the ships in "The it seemed a wasp. But because we will allow Indian Emperor," of which, however, he does him all we can to help out, let it be a phenix seanot deny the excellence; but intends to show, wasp, and the rarity of such an animal may do that by studied misconstruction every thing may much towards heightening the fancy. be equally represented as ridiculous. After so much of Dryden's elegant animadversions, justice requires that something of Settle's should be exhibited. The following observations are thereforc extracted from a quarto pamphlet of ninetyfive pages:

I'll travel then to some remoter sphere,

Till I find out new worlds, and crown you there."

On which Dryden made this remark:

"I believe our learned author takes a sphere for a country; the sphere of Morocco; as if Morocco were the globe of earth and water; but a globe is no sphere neither, by his leave," &c. "So sphere must not be sense, unless it relates to a circular motion about a globe, in which sense the astronomers use it. I would desire him to expound those lines in 'Granada :'

I'll to the turrets of the palace go,
And add new fire to those that fight below.
Thence, hero-like, with torches by my side
(Far be the omen though), my love I'll guide.

"It had been much more to his purpose, if he had designed to render the senseless play little, to have searched for some such pedantry as this:

Two ifs scarce make one possibility. If justice will take all, and nothing give, Justice, methinks, is not distributive. To die or kill you is the alternative. Rather than take your life, I will not live. "Observe how prettily our author chops logic in heroic verse. Three such fustian canting words as distributive, alternative, and two ifs, no man but himself would have come within the noise of. But he's a man of general learning and all comes into his play.

""Twould have done well too if he could have met with a rant or two, worth the observation: such as,

Move swiftly, Sun, and fly a lover's pace;
Leave months and weeks behind thee in thy race.

"But surely the sun, whether he flies a lover's or not a lover's pace, leaves weeks and months, nay, years too, behind him in his race.

"Poor Robin, or any other of the philo-mathematics, would have given him satisfaction in point."

the

If I could kill thee now, thy fate's so low,
That I must stoop, ere I can give the blow.
But mine is fixed so far above thy crown,
That all thy men,

Pil'd on thy back, can never pull it down.

poetry, but the promoter of his fortune. Langbaine places this play in 1673. The Earl of Rochester, therefore, was the famous Wilmot, whom yet tradition always represents as an enemy to Dryden, and who is mentioned by him with some disrespect in the preface to 'Juvenal.'

"Now where that is, Almanzor's fate is fixed, | acknowledges not only as the defender of his I cannot guess: but, wherever it is, I believe Almanzor, and think that all Abdalla's subjects, piled upon one another, might not pull down his fate so well as without. piling: besides, I think Abdalla so wise a man, that if Almanzor had told him that piling his men upon his back might do the feat, he would scarcely bear such a weight, for the pleasure of the exploit; but it is a huff, and let Abdalla do it if he dare.

The people like a headlong torrent go, And every dam they break or overflow, But, unoppos'd, they either lose their force, Or wind in volumes to their former course. A very pretty allusion, contrary to all sense or reason. Torrents, I take it, let them wind never so much, can never return to their former course, unless he can suppose that fountains can go upwards, which is impossible; nay, more, in the foregoing page he tells us so too; a trick of a very unfaithful memory.

But can no more than fountains upward flow. Which of a torrent, which signifies a rapid stream, is much more impossible. Besides, if he goes to quibble, and say, that it is possible by art water may be made return, and the same water run twice in one and the same channel; then he quite confutes what he says: for it is by being opposed, that it runs into its former course; for all engines that make water so return, do it by compulsion and opposition. Or, if he means a headlong torrent for a tide, which would be ridiculous, yet they do not wind in volumes but come fore-right back (if their upright lies straight to their former course), and that by opposition of the sea-water, that drives them back again.

As

"And for fancy, when he lights of any thing like it, 'tis a wonder if it be not borrowed. here, for example of, I find this fanciful thought in his Ann. Mirab.'

Old father Thames rais'd up his reverend head:
But fear'd the fate of Simoeís would return;
Deep in the ooze he sought his sedgy bed;
And shrunk his waters back into his urn.
This is stolen from Cowley's 'Davideis,' p. 9.
Swift Jordan started, and straight backward fled,
Hiding amongst thick reeds his aged head.
And when the Spaniards their assault begin,
At once beat those without and those within.

