But had they condemned the piece for this uncommon case of parturition, they would have lost the beautiful and melodious verses, in which Cortez, and his followers, describe the advantages of the newly discovered world; and they would have lost the still more exquisite account, which, immediately after, Guyomar gives of the arrival of the Spanish fleet.  Of the characters little need be said; they stalk on, in their own fairy land, in the same uniform livery, and with little peculiarity of discrimination.  All the men, from Montezuma down to Pizarro, are brave warriors; and only vary, in proportion to the mitigating qualities which the poet has infused into their military ardour.  The women are all beautiful, and all deeply in love; differing from each other only, as the haughty or tender predominates in their passion.  But the charm of the poetry, and the ingenuity of the dialogue, render it impossible to peruse, without pleasure, a drama, the faults of which may be imputed to its structure, while its beauties are peculiar to Dryden.

The plot of the Indian Emperor is certainly of our author’s own composition; since even the malignant assiduity of Langbaine has been unable to point out any author from whom it is borrowed.  The play was first acted in 1665, and received with great applause.

CONNECTION
OF
THE INDIAN EMPEROR
TO
THE INDIAN QUEEN [A].

[Footnote A:  This argument was printed, and dispersed amongst the audience upon the first night of representation.  Hence Bayes is made to say, in the Rehearsal, that he had printed many reams, to instil into the audience some conception of his plot.]

The conclusion of the Indian Queen (part of which poem was wrote by me) left little matter for another story to be built on, there remaining but two of the considerable characters alive, viz.  Montezuma and Orazia.  Thereupon the author of this thought it necessary to produce new persons from the old ones; and considering the late Indian Queen, before she loved Montezuma, lived in clandestine marriage with her general Traxalla, from those two he has raised a son and two daughters, supposed to be left young orphans at their death.  On the other side, he has given to Montezuma and Orazia, two sons and a daughter; all now supposed to be grown up to mens’ and womens’ estate; and their mother, Orazia, (for whom there was no further use in the story,) lately dead.

So that you are to imagine about twenty years elapsed since the coronation of Montezuma; who, in the truth of the history, was a great and glorious prince; and in whose time happened the discovery and invasion of Mexico, by the Spaniards, under the conduct of Hernando Cortez, who, joining with the Traxallan Indians, the inveterate enemies of Montezuma, wholly subverted that flourishing empire;—­the conquest of which is the subject of this dramatic poem.

I have neither wholly followed the story, nor varied from it; and, as near as I could, have traced the native simplicity and ignorance of the Indians, in relation to European customs;—­the shipping, armour, horses, swords, and guns of the Spaniards, being as new to them, as their habits and their language were to the Christians.