[312] The death of the Jesuits, executed for the Plot.
[313] All the queen's former children died in infancy.
[314] The year 1688, big with so many events of importance, commenced very unfavourably with stormy weather, and an epidemical distemper among men and cattle.
[315] 1 Kings, chap, xxxiv.
[317] Original sin, supposed to be washed off by baptism.
[318] See "The Hind and the Panther," p. 224.
[319] The prince christened, but not named.
[320] Jehovah, or the name of God, unlawful to be pronounced by the Jews. Dryden.
[321] Some authors say, that the true name of Rome was kept a secret, ne hostes incantamentis deos elicerent. Dryden.
[322] Candia, where Jupiter was born and lived secretly. Dryden.
[323] Pallas, or Minerva, said by the poets to have been bred up by hand. Dryden.
[324] The prince had no wet nurse.
[326] 2 Kings, chap. iv.
[327] 1 Samuel, chap. iv. v. 10.
[328] Exodus, chap. xvii. v. 8.
[329] Aristides. See his Life in Plutarch.
[330] Our author's several modes of coaxing or bullying the audience in the prologues, are ridiculed in the "Rehearsal;" where Bayes says, "You must know there is in nature but two ways of making very good prologues;—the one is, by civility, by insinuation, good language, and all that to —— a —— in a manner steal your plaudit from the courtesy of the auditors: the other, by making use of some certain personal things, which may keep a hank upon such censuring persons as cannot otherwise, egad, in nature, be hindered from being too free with their tongues."
[331] The following is the statement of the accusation in Tom's peculiar style, being a sort of cant jargon, not void of low humour:
"Bayes. Now, there being but three remarkable places in the whole island; that is, the two universities, and the great metropolitan city; I shall, consequently, confine my discourse only to them: But, first of all, I must tell you, that I am altogether of my Lord Plausible's opinion in the "Plain Dealer;" if I chance to commend any place, or order of men, out of pure friendship, I choose to do it before their faces; and if I have occasion to speak ill of any person or place, out of a principle of respect and good manners, I do it behind their backs. You cannot imagine, Mr Crites, when I visit either of the two universities, in my own person, or by my commissioners of the playhouse, how much I am taken with a college life: Oh, there's nothing like a cheese cut out into farthings! and my Lord Mayor, amidst all his brutal city luxury, does not dine half so well as a student upon a single chop of rotten roasted mutton; nay, I can scarce prevail with myself, for a month or two after, to eat my meat on a plate, so great a respect have I for a university trencher; and then their conversation is so learned, and withal so innocent, that I could sit a whole day together at a coffee-house to hear them dispute about actus perspicui, and forma misti. From this beginning I naturally fall a railing at London, with as much zeal as a Buckingham-shire grazier, who had his pocket picked at a Smithfield entertainment; or a country lady, whose obsequious knight has spent his estate among misses, vintners, and linen-drapers; and then I tell my audience, that a man may walk farther in the city to meet a true judge of poetry, than ride his horse on Salisbury Plain to find a house.
You see here, Mr Crites, that scholars won't take Alderman Duncomb's leaden halfpence for Irish half crowns, while dull Londoner swallows every thing; and takes it with as little consideration, as a true Romanist takes a spiritual dose of relicts, that are sealed up with the council of Trent's coat-of-arms.
Eugen. How was that, Mr Bayes, about the council of Trent? Pray, let us hear it again.
Bayes. Gad forgive me for't!—it dropt from me ere I was aware; but I shall in time wear off this hitching in my gait, and walk in Catholic trammels as well as the best of them; nature, I must confess, is not overcome on the sudden—But let me see, gentlemen, whether I have any more lines to our last purpose; oh, here they are!