"The Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery," a comedy (1673), was driven off the stage, against the opinion, as the Author says, of the best judges. It is dedicated in a very elegant address to Sir Charles Sedley; in which he finds an oppor→ tunity for his usual complaint of hard treatment and unreasonable censure.

"Amboyna" (1673) is a tissue of mingled dialogue in verse and prose, and was perhaps written in less time than "The Virgin Martyr;" though the Author thought not fit, either ostentatiously or mournfully, to tell how little labour it cost him, or at how short a warning he produced it. It was a temporary performance, written in the time of the Dutch war, to inflame the nation against their enemies; to whom he hopes, as he declares in his epilogue, to make his poetry not less destructive than that by which Tyrtæus of old animated the Spartans. This play was written in the second Dutch war, in 1673.

"Troilus and Cressida" (1679) is a play altered from Shakspeare; but so altered, that, even in Langbaine's opinion, "the last scene in the third act is a masterpiece." It is introduced by a discourse on "the Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy," to which I suspect that Rymer's book had given occasion.

"The Spanish Friar" (1681) is a tragi-comedy, eminent for the happy coincidence and coalition of the two plots. As it was written against the papists, it would naturally at that time have friends and enemies; and partly by the popularity which it obtained at first, and partly by the real power both of the serious and risible part, it continued long a favourite of the public.

It was Dryden's opinion, at least for some time, and he maintained it in the dedication of this play, that the drama required an alterna tion of comic and tragic scenes; and that it is necessary to mitagate by alleviations of merriment the pressure of ponderous events, and the fatigue of toilsome passions. "Whoever," says writer for the stage." he, cannot perform both parts is but half a

"This Almanzor speaks of himself; and sure for one man to conquer an army within the city, "The Duke of Guise," a tragedy (1683) and another without the city, at once, is some-written in conjunction with Lee, as thing difficult: but this flight is pardonable to had been before, seems to deserve notice only Oedipus". some we meet with in Granada;' Osmin, for the offence which it gave to the remnant of speaking of Almanzor, the covenanters, and in general to the enemies of the court, who attacked him with great violence, and were answered by him; though at last he seems to withdraw from the conflict, by transferring the greater part of the blame or merit to his partner. It happened that a contract had been made between them, by which they were to join in writing a play and "he happened," says Dryden, to claim the promise just upon the finishing of a poem, when I would have been glad of a little respite.-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."

Who, like a tempest that outrides the wind, Made a just battle, ere the bodies join'd. Pray, what does this honourable person mean by a tempest that outrides the wind! a tempest that outrides itself? To suppose a tempest without wind, is as bad as supposing a man to walk without feet; for if he supposes the tempest to be something distinct from the wind, yet, as being the effect of wind only, to come before the cause is a little preposterous; so that if he takes it one way, or if he takes it the other, those two ifs will scarcely make one possibility." Enough of Settle.

"Marriage a-la-mode" (1673) is a comedy dedicated to the Earl of Rochester; whom he

This was a play written professedly for the party of the Duke of York, whose succession

85 was then opposed. A parallel is intended be- tible of sentiments accommodated to familiar in. tween the leaguers of France and the covenanterscidents. The complaint of life is celebrated; of England: and this intention produced the and there are many other passages that may be controversy. read with pleasure.

"Albion and Albanius" (1685) is a musical drama or opera, written, like "The Duke of Guise," against the republicans. With what success it was performed, I have not found.* "The state of Innocence and Fall of Man" (1675) is termed by him an opera: it is rather a tragedy in heroic rhyme, but of which the personages are such as cannot decently be exhibited on the stage. Some such production was foreseen by Marvel, who writes thus to" The design," says he, Milton:

"Or if a work so infinite be spann'd,

Jealous I was lest some less skilful hand, (Such as disquiet always what is well, And by ill-imitating would excel,)

Might hence presume the whole creation's day To change in scenes, and show it in a play."" It is another of his hasty productions: for the heat of his imagination raised it in a month. This composition is addressed to the Princess of Modena, then Dutchess of York, in a strain of flattery which disgraces genius, and which it was wonderful that any man that knew the meaning of his own words could use without self-detestation. It is an attempt to mingle earth and heaven, by praising human excellence in the language of religion.

