WHIGS AND TORIES.
Whenever these terms were first introduced, and whatever might be their original meaning, it is certain that in the reign of Charles the Second they carried the political signification which they still retain. Take, as a proof, the following nervous passage from Dryden's Epilogue to "The Duke of Guise," 1683:
"Damn'd neuters, in their middle way of steering,
Are neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring:
Nor whigs, nor Tories they; nor this nor that;
Not birds, not beasts, but just a kind of bat:
A twilight animal, true to neither cause,
With Tory wings, but Whiggish teeth and claws."