[55] Probably the person mentioned in the "Essay on Satire."
[56] Sir George Etherege.
[57] Sir Car Scrope.
[58] Louise de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth.
[59] Probably the Mr Scrope whom Langbaine saw stabbed in the theatre, by Sir Thomas Armstrong, during the representation of "Macbeth." Wood mentions a satire of Sir Car Scrope's, in which Sir Thomas Armstrong is reflected upon. The author of the epistle seems to allude to some such circumstance.
[60] William Sallust, Seigneur Du Bartas, who wrote a huge poem, quaintly divided into "weeks and days," narrating the Scriptural history and miracles in vile bombastic and conceited verse. He found a kindred translator in Joshua Sylvester, who published a version of these and other poems about the beginning of the 17th century. Dubartas was a soldier and a Huguenot, and followed the banners of Henry IV. in the civil wars of France. Sylvester was an English merchant adventurer.
[61] Written by Duffet, a low author, employed by the players of the King's-house to compose parodies on the operas, by which the Duke's company at one time attracted large audiences. Accordingly he wrote a "Mock Tempest," "Psyche Debauched," and other pieces of the same kind. The first was so indecent, that in Dublin the ladies and people of rank left the house to the rabble when it was acted. See Langbaine, p. 177. Duffet was a milliner in the New Exchange.
[62] Des mourans et des morts cent montagnes plaintives. A line from Brebeuf's translation of Lucan.
[63] This passage occurs in the following notable account of the wardrobe of our ancestor Adam after the fall, translated by Sylvester from Du Bartas. It has the honour to be elsewhere alluded to by Dryden:
But when the winter's keener breath began,