[EPISTLE THE ELEVENTH.]
TO
HENRY HIGDEN, Esq.
ON HIS TRANSLATION OF
THE TENTH SATIRE OF JUVENAL.
Henry Higden was a member of the honourable society of the Middle Temple, and during the reigns of James II. and William III. held some rank among the wits of the age. He wrote a play called "Sir Noisy Parrot, or the Wary Widow," represented in 1693, which seems to have been most effectually damned; for in the preface the author complains, that "the theatre was by faction transformed into a bear-garden, hissing, mimicking, ridiculing, and cat-calling." I mention this circumstance, because amongst the poetical friends who hastened to condole with Mr Higden on the bad success of his piece, there is one who attributes it to the influence of our author over the inferior wits at Will's coffee-house.[50] But it seems more generally admitted, as the cause of the downfall of the "Wary Widow," that the author being a man of a convivial temper, had introduced too great a display of good eating and drinking into his piece; and that the actors, although Mr Higden complains of their general negligence, entered into these convivial scenes with great zeal, and became finally incapable of proceeding in their parts.[51] The prologue was written by Sir Charles Sedley, in which the following lines seem to be levelled at Dryden's critical prefaces:
But against old, as well as new, to rage,
Is the peculiar phrenzy of this age;
Shakespeare must down, and you must praise no more
Soft Desdemona, or the jealous Moor.
Shakespeare, whose fruitful genius, happy wit,
Was framed and finished at a lucky hit;
The pride of nature, and the shame of schools,
Born to create, and not to learn from rules,
Must please no more. His bastards now deride
Their father's nakedness, they ought to hide;
But when on spurs their Pegasus they force,
Their jaded muse is distanced in the course.