You are sensible, without question, how little beholden the city is to me, when I am upon my progress elsewhere. But 'tis a comfort that this peremptory humour does not continue long upon me; for, as I have the grace to disown my mother-university, with a jug in one hand, and a link in the other, when I am at Oxford,—
So, when I am got amongst my honest acquaintance here in Covent-Garden, I disown both the sisters, and make myself as merry as a grig, with their greasy trenchers, rusty salt-sellers, and no napkins, with their everlasting drinking, and no intervals of fornication to relieve it. In fine, I make a great scruple of it, whether it be possible for a man to write sound heroics, and make an accomplished thorough-paced wit, unless he comes to refine and cultivate himself at London; unless be knows how many stories high the houses are in Cheapside and Fleet-street; is acquainted with all the gaming ordinaries about town, and the rates of porters and hackney-coachmen; has shot the bridge; seen the tombs at Westminster; heard the Wooden-head speak; can tell you where the insuring-office is kept; and which of the twelve companies
The Reasons for Mr Bayes changing his Religion, p. 10.
[332] St Paul's, and other churches, were consumed in the great fire, then a recent event.
[333] That is, the consumer of Burgundy, or drunken bully of the day.
[334] Dorset-Garden theatre, where the Duke's company acted various shewy pieces, directed by D'Avenant.
[335] St André, the famous ballet dancer, composed dances for many operas about this time, which were probably performed by his light-footed countrymen, at Dorset-Gardens.
[336] "In 1673, the 'Tempest, or the Enchanted Island,' made into an opera by Mr Shadwell, having all new in it, as scenes, machines, &c.: one scene painted with myriads of ærial spirits; and others flying away with a table furnished with fruits, sweetmeats, and all sorts of viands, just when Duke Trinculo and his company were going to dinner. All things were performed so admirably well, that not any succeeding opera could get any money."—Roscius Anglicanus, p. 34. Shadwell had also, about this time, produced his opera of "Psyche," which, with the "Tempest" and other pieces depending chiefly upon shew and scenery, were acting in Dorset-Garden, when this Prologue was written. In order to ridicule these splendid exhibitions, the company at Drury-Lane brought forward parodies on them, such as the "Mock Tempest," "Psyche Debauched," &c. These pieces, though written in the meanest style by one Duffet, a low buffoon, had a transient course of success.
[337] This seems to be an allusion to the recent death of Mr Scroop; a man of fortune, who, about this time, was stabbed in the theatre at Dorset-Gardens by Sir Thomas Armstrong, afterwards the confidential friend of the Duke of Monmouth. Langbaine says, he witnessed this real tragedy, which happened during the representation of "Macbeth," as altered and revised by D'Avenant in 1674. Mr Scroop died immediately after his removal into a neighbouring house.
[338] Alluding to the recent establishment in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, then separated from the city by a large vacant space.
[339] "The three boys in buff," were, I believe, the three Bold Beauchamps in an old ranting play:
[340] Some part of the ornaments of D'Avenant's scenes probably presented the portraits of dramatic writers.
[341] Its properties are thus described by Spenser:
[342] Ralph Bathurst, thus highly distinguished by our author, was a distinguished character of the age. He was uncle to Allen, the first Lord Bathurst. He was born in 1620, and bred to the church, but abandoned divinity for the pursuit of medicine, which he practised until the Restoration, when he resumed his clerical character. In 1663 he became head of Trinity college, Oxford, into the court and chapel of which he introduced the beauties of classical architecture, to rival, if it were possible, the magnificence of the Gothic edifices by which it is surrounded. In 1673, he had the honour to be appointed vice-chancellor; an office which he retained for two years. During his execution of this duty he is said to have reformed many abuses which had crept into the university; and by liberal benefactions added considerably to the prosperity of literature. Anthony Wood, who had some private reason for disliking him, and who, moreover, was as determined an enemy to the fair sex as ever harboured in a cloister, picked a quarrel with Bathurst's wife, as he could find no reasonable fault with the vice-chancellor himself. "Dr Bathurst took his place of vice-chancellor; a man of good parts, and able to do good things; but he has a wife that scorns that he should be in print; a scornful woman! scorns that he was dean of Wells: no need of marrying such a woman, who is so conceited, that she thinks herself fit to govern a college, or university."