[41] I presume, this celebrated finisher of the law, who bequeathed his name to his successors in office, was a contemporary of our poet. In the time of the rebellion, that operator was called Gregory, and is supposed, with some probability, to have beheaded Charles I. See the evidence for the prisoner in Hulet's trial after the Restoration. State Trials, Vol. II. p. 388.
[42] This is a strange averment, considering the "Reflections upon Absalom and Achitophel, by a Person of Honour," in composing and publishing which, the Duke of Buckingham, our author's Zimri, shewed much resentment and very little wit. See Vol. IX. p. 272.
Persius exclamat, Per magnos, Brute, deos te
Oro, qui regis consueris tollere, cur non
Hunc Regem jugulas? Operum hoc mihi crede tuorum est.
Hor. Satire 8. Lib. I.
[44] This gentleman, who was as great a gambler as a punster, regaled with his quibbles the minor class of the frequenters of Will's coffee-house, who, having neither wit enough to entitle them to mix with the critics who associated with Dryden, and were called The Witty Club, or gravity enough to discuss politics with those who formed the Grave Club, were content to laugh heartily at the puns and conundrums of Captain Swan.
[45] Mr Lewis Maidwell, the author of a comedy called "The Generous Enemies," represented by the Duke's company 1680. In the prologue, as Mr Malone informs us, there is an allusion to Rochester's mean assault on Dryden:
Who dares be witty now, and with just rage
Disturb the vice and follies of the age?
With knaves and fools, satire's a dangerous fault;
They will not let you rub their sores with salt:
Else Rose street ambuscades shall break your head,
And life in verse shall lay the poet dead.
It is only farther known of this gentleman, that he was a friend of Shadwell, who gave him the epilogue for his comedy, and that he taught a private school.
[46] The Roman exclamation of high contentment at a recitation, like our bravo! bravissimo!