time,
  Poets take in for journey-work in rhime. 
  But I want curses for those mighty shoals
  Of scribbling Chloris’s, and Phyllis’ fools: 
  Those oafs should be restrained, during their lives,
  From pen and ink, as madmen are from knives. 
  I could rail on, but ’twere a task as vain,
  As preaching truth at Rome, or wit in Spain: 
  Yet, to huff out our play was worth my trying;
  John Lilburn ’scaped his judges by defying:[1]
  If guilty, yet I’m sure o’ the church’s blessing,
  By suffering for the plot, without confessing.

Footnote: 
1.  Lilburn, the most turbulent, but the boldest and most upright of
   men, had the merit of defying and resisting the tyranny of the
   king, of the parliament, and of the protector.  He was convicted in
   the star-chamber, but liberated by the parliament; he was tried on
   the parliamentary statute for treasons in 1651, and before
   Cromwell’s high court of justice in 1654; and notwithstanding an
   audacious defence,—­which to some has been more perilous than a
   feeble cause,—­he was, in both cases, triumphantly acquitted.

* * * * *

THE

SPANISH FRIAR;

OR,

THE DOUBLE DISCOVERY.

Ut melius possis fallere, sume togam.
—­MART.

_—­Alterna revisens
Lasit, et in solido rursus fortuna locavit._
—­VIRG.

THE SPANISH FRIAR.

The Spanish Friar, or the Double Discovery, is one of the best and most popular of our poet’s dramatic efforts.  The plot is, as Johnson remarks, particularly happy, for the coincidence and coalition of the tragic and comic plots.  The grounds for this eminent critic’s encomium will be found to lie more deep than appears at first sight.  It was, indeed, a sufficiently obvious connection, to make the gay Lorenzo an officer of the conquering army, and attached to the person of Torrismond.  This expedient could hardly have escaped the invention of the most vulgar playwright, that ever dovetailed tragedy and comedy together.  The felicity of Dryden’s plot, therefore, does not consist in the ingenuity of his original conception, but in the minutely artificial strokes, by which the reader is perpetually reminded of the dependence of the one part of the play on the other.  These are so frequent, and appear so very natural, that the comic plot, instead of diverting our attention from the tragic business, recals it to our mind by constant and unaffected allusion.  No great event happens in the higher region of the camp or court, that has not some indirect influence upon the intrigues of Lorenzo and Elvira; and the part which the gallant is called upon to act in the revolution that winds up the tragic interest, while it is highly in character, serves to bring the catastrophe of both parts of the play under the eye of the spectator, at one and the same time.  Thus much seemed necessary to explain the felicity of combination, upon which Dryden justly valued himself, and which Johnson sanctioned by his high commendation.  But, although artfully conjoined, the different departments of this tragi-comedy are separate subjects of critical remark.