or to have invented one, where the ties of nature had been nearer?  If we consider their actions, or their persons, a much less proportion will be yet found betwixt them; and if we bate the popularity, perhaps none at all.  If we consider them in reference to their parties, the one was manifestly the leader; the other, at the worst, is but misled.  The designs of the one tended openly to usurpation; those of the other may yet be interpreted more fairly; and I hope, from the natural candour and probity of his temper, that it will come to a perfect submission and reconcilement at last.  But that which perfectly destroys this pretended Parallel is, that our picture of the Duke of Guise is exactly according to the original in the history; his actions, his manners, nay, sometimes his very words, are so justly copied, that whoever has read him in Davila, sees him the same here.  There is no going out of the way, no dash of a pen to make any by-feature resemble him to any other man; and indeed, excepting his ambition, there was not in France, or perhaps in any other country, any man of his age vain enough to hope he could be mistaken for him.[6] So that if you would have made a Parallel, we could not.  And yet I fancy, that where I make it my business to draw likeness, it will be no hard matter to judge who sate for the picture.  For the Duke of Guise’s return to Paris contrary to the king’s order, enough already has been said; it was too considerable in the story to be omitted, because it occasioned the mischiefs that ensued.  But in this likeness, which was only casual, no danger followed.  I am confident there was none intended; and am satisfied that none was feared.  But the argument drawn from our evident design is yet, if possible, more convincing.  The first words of the prologue spake the play to be a Parallel, and then you are immediately informed how far that Parallel extended, and of what it is so:  “The Holy League begot the Covenant, Guisards got the Whig, &c.”  So then it is not, (as the snarling authors of the Reflections tell you) a Parallel of the men, but of the times; a Parallel of the factions, and of the leaguers.  And every one knows that this prologue was written before the stopping of the play.  Neither was the name altered on any such account as they insinuate, but laid aside long before, because a book called the Parallel had been printed, resembling the French League to the English Covenant; and therefore we thought it not convenient to make use of another man’s title.[7] The chief person in the tragedy, or he whose disasters are the subject of it, may in reason give the name; and so it was called the “Duke of Guise.”  Our intention therefore was to make the play a Parallel betwixt the Holy League, plotted by the house of Guise and its adherents, with the Covenant plotted by the rebels in the time of king Charles I. and those of the new Association, which was the spawn of the old Covenant.