Chapter XXII: Act I: Scene II. It appears from the letter of the literary veteran

in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1745, that our author, as he
advanced in reputation, assumed the fashionable _Chedreux_ periwig.

3. This passage though, doubtless applicable to many of the men of
rank at the court of Charles II., was particularly levelled at Lord
Rochester with whom our author was now on bad terms. It is hardly
fair to enquire how far this description of the discourse and
talents of a person of wit and honour agrees with that given in the
dedication to Marriage a-la-Mode, when, in compliment to the same
nobleman, we are told, that, "Wit seems to have lodged itself more
nobly in this age, than in any of the former; and that his lordship
had but another step to make, from the patron of wit, to become its
tyrant." This last observation seems to have been made in the
spirit of prophecy.

4. Such is said to have been the answer of a philosopher to a friend,
who upbraided him with giving up a dispute to the Emperor Adrian.

5. This passage alludes to an imitation of Horace, quaintly entitled
an "Allusion to the Tenth Satire of his First Book" which was the
production of Rochester. As however it appeared without a name, it
may have been for a time imputed to some of the inferior wits, whom
his Lordship patronized. It contains a warm attack on Dryden, part
of which has been already quoted. Dryden probably knew the real
author of this satire, although he chose to impute it to one of the
"Zanies" of the great. At least it seems unlikely that he should
take Crown for the author, as has been supposed by Mr Malone; for
in the imitation we have these lines:

For by that rule I might as well admit
Crown's heavy scenes for poetry and wit.

Crown could hardly be charged as author of a poem, in which this
sarcasm occurred.

6. Alluding probably to the concluding lines of the Satire.

I loath the rabble; 'tis enough for me
If Sedley, Shadwell, Shepherd, Wycherley,
Godolphin, Butler, Buckhurst, Buckingham,
And some few more whom I omit to name,
Approve my sense; I count their censure fame.

7. Dryden alludes to the censure past on himself, where it is said,

Five hundred verses in a morning writ.
Prove him no more a poet than a wit.

8. This refers to the characters of Shadwell and Wycherley, which
according to Dryden, the satirist seems to have misunderstood.

Of all our modern wits, none seems to me
Once to have touched upon true comedy,
But hasty Shadwell and slow Wycherley;
Shadwell's unfinished works do yet impart
Great proofs of force of nature, none of art.
With just bold strokes he dashes here and there,
Shewing great mastery with little care;
But Wycherley earns hard whate'er he gains,
He wants no judgment, and he spares no pains;
He frequently excels, and, at the least,
Makes fewer faults than any of the rest.

9. "I have chiefly considered the fable, or plot, which all conclude
to be the soul of a tragedy, which, with the ancients, is all ways
to be found a reasonable soul, but with us, for the most part, a
brutish, and often worse than brutish.

"And certainly there is not required much learning, or that a man
must be some Aristotle and doctor of subtilties, to form a right
judgement in this particular; common sense suffices; and rarely
have I known women-judges mistaken in these points, where they have
patience to think; and left to their own heads, they decide with
their own sense. But if people are prepossessed, if they will judge
of Rollo by Othello, and one crooked line by another, we can never
have a certainty."

The tragedies of the last age considered, in a letter to Fleetwood
Shepherd, by Thomas Rymer, Edit. 1678, p. 4.