fortunate that I could so long entertain you; if not, I shall at least have the satisfaction to know, that your time was more usefully employed upon the publick. I am,

My LORD,

Your Lordship's most obedient,

humble servant,

JOHN DRYDEN,

DEDICATION

OF

THE SPANISH FRYAR,'

OR, THE DOUBLE DISCOVERY.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

JOHN, LORD HAUGHTON.*

MY LORD,

WHEN I first designed this play I found,

or thought I found, somewhat so moving in the serious part of it, and so pleasant in the comick, as might deserve à more than ordinary care in both. Accordingly, I used the best of my endeavour in

2

This tragi-comedy was represented by the King's Servants at the Theatre Royal, and first printed in 1681. John, Lord Haughton, was the eldest son of Gilbert Holles, third Earl of Clare, to which title he succeeded. on the death of his father, January 16th, 1688-9. Having married Margaret, third daughter of Henry Cavendish, second Duke of Newcastle, he was, in 1694, made Marquis of Clare, and Duke of Newcastle; and in 1698 was elected a Knight of the Garter. He died July 17th. 1711, leaving only one daughter, Henrietta, who after his death married Edward, Lord Harley, eldest son of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford.

the management of two plots, so very different from each other, that it was not perhaps the talent of every writer to have made them of a piece. Neither have I attempted other plays of the same nature, in my opinion, with the same judgment, though with like success. And though many poets may suspect themselves for the fondness and partiality of parents to their youngest children, yet I hope I may stand exempted from this rule, because I know myself too well to be ever satisfied with my own conceptions, which have seldom reached to those ideas that I had within me; and consequently, I presume I may have liberty to judge when I write more or less pardonably, as an ordinary marksman may know certainly when he shoots less wide at what he aims.

Besides; the care and pains I have bestowed on this beyond my other tragi-comedies may reasonably make the world conclude, that either I can do nothing tolerably, or that this poem is not much amiss. Few good pictures have been finished at one sitting; neither can a true just play, which is to bear the test of ages, be produced at a heat, or by the force of fancy, without the maturity of judgment. For my own part, I have both so just a diffidence of myself, and so great a reverence for my audience, that I dare venture nothing without a strict examination; and am as much ashamed to put a loose indigested play upon the publick, as I should be to offer brass money in a payment: for though it should be

taken, as it is too often, upon the stage, yet it will be found in the second telling; and a judicious reader will discover in his closet that trashy stuff, whose glittering deceived him in the action. I have often heard the stationer sighing in his shop, and wishing for those hands to take off his melancholy bargain, which clapped its performance on the stage. In a playhouse every thing contributes to impose upon the judgment: the lights, the scenes, the habits, and above all, the grace of action, which is commonly the best where there is the most need of it, surprise the audience, and cast a mist upon their understandings; not unlike the cunning of a juggler, who is always staring us in the face, and overwhelming us with gibberish, only that he may gain the opportunity of making the cleaner conveyance of his trick. But these false beauties of the stage are no more lasting than a rainbow, when the actor ceases to shine upon them; when he gilds them no longer with his reflection, they vanish in a twinkling. I have sometimes wondered, in the reading, what was become of those glaring colours which amazed me. in BUSSY D'AMBOIS3 upon the theatre; but when I had taken up what I supposed a fallen star, I found I had been cozened with a jelly nothing

3 Atragedy written by George Chapman, and printed in 1607. This play not only appears to have been popular in the author's time, but (strange to tell!) was acted with success after the Restoration.

but a cold dull mass, which glittered no longer than it was shooting; a dwarfish thought dressed up in gigantick words, repetition in abundance, looseness of expression and gross hyperboles, the sense of one line expanded prodigiously into ten; and to sum up all, uncorrect English, and a hideous mingle of false poetry and true nonsense; or at best, a scantling of wit, which lay gasping for life, and groaning beneath a heap of rubbish. A famous modern poet used to sacrifice every year a Statius to Virgil's manes; and I have indignation enough to burn a D'AMBOIS annually to the memory of Jonson. But now, my Lord, I am sensible, perhaps too late, that I have gone too far; for I remember some verses of my own Maximin and Almanzor which cry vengeance upon me for their extravagance, and which I wish heartily in the same fire with Statius and Chapman. All I can say for those passages, which are

• Andrea Navagero, (in Latin NAUGERIUS,) a noble Venetian and celebrated Latin poet, who died in 1529, was accustomed, as Strada informs us in his PROLUSIONES ACADEMICE, (lib. ii. prol. 5.) on the anniversary of his birthday, to burn the works of MARTIAL; at the same time informing those friends whom he invited to an entertainment on the occasion, that this was a sacrifice to the manes of VIRGIL, an author for whom he had a high admiration but Balzac, who also mentions this circumstance, says with more probability, that Martial was sacrificed by Navagero to the manes of CATULLUS. I have no where met with an account exactly corresponding with that mentioned by our author. Navagero indeed having