and totally inconsistent doctrine is thus to be collected from the action of the piece and the sentiments expressed by those, whose sentiments are alone marked as worthy of being attended to.  This obvious fault, with many others, is pointed out in a criticism on the “Lancashire Witches,” published in the Spectator.  The paper is said to have been written by Hughes, but considerably softened by Addison.

5.  Half-a-crown was then the box price.

You visit our plays and merit the stocks,
For paying half-crowns of brass to our box;
Nay, often you swear when places are shewn ye,
That your hearing is thick,
And so by a love trick,
You pass through our scenes up to the balcony.
Epilogue to “The Man’s the Master.”

The farce, alluded to, seems to have been “The Lancashire Witches.”  See Shadwell’s account of the reception of that piece, from which it appears, that the charge of forming a party in the theatre was a subject of mutual reproach betwixt the dramatists of the contending parties.

6.  This single remark is amply sufficient to exculpate Dryden from
   having intended any general parallel between Monmouth and the Duke
   of Guise.  To have produced such a parallel, it would have been
   necessary to unite, in one individual, the daring political courage
   of Shaftesbury, his capacity of seizing the means to attain his
   object, and his unprincipled carelessness of their nature, with the
   fine person, chivalrous gallantry, military fame, and courteous
   manners of the Duke of Monmouth.  Had these talents, as they were
   employed in the same cause, been vested in the same person, the
   Duke of Guise must have yielded the palm.  The partial resemblance,
   in one point of their conduct, is stated by our poet, not to have
   been introduced as an intended likeness, betwixt the Duke of
   Guise, and the Protestant Duke.  We may observe, in the words of
   Bertran,

     The dial spoke not—­but it made shrewd signs.
                                   Spanish Friar.

7.  Alluding to a book, called “The Parallel,” published by J.
   Northleigh L.L.B. the same who afterwards wrote “the Triumph of the
   Monarchy,” and was honoured by a copy of verses from our author.

8.  “Julian the Apostate, with a short account of his life, and a
   parallel betwixt Popery and Paganism,” was a treatise, written by
   the Rev. Samuel Johnson, chaplain to Lord Russell, for the purpose
   of forwarding the bill of exclusion, by shewing the consequences to
   Christianity of a Pagan Emperor attaining the throne.  It would
   seem, that one of the sheriffs had mistaken so grossly, as to talk
   of Julian the Apostle; or, more probably, such a blunder was
   circulated as true, by some tory wit.  Wood surmises, that Hunt had
   some share in composing Julian. Ath.  Ox. II. p. 729.]