In the mean time, my lord, I take the confidence to present you with a tragedy, the characters of which are the nearest to those of an heroic poem.  It was dedicated to you in my heart, before it was presented on the stage.  Some things in it have passed your approbation, and many your amendment.  You were likewise pleased to recommend it to the king’s perusal, before the last hand was added to it, when I received the favour from him, to have the most considerable event of it modelled by his royal pleasure.  It may be some vanity in me to add his testimony then, and which he graciously confirmed afterwards, that it was the best of all my tragedies; in which he has made authentic my private opinion of it; at least, he has given it a value by his commendation, which it had not by my writing.

That which was not pleasing to some of the fair ladies in the last act of it, as I dare not vindicate, so neither can I wholly condemn, till I find more reason for their censures.  The procedure of Indamora and Melesinda seems yet, in my judgment, natural, and not unbecoming of their characters.  If they, who arraign them, fail not more, the world will never blame their conduct; and I shall be glad, for the honour of my country, to find better images of virtue drawn to the life in their behaviour, than any I could feign to adorn the theatre.  I confess, I have only represented a practical virtue, mixed with the frailties and imperfections of human life.  I have made my heroine fearful of death, which neither Cassandra nor Cleopatra would have been; and they themselves, I doubt it not, would have outdone romance in that particular.  Yet their Mandana (and the Cyrus was written by a lady,) was not altogether so hard-hearted:  For she sat down on the cold ground by the king of Assyria, and not only pitied him, who died in her defence; but allowed him some favours, such, perhaps, as they would think, should only be permitted to her Cyrus[7].  I have made my Melesinda, in opposition to Nourmahal, a woman passionately loving of her husband, patient of injuries and contempt, and constant in her kindness, to the last; and in that, perhaps, I may have erred, because it is not a virtue much in use.  Those Indian wives are loving fools, and may do well to keep themselves in their own country, or, at least, to keep company with the Arrias and Portias of old Rome:  Some of our ladies know better things.  But, it may be, I am partial to my own writings; yet I have laboured as much as any man, to divest myself of the self-opinion of an author; and am too well satisfied of my own weakness, to be pleased with any thing I have written.  But, on the other side, my reason tells me, that, in probability, what I have seriously and long considered may be as likely to be just and natural, as what an ordinary judge (if there be any such among those ladies) will think fit, in a transient presentation, to be placed in the room of that which they condemn.  The most judicious