[4] See vol. ix.

[5] See vol. ix.  This piece, entitled “Absalom’s Conspiracy or the Tragedy of Treason,” is printed in the same volume.

[6] See vol. ix.

[7] Lord Grey says in his narrative, “After the dissolution of the Oxford parliament, we were all very peaceably inclined, and nothing passed amongst us that summer of importance, which I can call to mind:  I think my Lord Shaftesbury was sent to the Tower just before the long vacation; and the Duke of Monmouth, Mr. Montague, Sir Thomas Armstrong, and myself, went to Tunbridge immediately after his lordship’s imprisonment, where we laid aside the thoughts of disturbing the peace of the government for those of diverting ourselves.”

[8] He usually distinguishes Dryden by his “Rehearsal” title of Bayes; and, among many other oblique expressions of malevolence, he has this note:—­

“To see the incorrigibleness of our poets in their pedantic manner, their vanity, defiance of criticism, their rhodomontade, and poetical bravado, we need only turn to our famous poet-laureat (the very Mr. Bayes himself), in one of his latest and most valued pieces, writ many years after the ingenious author of the ‘Rehearsal’ had drawn his picture.  ’I have been listening (says our poet, in his Preface to ’Don Sebastian’), what objections had been made against the conduct of the play, but found them all so trivial, that if I should name them, a true critic would imagine that I played booty.  Some are pleased to say the writing is dull; but aedatum habet de se loquatur. Others, that the double poison is unnatural; let the common received opinion, and Ausonius’s famous epigram, answer that.  Lastly, a more ignorant sort of creatures than either of the former maintain, that the character of Dorax is not only unnatural, but inconsistent with itself; let them read the play, and think again.  A longer reply is what those cavillers deserve not.  But I will give them and their fellows to understand, that the Earl of ——­ was pleased to read the tragedy twice over before it was acted and did me the favour to send me word, that I had written beyond any of my former plays, and that he was displeased anything should be cut away.  If I have not reason to prefer his single judgment to a whole faction, let the world be judge; for the opposition is the same with that of Lucan’s hero against an army, concurrere bellum atque virum.  I think I may modestly conclude,’ etc.

“Thus he goes on, to the very end, in the self-same strain.  Who, after this, can ever say of the ‘Rehearsal’ author, that his picture of our poet was overcharged, or the national humour wrong described?”

[9] See vol. ix.

[10] See some extracts from this piece, vol. ix.