[36] This Dryden might learn from Mulgrave, who mentions in his Memoirs, as a means of Monmouth’s advancement, the “great friendship which the Duke of York had openly professed to his wife, a lady of wit and reputation, who had both the ambition of making her husband considerable, and the address of succeeding in it, by using her interest in so friendly an uncle, whose design I believe was only to convert her.  Whether this familiarity of theirs was contrived or only connived at by the Duke of Monmouth himself, is hard to determine.  But I remember, that, after these two princes had become declared enemies, the Duke of York one day told me, with some emotion, as conceiving it a new mark of his nephew’s insolence, that he had forbidden his wife to receive any more visits from him; at which I could not help frankly replying, that I, who was not used to excuse him, yet could not hold from doing it in that case, wishing his highness might have no juster cause to complain of him.  Upon which the duke, surprised to find me excuse his and my own enemy, changed the discourse immediately.”—­Memoirs, p. 13.

I have perused letters from Sir Gideon Scott of Highchester to the Duchess of Monmouth, recommending a prudent and proper attention to the Duke of York:  and this advice she probably followed; for, after her husband’s execution, James restored to her all her family estates.

[37] Bought by Mr. Luttrell, 11th April 1683.  See it in vol. x.  It is expressly levelled against “The Duke of Guise,” and generally against Dryden as a court poet.  I may, however be wrong in ascribing it to Shadwell.

[38] I observe Anthony Wood, as well as Mr. Malone, suppose Hunt and the Templar associated in the Reflections to be the same person.  But in the “Vindication of the Duke of Guise” Shadwell and they are spoke of as three distinct persons.

[39] See vol. xvii.  In this edition I have retained a specimen of a translation which our author probably executed with peculiar care; selecting it from the account of the barricades of Paris, as illustrating the tragedy of “The Duke of Guise.”

[40] [This story is told with great variation of figures.  Johnson mentions two and three guineas as the old and new prices; others give four and six.—­ED.]

[41] Probably alluding to having defended Clarendon in public company; for nothing of the kind occurs in Dryden’s publications. [It is not impossible that the New Year’s Day Poem (1662) to the Lord Chancellor is partly referred to here.—­ED.]

[42] Probably the translation of “Religio Laici.”