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an argument taken almost verbatim from a papist, who accuses Catharine de Medicis for violating her word given to the protestants during her regency of France. What securities in particular we have, that our own religion and liberties would be preserved, though under a popish successor, any one may inform himself at large in a book lately written by the reverend and learned doctor Hicks, called Jovian, in answer to Julian the Apostate*; in which that truly christian author has satisfied all scruples which reasonable men can make, and proved, that we are in no danger of losing either; and wherein also, if those assurances should all fail, (which is almost morally impossible,) the doctrine of passive obedience is unanswerably demonstrated; a doctrine delivered with so much sincerity, and resignation of spirit, that it seems evident the assertor of it is ready, if there were occasion, to seal it with his blood.

I have done with mannerly Mr Hunt, who is only magni nominis umbra; the most malicious, and withal, the most incoherent ignorant scribbler of the whole party. I insult not over his misfortunes, though he has himself occasioned them; and though I will not take his own excuse, that he is in passion,

tion of the Cardinal Legate. He was slain, and his army totally routed in the bloody battle of Warna, where ten thousand Christians fell before the janissaries of Amurath II. It is said, that while the battle remained undecided, the sultan displayed the solemn treaty, and invoked the God of truth, and the blessed name of Jesus, to revenge the impious infidelity of the Hungarian. This battle would have laid Hungary under the Turkish yoke, had it not been for the exploits of John Corvinus Huniades, the white knight of Walachia, and the more dubious prowess of the famous John Castriot, king of Epirus.

In the preface to which the author alleges, that Hunt contributed no small share towards the composition of "Julian the Apostate." See Wood's Ath. Oxon. v. ii. p. 729.

I will make a better for him, for I conclude him cracked; and if he should return to England, am charitable enough to wish his only prison might be Bedlam. This apology is truer than that he makes for me; for writing a play, as I conceive, is not entering into the Observator's province; neither is it the Observator's manner to confound truth with falsehood, to put out the eyes of people, and leave them without understanding. The quarrel of the party to him is, that he has undeceived the ignorant, and laid open the shameful contrivances of the new vamped Association; that though he is "on the wrong side of life," as he calls it, yet he pleads not his age to be emeritus; that, in short, he has left the faction as bare of arguments, as Æsop's bird of feathers; and plumed them of all those fallacies and evasions which they borrowed from jesuits and presbyterians.

Now for my templar and poet in association for a libel, like the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in a fiery sign. What the one wants in wit, the other must supply in law. As for malice, their quotas are indifferently well adjusted; the rough draught, I take for granted, is the poet's, the finishings the lawyer's. They begin,-that in order to one Mr Friend's commands, one of them went to see the play. This was not the poet, I am certain; for nobody saw him there, and he is not of a size to be concealed. But the mountain, they say, was delivered of a mouse. I have been gossip to many such labours of a dull fat scribbler, where the mountain has been bigger, and the mouse less. The next sally is on the city-elections, and a charge is brought against my lord mayor, and the two sheriffs, for excluding true electors. I have heard, that a Whig gentleman of the Temple hired a livery-gown, to give

his voice among the companies at Guild-hall; let the question be put, whether or no he were a true elector? Then their own juries are commended from several topics; they are the wisest, richest, and most conscientious: to which is answered, ignoramus. But our juries give most prodigious and unheard-of damages. Hitherto there is nothing but boys-play in our authors: My mill grinds pepper and spice, your mill grinds rats and mice. They go on,-" if I may be allowed to judge;" (as men that do not poetize may be judges of wit, human nature, and common decencies;) so then the sentence is begun with I; there is but one of them puts in for a judge's place, that is, he in the grey; but presently it is-men; two more in buckram would be judges too. Neither of them, it seems, poetize; that is true, but both of them are in at rhime doggrel; witness the song against the bishops, and the Tunbridge ballad *. By the way, I find all my scribbling enemies have a mind to be judges, and chief barons. Proceed, gentlemen:-"This play, as I am informed by some, who have a nearer communication with the poets and the players, than I have,

The song against the bishops is probably a ballad, upon their share in throwing out the bill of exclusion, beginning thus:

The grave house of Commons, by hook, or by crook,
Resolved to root out both the pope and the duke;
Let them vote, let them move, let them do what they will;
The bishops, the bishops, have thrown out the bill.

