his face, appeared at Venice, where he was owned by some of his countrymen; but being seized by the Spaniards, was first imprisoned, then sent to the gallies, and at last put to death in private.  It is most certain, that the Portuguese expected his return for almost an age together after that battle, which is at least a proof of their extreme love to his memory; and the usage they had from their new conquerors, might possibly make them so extravagant in their hopes and wishes for their old master[2].

This ground-work the history afforded me, and I desire no better to build a play upon; for where the event of a great action is left doubtful, there the poet is left master.  He may raise what he pleases on that foundation, provided he makes it of a piece, and according to the rule of probability.  From hence I was only obliged, that Sebastian should return to Portugal no more; but at the same time I had him at my own disposal, whether to bestow him in Afric, or in any other corner of the world, or to have closed the tragedy with his death; and the last of these was certainly the most easy, but for the same reason the least artful; because, as I have somewhere said, the poison and the dagger are still at hand to butcher a hero, when a poet wants the brains to save him.  It being therefore only necessary, according to the laws of the drama, that Sebastian should no more be seen upon the throne, I leave it for the world to judge, whether or no I have disposed of him according to art, or have bungled up the conclusion of his adventure.  In the drawing of his character, I forgot not piety, which any one may observe to be one principal ingredient of it, even so far as to be a habit in him; though I shew him once to be transported from it by the violence of a sudden passion, to endeavour a self-murder.  This being presupposed, that he was religious, the horror of his incest, though innocently committed, was the best reason which the stage could give for hindering his return.  It is true, I have no right to blast his memory with such a crime; but declaring it to be fiction, I desire my audience to think it no longer true, than while they are seeing it represented; for that once ended, he may be a saint, for aught I know, and we have reason to presume he is.  On this supposition, it was unreasonable to have killed him; for the learned Mr Rymer has well observed, that in all punishments we are to regulate ourselves by poetical justice; and according to those measures, an involuntary sin deserves not death; from whence it follows, that to divorce himself from the beloved object, to retire into a desert, and deprive himself of a throne, was the utmost punishment which a poet could inflict, as it was also the utmost reparation which Sebastian could make.  For what relates to Almeyda, her part is wholly fictitious.  I know it is the surname of a noble family in Portugal, which was very instrumental in the restoration of Don John de Braganza, father to the most illustrious and