“The author of it being nobly born, of an ancient and numerous family, had many of his relations and friends in the cock-pit during the acting of it.  Some of them perceiving his Grace to head a party, who were very active in damning the play, by hissing and laughing immoderately at the strange conduct thereof, there were persons laid wait for him as he came out; but there being a great tumult and uproar in the house and the passages near it, he escaped; but he was threatened hard.  However, the business was composed in a short time, though by what means I have not been informed.”  The trade of criticism was not uniformly safe in these days.  In the Preface to the “Reformation,” a beau is only directed to venture to abuse a new play, if he knows, the author is no fighter.

[8] [Scott has Dryden’s authority (in the letter to Hyde already referred to) for this word, but it is pretty certainly rhetorical.  See article on “Butler,” by the present writer, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, ninth edition.—­ED.]

[9] [It may be well to mention that the editions of the “Rehearsal” are very numerous, and that fresh parodies of fresh plays as they appeared were incorporated in them.  Scott does not seem to have been fully aware of this.—­ED.]

[10] Preface to “An Evening’s Love.”

[11] Mr. Malone inclines to think there is no allusion to “Marriage a la Mode” in the “Rehearsal.”  But surely the whimsical distress of Prince Prettyman, “sometimes a fisher’s son, sometimes a prince,” is precisely that of Leonidas, who is first introduced as the son of a shepherd; secondly, discovered to be the son of an unlawful king called Polydamas; thirdly, proved anew to be the son of the shepherd, and finally proved to be the son of neither of them, but of the lawful king, Theogenes.  Besides, the author of the “Key to the Rehearsal” points out a parallel between the revolution of state in the farce, and that by which Leonidas, after being carried off to execution, on a sudden snatches a sword from one of the guards, proclaims himself rightful king, and, without more ceremony, deposes the powerful and jealous usurper, who had sentenced him to death.

[12] Spence’s “Anecdotes,” quoted by Mr. Malone, vol. i. p. 106.

[13] “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; because also I knew, that my betters were more concerned than I was in that satire; and, lastly, because Mr. Smith and Mr. Johnson, the main pillars of it, were two such languishing gentlemen in their conversation, that I could liken them to nothing but to their own relations, those noble characters of men of wit and pleasure about the town.”—­Dedication to Juvenal.