whom he trusted in his flight, he was delivered up to his brother, and by his command assassinated.  Aureng-Zebe now assumed the throne, and advanced against Sultan-Sujah, his sole remaining brother; he seduced his chief commanders, routed the forces who remained faithful, and drove him out of Bengal into the Pagan countries adjacent, where, after several adventures, he perished miserably in the mountains.  Aureng-Zebe also murdered one or two nephews, and a few other near relations; but, in expiation of his complicated crimes, renounced the use of flesh, fish, and wine, living only upon barley-bread vegetables, and confections, although scrupling no excesses by which he could extend and strengthen his usurped power[1].

Dr Johnson has supposed, that, in assuming for his subject a living prince, Dryden incurred some risque; as, should Aureng-Zebe have learned and resented the freedom, our Indian trade was exposed to the consequences of his displeasure.  It may, however, be safely doubted, whether a monarch, who had actually performed the achievements above narrated, would have been scandalized by those imputed to him in the text.  In other respects, the distance and obscurity of the events gave a poet the same authority over them, as if they had occurred in the annals of past ages; a circumstance in which Dryden’s age widely differed from ours, when so much has our intimacy increased with the Oriental world, that the transactions of Delhi are almost as familiar to us as those of Paris.

The tragedy of “Aureng-Zebe” is introduced by the poet’s declaration in the prologue, that his taste for heroic plays was now upon the wane: 

  But he has now another taste of wit;
  And, to confess a truth, though out of time,
  Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme. 
  Passion’s too fierce to be in fetters bound,
  And nature flies him, like enchanted ground,
  What verse can do, he has performed in this,
  Which he presumes the most correct of his.

Agreeably to what might be expected from this declaration, the verse used in “Aureng-Zebe” is of that kind which may be most easily applied to the purposes of ordinary dialogue.  There is much less of ornate structure and emphatic swell, than occurs in the speeches of Almanzor and Maximin; and Dryden, though late, seems to have at length discovered, that the language of true passion is inconsistent with that regular modulation, to maintain which, the actor must mouth each couplet in a sort of recitative.  The ease of the verse in “Aureng-Zebe,” although managed with infinite address, did not escape censure.  In the “just remonstrance of affronted That,” transmitted to the Spectator, the offended conjunction is made to plead, “What great advantage was I of to Mr Dryden, in his “Indian Emperor?”

  You force me still to answer you in that,
  To furnish out a rhime to Morat.