[130] This lady lived to the age of ninety-four. Her huge romances, "Artamenes, Clelia, and Cleopatra," were in my childhood still read in some old-fashioned Scottish families, though now absolutely forgotten, and in no chance of being revived. Mademoiselle de Scuderi died about eighteen months after this discourse was written. There is no reason to think she was seriously engaged in translating Chaucer, whose works certainly never existed in the old Provençal or Norman French, into which last they were more likely to have been translated.
[131] Pope, however, modernized this prologue, and, it is said, some of Chaucer's looser tales, though the latter were published under the name of Betterton. Malone, vol. iv. p. 631.
[132] The allusion, in Boccace, was probably to his own poem, the "Theseida," a work so scarce, as almost never to have been heard of, until it was described by Tyrwhitt, in his Essay concerning the Originals whence Chaucer drew his tales. It contains the whole story of Palamon and Arcite. But the tale itself was more ancient than the days of Boccace.
[133] There seems to have been something questionable in Milbourne's character. Dryden, a little lower down, hints, that he lost his living, for writing a libel upon his parishioners.
[134] "Prince Arthur," and "King Arthur," two works, facetiously entitled epic poems, published in 1695 and 1697. In the preface to the first, occurred the following severe attack upon Dryden, which is inserted by Mr Malone as illustrative of the passage in the text.
"Some of these poets, to excuse their guilt, allege for themselves, that the degeneracy of the age makes their lewd way of writing necessary. They pretend, the auditors will not be pleased, unless they are thus entertained from the stage; and to please, they say, is the chief business of the poet. But this is by no means a just apology. It is not true, as was said before, that the poet's chief business is to please: his chief business is to instruct, to make mankind wiser and better; and, in order to this, his care should be to please and entertain the audience, with all the wit and art he is master of. Aristotle and Horace, and all their critics and commentators, all men of wit and sense, agree, that this is the end of poetry. But they say, it is their profession to write for the stage; and that poets must starve, if they will not, in this way, humour the audience; the theatre will be as unfrequented as the churches, and the poet and the parson equally neglected. Let the poet, then, abandon his profession, and take up some honest, lawful, calling; where, joining industry to his great wit, he may soon get above the complaints of poverty, so common among these ingenious men, and lie under no necessity of prostituting his wit, to any such vile purposes as are here censured. This will be a course of life more profitable and honourable to himself, and more useful to others. And there are, among these writers, some, who think they might have risen to the highest dignities, in other professions, had they employed their wit in those ways. It is a mighty dishonour and reproach to any man that is capable of being useful to the world, in any liberal and virtuous profession, to lavish out his life and wit, in propagating vice and corruption of manners, and in battering, from the stage, the strongest entrenchments, and best works, of religion and virtue. Whoever makes this his choice, when the other was in his power, may he go off the stage unpitied, complaining of neglect and poverty, the just punishments of his irreligion and folly."
[135] This play is bad enough, yet the assertion seems a strong one. There can be little pleasure, however, in weighing filth against filth, so the point may be left undecided.
[136] There is an account of this desperate action, in the Memoirs of Captain Carleton. The Confederate Army were upon their march when the Prince of Condé suddenly attacked their rear, which he totally routed, and then led his forces between the second line of the Confederates, and their line of baggage, to compel them to a general action. But the plunder of the baggage occasioned so much delay, that the van of the Prince of Orange's army had time to rejoin the centre; and, though the French maintained the action with great vigour, they were, in the end, compelled to leave the Confederates in possession of the field of battle. This battle was fought 11th August, 1674.
[137] Lady Mary Somerset, second wife of the Duke of Ormond, to whom she was married in 1685. She was second daughter of Henry, first Duke of Beaufort.
[138] The first patroness of Chaucer was Blanche, first wife of John, Duke of Gaunt, whose death he has celebrated in the "Boke of the Duchesse." She was the second daughter of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, grandson of Edmund, surnamed Crouchback, brother of Edward I. But I do not know how the Duchess of Ormond could be said to be "born of her blood," since she was descended of John of Gaunt by his third, not his first wife. Dryden, however, might not know, or might disregard, these minutiæ of genealogy.