It concludes with the following stanza :

The best of expedients, the law can propose,
Our church to preserve, and to quiet our foes,
Is not to let lawn sleeves our parliament fill,
But throw out the bishops, that threw out the bill.

State Poems, Vol. III. p. 154.

The Tunbridge ballad, which our author also ascribes to Shadwell or his assistant, I have not found among the numerous libels of the time.

Which of the two Sosias is it that now speaks? If the lawyer, it is true he has but little communication with the players; if the poet, the players have but little communication with him; for it is not long ago, he said to somebody, " By G-, my lord, those Tory rogues will act none of my plays." Well, but the accusation,-that this play was once written by another, and then it was called the "Parisian Massacre." Such a play I have heard indeed was written; but I never saw it *. Whether this be any of it or no, I can say no more than for my own part of it. But pray, who denies the unparalleled villainy of the papists in that bloody massacre? I have enquired, why it was not acted, and heard it

The "Massacre of Paris" appears to have been written by Lee, during the time of the Popish plot, and if then brought out, the subject might have been extravagantly popular. It would appear it was suppressed at the request of the French ambassador. Several speeches, and even a whole scene seem to have been transplanted to the "Duke of Guise," which were afterwards replaced, when the Revolution rendered the "Massacre of Paris," again a popular topic. There were, among others, the description of the meeting of Alva and the queen mother at Bayonne; the sentiments expressed concerning the assassination of Cæsar, and especially the whole quarrelling scene between Guise and Grillon, which, in the "Massacre of Paris," passes between Guise and the admiral Chastillon. In the preface to the "Princess of Cleves," which was acted in 1689, Lee gives the following account of the transposition of these passages. "The Duke of Guise, who was notorious for a bolder fault, has wrested two whole scenes from the original, (the Massacre just before mentioned,) which, after the vacation, he will be forced to pay. I was, I confess, through indignation, forced to limb my own child, which time, the true cure for all maladies and injustice, has set together again. The play cost me much pains, the story is true, and, I hope, the object will display treachery in its own colours. But this farce, comedy, tragedy, or mere play, was a revenge for the refusal of the other." This last sentence alJudes to the suppression of the "Massacre of Paris,” which, according to the author's promise, appeared with all its appurtenan ces restored in 1690, the year following.

was stopt by the interposition of an ambassador, who was willing to save the credit of his country, and not to have the memory of an action so barbarous revived; but that I tempted my friend to alter it, is a notorious whiggism, to save the broader word. The "Sicilian Vespers" I have had plotted by me above these seven years: the story of it I found under borrowed names in Giraldo Cinthio; but the rape in my tragedy of " Amboyna" was so like it, that I forbore the writing. But what had this to do with protestants? For the massacrers and the massacred were all papists.

But it is observable, they say, that "though the massacre could not be acted, as it was first written against papists, yet when it was turned upon protestants, it found reception."

Now all is come out; the scandal of the story turns at last upon the government: that patronizes popish plays, and forbids protestant *. Ours is to

When the days of Whiggish prosperity shone forth, Shadwell did his best to retort upon our poet. In the prologue to "Bury Fair," we find the following lines of exultation, on his having regained possession of the stage:

Those wretched poetitos, who got praise,

By writing most confounded loyal plays,

With viler coarser jests, than at Bear-garden,

And silly Grub-street songs, worse than Tom Farthing;

If any noble patriot did excel,

His own and country's rights defending well,

These yelping curs were straight 'looed on to bark,

On the deserving man to set a mark;

Those abject fawning parasites and knaves,

Since they were such, would have all others slaves.

'Twas precious loyalty, that was thought fit

To atone for want of honesty and wit;

No wonder common sense was all cried down,

And noise and nonsense swaggered through the town;

Our author then opprest would have you know it,

Was silenced for a non-conformist poet;

Now, sirs, since common sence has won the day,

Be kind to this as to his last year's play;

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