The preface contains an apology for heroic verse and poetic license; by which is meant not any liberty taken in contracting or extending words, but the use of bold fictions and ambitious figures.

He

This play is addressed to the Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Duke of Buckingham, himself, if not a poet, yet a writer of verses, and a critic. In this address Dryden gave the first hints of his intention to write an epic poem. mentions his design in terms so obscure, that he seems afraid lest his plan should be purloined, as, he says, happened to him when he told it more plainly in his preface to "Juvenal." you know is great, the story English, and neither too near the present times, nor too distant from them."

66

"All for Love, or the World well Lost," (1678,) a tragedy founded upon the story of Antony and Cleopatra, he tells us, "is the only play which he wrote for himself;" the rest consent accounted the work in which he has adwere given to the people. It is by universal mitted the fewest improprieties of style or character; but it has one fault equal to many, though rather moral than critical, that, by admitting the romantic omnipotence of Love, he has recommended, as laudable and worthy of imitation, that conduct which, through all ages, the good have censured as vicious, and the bad despised as foolish.

though written upon the common topics of maOf this play, the prologue and the epilogue, licious and ignorant criticisms, and without any particular relation to the characters or incidents of the drama, are deservedly celebrated for their elegance and sprightliness."

"Limberham, or the Kind Keeper," (1680) is hibited as too indecent for the stage. What a comedy, which, after the third night, was progave offence was in the printing, as the Author says, altered or omitted. Dryden confesses that its indecency was objected to; but Langbaine, who yet seldom favours him, imputes its expul sion to resentment, because it "so much exposed the keeping part of the town.”

The reason which he gives for printing what was never acted cannot be overpassed: "I was induced to it in my own defence, many hundred copies of it being dispersed abroad without my knowledge or consent; and every one gathering new faults, it became at length a libel against me." These copies, as they gathered faults, were apparently manuscript, and he lived in an age very unlike ours, if many hundred copies of fourteen hundred lines were likely to be transcribed. An author has a right to print his own works, and need not seek an apology in falsehood; but he that could bear to write the dedication felt no pain in writing the pre-third acts. face.

"Aureng Zebe" (1676) is a tragedy founded on the actions of a great prince then reigning, but over nations not likely to employ their critics upon the transactions of the English stage. If he had known and disliked his own character, our trade was not in those times secure from his resentment. His country is at such a distance, that the manners might be safely falsified, and the incidents feigned for the remoteness of place is remarked, by Racine, to afford the same conveniences to a poet as length of time.

66

Dryden and Lee, in conjunction, from the works Oedipus" (1679) is a tragedy formed by of Sophocles, Seneca, and Corneille. Dryden planned the scenes, and composed the first and

ed either the first or second of his dramatic per"Don Sebastian" (1690) is commonly esteemformances. It is too long to be all acted, and has many characters and many incidents: and though it is not without sallies of frantic dignity, and more noise than meaning, yet, as it makes approaches to the possibilities of real life, and has some sentiments which leave a strong impression, it continued long to attract attention. Amidst the distresses of princes, and the vicissitudes of empire, are inserted several scenes which the writer intended for comic; but which, This play is written in rhyme, and has the suppose, that age did not much commend, and appearance of being the most elaborate of all the this would not endure. There are, however, dramas. The personages are imperial; but the passages of excellence universally acknowledg dialogue is often domestic, and therefore suscep-ed; the dispute and the reconciliation of Dorax

* Downes says, it was performed on a very unlucky day, viz. that on which the Duke of Monmouth landed in the west: and he intimates, that the consternation Into which the kingdom was thrown by this event was a reason why it was performed but six times and was in general ill received.-H.

I

and Sebastian has always been admired.

This play was first acted in 1690, after Dryden had for some years discontinued dramatic poetry.

"Amphytrion" is a comedy derived from Plautus and Moliere. The dedication is dated