EPISTLE THE FOURTH. TO THE LADY CASTLEMAINE, UPON HER ENCOURAGING HIS FIRST PLAY, THE WILD GALLANT, ACTED IN 1662-63. BARBARA VILLIERS, heiress of William, Viscount Grandison, in Ireland, and wife of Roger Palmer, Esq., was the first favourite who, after the Restoration of Charles II., enjoyed the power and consequence of a royal mistress. It is even said that the King took her from her husband, upon the very day of his landing, and raised him, in compensation, to the rank and title of Earl of Castlemaine. The lady herself was created Lady Nonsuch, Countess of Southampton, and finally Duchess of Cleveland. She bore the King three sons and three daughters, and long enjoyed a considerable share of his favour. It would seem that, in 1662-63, while Lady Castlemaine was in the very height of her reign, she extended her patronage to our author, upon his commencing his dramatic career. In the preface to his first play, "The Wild Gallant," he acknowledges that it met with very indifferent success, and had been condemned by the greater part of the audience. But he adds, "it was well received at court, and was more than once the divertisement of his Majesty by his own command." * These marks of royal favour were doubtless owing to the intercession of Lady Castlemaine. If we can trust the * Preface to "The Wild Gallant," vol. ii. p. 27. sarcasm thrown out by a contemporary satirist, our author piqued himself more on this light and gallant effusion than its importance deserved.* The verses abound with sprightly and ingenious turns; and the conceits, which were the taste of the age, show to some advantage on such an occasion. There is, however, little propriety in comparing the influence of the royal mistress to the virtue of Cato. Dryden, who one would have thought had more wit, Session of the Poets, 1670. EPISTLE THE FOURTH. As seamen, shipwracked on some happy shore, So my much-envied muse, by storms long tost, 5 15 While they the victor, he the vanquished chose: 10 *This seems to be the passage sneered at in the "Session of the Poets." 20 You, like the stars, not by reflection bright, Are born to your own heaven, and your own light; Like them are good, but from a nobler cause, From your own knowledge, not from nature's laws. Your power you never use, but for defence, With such assurance as they meant to say, EPISTLE THE FIFTH. ΤΟ MR. LEE, ON HIS TRAGEDY OF THE RIVAL QUEENS; OR, "THE Rival Queens; or, Alexander the Great," of Nathaniel Lee, has been always deemed the most capital performance of its unfortunate author. There is nothing throughout the play that is tame or indifferent; all is either exquisitely good, or extravagantly bombastic, though some passages hover between the sublime and the ridiculous. Addison has justly remarked that Lee's "thoughts are wonderfully suited for tragedy, but frequently lost in such a crowd of words, that it is hard to see the beauty of them. There is infinite fire in his works, but so involved in smoke, that it does not appear in half its lustre." Lee and our author lived on terms of strict friendship, and wrote, in conjunction, "Edipus," and "The Duke of Guise." Lee's madness and confinement in Bedlam are well known ; as also his repartee to a coxcomb, who told him it was easy to write like a madman: "No," answered the poet, "it is not easy to write like a madman, but it is very easy to write like a fool." Dryden elegantly apologises, in the following verses, for the extravagance of his style of poetry. Lee's death was very melancholy. Being discharged from Bedlam, and returning by night from a tavern, in a state of intoxication, to his lodgings in Duke Street, he fell down somewhere in Clare Market, and was either killed by a carriage driving over him, or stifled in the snow, which was then deep. Thus died this eminent dramatic poet in the year 1691, or 1692, in the thirty-fifth year of his age. |