He had been pleased twice or thrice to command, that it should be practised before him, especially the first and third acts of it; and publicly declared more than once, that the composition and choruses were more just, and more beautiful, than any he had heard in England.  How nice an ear he had in music, is sufficiently known; his praise therefore has established the reputation of it above censure, and made it in a manner sacred.  It is therefore humbly and religiously dedicated to his memory.

It might reasonably have been expected that his death must have changed the whole fabric of the opera, or at least a great part of it.  But the design of it originally was so happy, that it needed no alteration, properly so called; for the addition of twenty or thirty lines in the apotheosis of Albion, has made it entirely of a piece, This was the only way which could have been invented, to save it from botched ending; and it fell luckily into my imagination; as if there were a kind of fatality even in the most trivial things concerning the succession:  a change was made, and not for the worse, without the least confusion or disturbance; and those very causes, which seemed to threaten us with troubles, conspired to produce our lasting happiness.

Footnotes: 
1.  This definition occurs in the preface to the “State of Innocence;”
   but although given by Dryden, and sanctioned by Pope, it has a very
   limited resemblance to that which is defined.  Mr Addison has,
   however, mistaken Dryden, in supposing that he applied this
   definition exclusively to what we now properly call wit.  From the
   context it is plain, that he meant to include all poetical
   composition.—­Spectator, No. 62.  The word once comprehended human
   knowledge in general.  We still talk of the wit of man, to signify
   all that man can devise.

2.  The first Italian opera is said to have been that of “Dafne,”
   performed at Florence in 1597.—­See BURNEY’S History of Music,
   Vol. iv. p. 17.

3.  This passage gave great offence, being supposed to contain an
   oblique reflection on Purcell and the other English composers.

4.  Alluding to the disputes betwixt the King and Parliament, on the
   important point of the command of the militia.]

PROLOGUE

Full twenty years, and more, our labouring stage
Has lost, on this incorrigible age: 
Our poets, the John Ketches of the nation,
Have seemed to lash ye, even to excoriation;
But still no sign remains; which plainly notes,
You bore like heroes, or you bribed like Oates.—­
What can we do, when mimicking a fop,
Like beating nut-trees, makes a larger crop? 
’Faith, we’ll e’en spare our pains! and, to content you,
Will fairly leave you what your Maker meant you. 
Satire was once your physic, wit your food;