as nearly touches me, the sentence of a royal judge.  Many have imagined the character of Philocles to be faulty; some for not discovering the queen’s love, others for his joining in her restraint:  But though I am not of their number, who obstinately defend what they have once said, I may, with modesty, take up those answers which have been made for me by my friends; namely, that Philocles, who was but a gentleman of ordinary birth, had no reason to guess so soon at the queen’s passion; she being a person so much above him, and, by the suffrages of all her people, already destined to Lysimantes:  Besides, that he was prepossessed (as the queen somewhere hints it to him) with another inclination, which rendered him less clear-sighted in it, since no man, at the same time, can distinctly view two different objects; and if this, with any shew of reason, may be defended, I leave my masters, the critics, to determine, whether it be not much more conducing to the beauty of my plot, that Philocles should be long kept ignorant of the queen’s love, than that with one leap he should have entered into the knowledge of it, and thereby freed himself, to the disgust of the audience, from that pleasing labyrinth of errors which was prepared for him.  As for that other objection, of his joining in the queen’s imprisonment, it is indisputably that which every man, if he examines himself, would have done on the like occasion.  If they answer, that it takes from the height of his character to do it; I would enquire of my overwise censors, who told them I intended him a perfect character, or, indeed, what necessity was there he should be so, the variety of images being one great beauty of a play?  It was as much as I designed, to shew one great and absolute pattern of honour in my poem, which I did in the person of the queen:  all the defects of the other parts being set to shew, the more to recommend that one character of virtue to the audience.  But neither was the fault of Philocles so great, if the circumstances be considered, which, as moral philosophy assures us, make the essential differences of good and bad; he himself best explaining his own intentions in his last act, which was the restoration of his queen; and even before that, in the honesty of his expressions, when he was unavoidably led by the impulsions of his love to do it.  That which with more reason was objected as an indecorum, is the management of the last scene of the play, where Celadon and Florimel are treating too lightly of their marriage in the presence of the queen, who likewise seems to stand idle, while the great action of the drama is still depending.  This I cannot otherwise defend, than by telling you, I so designed it on purpose, to make my play go off more smartly; that scene being, in the opinion of the best judges, the most divertising of the whole comedy.  But though the artifice succeeded, I am willing to acknowledge it as a fault, since it pleased his majesty, the best judge, to think it so.