—Perhaps the countenance given by Bathurst to the theatre, for which Dryden here expresses his gratitude, might not tend to conciliate the good will of Anthony, who quarrelled with his sister-in-law by refusing to treat her to the play. But it agreed well with the character of Bathurst, who was not only a patron of literature in all its branches, but himself an excellent Latin poet, as his verses prefixed to Hobbes' "Leviathan," fully testify; and as good an English poet as most of his contemporaries. He died in his eighty-fourth year, 1704. Warton has given us the following character of his Latin compositions, for which Dryden has celebrated him so highly: "His Latin orations are wonderful specimens of wit and antithesis, which were the delight of his age. They want, upon the whole, the purity and simplicity of Tully's eloquence, but even exceed the sententious smartness of Seneca, and the surprising turns of Pliny. They are perpetually spirited, and discover an uncommon quickness of thought. The manner is concise and abrupt, but yet perspicuous and easy: His allusions are delicate, and his observations sensible and animated; his sentiments of congratulation, or indignation, are equally forcible: his compliments are most elegantly turned, and his satire is most ingeniously severe. These compositions are extremely agreeable to read, but, in the present improvement of classical taste, not so proper to be imitated."—Life of Bathurst, prefixed to his Literary Remains, published under the inspection of Mr Warton.
[343] Characters in Jonson's "Volpone," and Fletcher's "King and no King," which plays are justly held the master-pieces of these authors.
[344] The "Slighted Maid" was a contemporary drama, written by Sir Richard Stapylton, of which Dryden elsewhere takes occasion to speak in terms of contempt. See the Parallel betwixt Poetry and Painting.
[345] This opinion seems to be solely founded on the inferiority of "Pericles," to the other plays of Shakspeare; an inferiority so great, as to warrant very strong doubts of its being the legitimate offspring of his muse at all.
[346] Alluding to the legend of the Glastonbury thorn, supposed to bloom on Christmas day.
[347] The war between France and the confederates was now raging on the Continent.
[348] The glorious nymphs, afterwards Queens Anne and Mary, both lived to exclude their own father and his son from the throne. Derrick, I suppose, alluded to this circumstance, when in the next line he read supplant for suppliant monarchs.
[349] The fool's cap and bauble, with which the ancient jester was equipped.
[350] A scramble.
[351] In Dryden's days, as in our own, there were provided by the hawkers a plentiful assortment of wonders and prodigies to captivate the people; with this difference, that, in that earlier period, the readers and believers of these wonders were more numerous, and of higher rank. I cannot point out the particular prodigies referred to; but I suppose they were of the same description as "The wonderful blazing star; with the dreadful apparition of two armies in the air; the one out of the north, the other out of the south, seen on the 17th December, 1680, betwixt four and five o'clock in the evening, at Ottery, ten miles eastward of Exon;" or as "The strange and dreadful relation of a horrible tempest of thunder and lightning, and of strange apparitions in the air, accompanied with whirlwinds, gusts of hail and rain, which happened the 10th of June, 1680, at a place near Weatherby, in the county of York: with the account how the top of strong oak, containing one load of wood, was taken off by a sheet of fire, wrapped in a whirlwind, and carried through the air, half a mile distant from the place, &c. As, likewise, another strange relation of a monstrous child with two heads, four arms, four legs, and all things thereunto belonging; born at a village, called Ill-Brewers, in the county of Somerset, on the 19th of May last, with several other circumstances and curious observations, to the wonder of all that have beheld it."
[352] The court of Requests was a general rendezvous for the news-mongers, politicians, and busy bodies of the time. North says, "It was observable of Oates, that while he had his liberty, as in King Charles's time and King William's, especially the latter, he never failed to give his attendance in the court of Requests, and in the lobbies, to solicit hard in all points under deliberation that might terminate in the prejudice of the church, crown, or of any gentlemen of the loyal, or church of England party." Swift, in his journal to Stella, makes frequent mention of the Court of Requests as a scene of political bustle and intrigue.
[353] The Popish plot being now in full force and credit, our author here, as in the "Spanish Friar," flatters the universal prejudice entertained against the Catholics.
