concerned to prevent any farther operation of it.  It appears from the general consent of the audiences, that their party were known to be represented; and themselves owned openly, by their hissings, that they were incensed at it, as an object which they could not bear.  It is evident by their endeavours to shift off this parallel from their side, that their principles are too shameful to be maintained.  It is notorious, that they, and they only, have made the parallel betwixt the Duke of Guise and the Duke of Monmouth, and that in revenge for the manifest likeness they find in the parties themselves, they have carried up the parallel to the heads of the parties, where there is no resemblance at all; under which colour, while they pretend to advert upon one libel, they set up another.  For what resemblance could they suggest betwixt two persons so unlike in their descent, the qualities of their minds, and the disparity of their warlike actions, if they grant not, that there is a faction here, which is like that other which was in France? so that if they do not first acknowledge one common cause, there is no foundation for a parallel.  The dilemma therefore lies strong upon them; and let them avoid it if they can,—­that either they must avow the wickedness of their designs, or disown the likeness of those two persons.  I do further charge those audacious authors, that they themselves have made the parallel which they call mine, and that under the covert of this parallel they have odiously compared our present king with king Henry the Third; and farther, that they have forced this parallel expressly to wound His Majesty in the comparison:  for, since there is a parallel (as they would have it) it must be either theirs or mine.  I have proved that it cannot possibly be mine:  and in so doing, that it must be theirs by consequence.  Under this shadow all the vices of the French king are charged by those libellers (by a side-wind) upon ours; and it is indeed the bottom of their design to make the king cheap, his royal brother odious, and to alter the course of the succession.

Now, after the malice of this sputtering triumvirate (Mr Hunt, and the two Reflectors), against the person and dignity of the king, and against all that endeavour to serve him (which makes their hatred to his cause apparent), the very charging of our play to be a libel, and such a parallel as these ignoramuses would render it, is almost as great an affront to His Majesty, as the libellous picture itself, by which they have exposed him to his subjects.  For it is no longer our parallel, but the king’s, by whose order it was acted, without any shuffling or importunity from the poets.  The tragedy (cried the faction) is a libel against such and such illustrious persons.  Upon this the play was stopt, examined, acquitted, and ordered to be brought upon the stage:  not one stroke in it of a resemblance, to answer the scope and intent of the complaint.  There were some features, indeed, that the illustrious Mr Hunt and