neuters: let them be crushed on all occasions; for their business was their own security. They had neither courage enough to engage on my side, nor conscience enough to help their lawful Sovereign; therefore let them be made examples, as the worst sort of interessed men, which certainly are enemies to both, and would be profitable to neither."

A

PREFACE

то

DON SEBASTIAN.

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WHETHER it happened through a long disuse of writing, that I forgot the usual compass of a play, or that by crowding it with characters and incidents, I put a necessity upon myself of lengthening the main action, I know not; but the first day's audience sufficiently convinced me of my errour; and that the poem was insupportably too long. It is an ill ambition of us poets to please an audience with more than they can bear; and supposing that we wrote as well, as vainly we imagine ourselves to write, yet we ought to consider that no man can bear to be long tickled. There is a nauseousness in a city feast, when we are to sit four hours after we are cloyed. I am therefore, in the first place, to acknowledge with all manner of gratitude, their civility, who were pleased to endure it with so much patience, to be weary with so much good nature and silence, and not to explode an entertainment which was designed to please them; or discourage an author whose misfortunes have once more brought him, against his will, upon the stage. While I cons

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tinue in these bad circumstances,* (and truly I see very little probability of coming out,) I must be obliged to write; and if I may still hope for the same kind usage, I shall the less repent of that hard necessity. I write not this out of any expectation to be pitied, for I have enemies enow to wish me yet in a worse condition; but give me leave to say, that if I can please by writing, as I shall endeavour it, the town may be somewhat obliged to my misfortunes for a part of their diversion. Having been longer acquainted with the stage than any poet now living, and having observed how difficult it was to please; that the humours of comedy were almost spent; that love and honour, (the mistaken topicks of tragedy,) were quite worn out; that the theatres could not support their charges; that the audience forsook them; that young men without learning set up for judges, and that they talked loudest who understood the least; all these discouragements had not only weaned me from the stage, but had also given me a loathing of it. But enough of this the difficulties continue; they increase, and I am still condemned to dig in those exhausted mines.

Whatever fault I next commit, rest assured it shall not be that of too much length. Above twelve hundred lines have been cut off from this tragedy, since it was first delivered to the actors. They

**Our author, on the Revolution, had been deprived of the offices of Poet Laureate, and Historiographer.

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were indeed so judiciously lopped by Mr. Betterton, to whose care and excellent action I am equally obliged, that the connection of the story was not lost; but on the other side, it was impossible to prevent some part of the action from being precipitated, and coming on without that due preparation which is required to all great events; as in particular, that of raising the mobile, in the beginning of the fourth act, which a man of Benducar's cool character could not naturally attempt, without taking all those precautions which he foresaw would be necessary to render his design successful. On this consideration, I have replaced those lines through the whole poem, and thereby restored it to that clearness of conception, and (if I may dare to say it) that lustre and masculine vigour, in which it was first written. It is obvious to every understanding reader, that the most poetical parts, which are descriptions, images, similitudes, and moral sentences, are those which of necessity were to be pared away, when the body was swollen into too large a bulk for the representation of the stage. But there is a vast difference betwixt a publick entertainment on the theatre, and a private reading in the closet in the first

The word mobile [mobile vulgus] was first introduced into our language about this time, and was soon abbreviated into mob. T. Brown, in 1690, uses both the Latin word at length, and the abbreviation; and in the Preface to CLEOMENES, two years afterwards, our author uses mob with a kind of apology," as they call it."

we are confined to time, and though we talk not by the hour-glass, yet the watch often drawn out of the pocket warns the actors, that their audience is weary; in the last, every reader is judge of his own convenience; he can take up the book, and lay it down at his pleasure, and find out those beauties of propriety in thought and writing, which escaped him in the tumult and hurry of representing. And I dare boldly promise for this play, that in the roughness of the numbers and cadences, (which I assure was not casual, but so designed,) you will see somewhat more masterly arising to your view than in most, if not any, of my former tragedies. There is a more noble daring in the figures, and more suitable to the loftiness of the subject; and besides this, some newnesses of English, translated from the beauties of modern tongues, as well as from the elegancies of the Latin; and here and there some old words are sprinkled, which, for their significance and sound, deserved not to be antiquated; such as we often find in Sallust amongst the Roman authors, and in Milton's PARADISE amongst ours; though perhaps the latter, instead of sprinkling, has dealt them with too free a hand, even sometimes to the obscuring of his sense.

As for the story or plot of the tragedy, it is purely fiction; for I take it up where the history has laid it down. We are assured by all writers of those times, that Sebastian, a young prince of great courage and expectation, undertook that war