[354] Apparently, a tennis-court was the place where the temporary stage was erected at Oxford.
[355] Probably some pasquinade against the Whigs, then current in the university.
[356] Noted school divines, whose works (the greater was the pity) were then in high esteem in the university.
[357] The City Gazettes were such publications as the Petition of the City, Mayor, and Aldermen, for the sitting of parliament on the 13th January, 1680, which is printed with the city arms prefixed, by a solemn order of the common council, and an appointment by the Lord Mayor, that Samuel Roycroft, printer to the city, do print the same, pursuant to order, and that no other person presume to do so. The "factious speech" was probably that of Shaftesbury, which was burned by the hands of the common hangman.
[358] The Pope-burning, so often mentioned.
[359] The meaning is, that the poets rebel against sense and criticism, like the parliament, in 1641, against the king; and that the audience judge as ill as those, who, in 1648, condemned Charles to the block. The parallel between the political disputes in 1680, and 1681, and those which preceded the great civil war, was fashionable among the Tories. A Whig author, who undertakes "to answer the clamours of the malicious, and to inform the ignorant on this subject," complains, "It hath been all the clamour of late, forty-one, forty-one is now coming to be acted over again; we are running in the very same steps, in the same path and road, to undo the nation, and to ruin kingly government, as our predecessors did in forty, and forty-one. We run the same courses, we take the same measures; latet anguis in herba; beware of the Presbyterian serpent, who lurks in the affairs of eighty, being the very same complexion, form, and shape, as that of forty and forty one."—The Disloyal Forty and Forty-one, and the Loyal Eighty, presented to public view. Folio 1680.
[360] Alluding to St André, the famous dancing master, and Jacob Hall, the performer on the slack rope.
[361] Cowley published in his sixteenth year, a book called "Poetical Blossoms."
[362] The city of London had now declared against petitioning for parliament.
[363] Alluding to the Irish massacre.
[364] The lottery cavaliers were the loyal indigent officers, to whom the right of keeping lotteries was granted by patent in the reign of Charles II. There are many proclamations in the gazettes of the time against persons encroaching upon this exclusive privilege.
[365] The "three ungiving parliaments" were that convoked in 1679, and dissolved on the 10th July in the same year; that which was held at Westminster 21st October, 1680, and dissolved on the 18th January following; and, finally, the Oxford parliament, assembled 21st March, 1680-1, and dissolved on the 28th of the same month. All these parliaments refused supplies to the crown, until they should obtain security, as they termed it, for the Protestant religion.
[366] The famous astrologer Lilly is here mentioned ironically. In his "Strange and wonderful prophecy, being a relation of many universal accidents that will come to pass in the year 1681, according to the prognostications of the celestial bodies, as well in this our English nation, as in parts beyond the seas, with a sober caution to all, by speedy repentance, to avert the judgments that are impendent," I find "an account of the great stream of light, by some termed a blazing star, which was seen in the south-west on Saturday and Sunday, the 11th and 12th of this instant December, between six and seven in the evening, with several judicial opinions and conjectures on the same." But the comet, mentioned in the text, may be that which is noticed in "A strange and wonderful Trinity, or a Triplicity of Stupendous Prodigies, consisting of a wonderful eclipse, as well as of a wonderful comet, and of a wonderful conjunction, now in its second return; seeing all these three prodigious wonders do jointly portend wonderful events, all meeting together in a strange harmonious triangle, and are all the three royal heralds successively sent from the King of Heaven, to sound succeeding alarms for awakening a slumbering world. Beware the third time." 4to. London, 1683. This comet is said to have appeared in October 1682. Various interpretations were put upon these heavenly phenomena, by Gadbury, Lilly, Kirkby, Whalley, and other Philo-maths, who were chiefly guided in their predictions by their political attachments. Some insisted they meant civil war, others foreign conquest; some that they presaged the downfall of the Turk, others that of the Pope and French king; some that they foretold dearth on the land, and others, the fertility of the king's bed, by the birth of a son, to the exclusion of the Duke of York.
[367] This was one of the numerous devices used by the partizans of Monmouth to strengthen his interest: "A relation was published, in the name of one Elizabeth Freeman, afterwards called the Maid of Hatfield, setting forth, That, on the 24th of January, the appearance of a woman all in white, with a white veil over her face, accosted her with these words: 'Sweetheart, the 15th day of May is appointed for the royal blood to be poisoned. Be not afraid, for I am sent to tell thee.' That on the 25th, the same appearance stood before her again, and she having then acquired courage enough to lay it under the usual adjuration, in the name, &c. it assumed a more glorious shape, and said in a harsher tone of voice: 'Tell King Charles from me, and bid him not remove his parliament, and stand to his council:' adding, 'do as I bid you.' That on the 26th it appeared to her a third time, but said only, 'do your message.' And that on the next night, when she saw it for the last time, it said nothing at all.
"Those who depend upon the people for support, must try all manners of practices upon them; and such fooleries as these sometimes operate more forcibly than expedients of a more rational kind. Care was, besides, taken, to have this relation attested by Sir Joseph Jordan, a justice of the peace, and the rector of Hatfield, Dr Lee, who was one of the king's chaplains: Nay, the message was actually sent to his majesty, and the whole forgery very officiously circulated all over the kingdom."—Ralph's Review of the Reigns of Charles II. and James II. Vol. I. p. 562.
The Tories, according to the custom of that time, endeavoured to turn this apparition against those who invented it, and published an ironical account of its appearance to Lady Gray, the supposed mistress of the Duke of Monmouth.—See Ralph, ibid. and this Work, Vol. IX. p. 276.
[368] "Heraclitus Ridens" was a paper published weekly, by L'Estrange, on the part of the court, and answered by one called "Democritus" on that of the Whigs.
[369] Probably alluding to the pope-burning, meditated by the Whigs during the administration of Harley. Swift, in his journal to Stella, mentions the figures intended for the procession having been seized by government.
[370] See a copy of the penny chronicle alluded to, containing a minute account of this celebrated procession, with a cut illustrative of the description, Vol. VI. p. 222.
[371] Only five dissenters were allowed to meet together by the penal statutes.
[372] Where the play was acted.
[373] Alluding to the tokens issued by tradesmen in place of copper money, which, though not a legal tender of payment, continued to be current by the credit of the individual whose name they bore. Tom Brown mentions Alderman Buncombe's leaden halfpence.
[374] The Parliament, which sat from the Restoration till 1678, bore this ignominious epithet among the Whigs.
[375] Alluding to the emigration of the French Huguenots, which the intolerance of Louis XIV. and his ministers began to render general. Many took refuge in England. See Vol. X. p. 264.
[376] An allusion to Shadwell; who boasted, that he drew his characters from nature, in contempt of regular criticism.
[377] Alluding to the mode in which the emperors were chosen during the decline of the empire, when the soldiers of the Prætorian guards were the electors, without regard to the legal rights of the senate.
[378] This and the following lines refer to the success of Shadwell's comedy of "The Lancashire Witches," in which a great deal of machinery is introduced; the witches flying away with the clown's candles, and the priest's bottle of holy water, and converting a country-fellow into a horse upon the stage. Not content with this, the author has introduced upon the stage all that writers upon Dæmonology have rehearsed of the Witches' Sabbath, or Festival, with their infernal master; and has thus, very clumsily, mixed the horrible with the ludicrous. As for the cats and dogs, we have, in one place,—"Enter an Imp, in the shape of a black Shock;" and, in another,
"Enter Mother Hargrave, Mother Madge, and two Witches more; they mew, and spit, like cats, and fly at them, and scratch them.
Young Hartford. What's this? we're set on by cats.
Sir Timothy. They're witches in the shape of cats; what shall we do?
Priest. Phaat will I do? cat, cat, cat! oh, oh! Conjuro vobis! fugite, fugite, Cacodæmones; cats, cats! (They scratch all their faces, till the blood runs about them.)
Tom Shacklehead. Have at ye all! (he cuts at them.) I ha' mauled some of them, by the mass! they are fled, but I am plaguily scratched. (The Witches shriek, and run away.)"
Besides the offence which Shadwell gave, in point of taste, by the introduction of these pantomimical absurdities, Dryden was also displeased by the whole tenor of the play, which was directed against the High-Churchmen and Tories.—See Dedication of the Duke of Guise, Vol. VII. p. 15.
[379] This has no reference to any recent representation of the tragedy of "Macbeth." Shadwell, from the witchcraft introduced in his play, is ironically termed, "Macbeth and Simon Magus."
[380] Alluding to the Roman citizens, who had the right of voting, denied to the lower, or provincial orders.
[381] Our author was educated at Cambridge. Whether the sons of Cam relished this avowed preference of Oxford, may be doubted.
[382] Alluding to the Whigs, who called themselves so. See Vol. IX. p. 211.
[383] Alluding to the gratulating speech of Orator Higgins to Clause, when elected King of the Beggars:
[384] The severity of the Austrian government, in Hungary particularly, towards those who dissented from the Roman Catholic faith, occasioned several insurrections. The most memorable was headed by Count Teckeli, who allied himself with the sultan, assumed the crown of Transylvania, as a vassal of the Porte, and joined, with a considerable force, the large army of Turks which besieged Vienna, and threatened to annihilate the Austrian empire. A similarity of situation and of interest induced the Whig party in England to look with a favourable eye upon this Hungarian insurgent, as may be fully inferred from the following passage in De Foe's "Appeal to Honour and Justice:"
"The first time I had the misfortune to differ with my friends, was about the year 1683, when the Turks were besieging Vienna, and the Whigs in England, generally speaking, were for the Turks taking it; which I, having read the history of the cruelty and perfidious dealings of the Turks in their wars, and how they had rooted out the name of the Christian religion in above threescore and ten kingdoms, could by no means agree with; and, though then but a young man, and a younger author, I opposed it, and wrote against it, which was taken very unkindly indeed."
The incongruity of the opinion combated by De Foe, with the high pretences of religion set up by the Whigs, was the constant subject of ridicule to the Tory wits. In a poem, entitled, "The Third Part of Advice to the Painter," dated by Luttrell 28th May, 1684, we find the following passage:
Another Tory poet prophecies of the infant son of James II.,—
Another ballad, written shortly after the defeat of Monmouth, is entitled, "A Song upon the Rendezvous on Hounsley-heath, with a Parallel of the Destruction of our English Turks in the West, and the Mahometans in Hungary." The expression occurs also in the Address of the Carlisle Citizens on the Declaration of Indulgence, who "thank his majesty for his royal army, which is really both the honour and safety of the nation, let the Teckelites think and say what they will." An indignant Whig commentator on this effusion of loyalty, says, "What the good men of Carlisle mean by Teckelites, we know not any more than they know themselves. However, the word has a pretty effect at a time when the Protestant Hungarians, under Count Teckely, were well beaten by the Popish standing army in Hungary." History of Addresses, p. 161.
[385] The original Trimmer was probably meant for Lord Shaftesbury, once a member of the Cabal, and a favourite minister, though afterwards in such violent opposition. His lordship's turn for gallantry was such as distinguished him even at the court of Charles.—See Vol. IX. p. 446. The party of Trimmers, properly so called, only comprehended the followers of Halifax; but our author seems to include all those who, professing to be friends of monarchy, were enemies of the Duke of York, and who were as odious to the court as the fanatical republicans. Much wit, and more virulence, was unchained against them. Among others, I find in Mr Luttrell's Collection, a poem, entitled, "The Character of a Trimmer," beginning thus:
[386] Loaded dice, contrived some for high, and others for low throws.
[387] Our author seems to copy himself in this passage. "His old father, in the country, would have given him but little thanks for it, to see him bring down a fine-bred woman, with a lute and a dressing-box, and a handful of money to her portion."—The Wild Gallant, Vol. II. p. 66.