[105] This promise our author never fully performed; although the "Essay on Epic Poetry," and other parts of his critical works, exhibit the materials of the proposed Second Part.
[106] The third of June, 1665. See the "Annus Mirabilis," and the Notes, Vol. IX. p. 108, 161. Our author, in his poem to the Duchess, mentions the circumstance of the cannon being heard at London:
When from afar we heard the cannon play,
Like distant thunder on a shiny day.
Vol. IX. p. 79.
[107] James Duke of York, afterwards James II.
[108] There is something very striking in this description, which was doubtless copied from reality.
[109] This is a favourable representation of the character of Sir Robert Howard, who is described by his contemporaries as very vain, obstinate, and opinionative, and as such was ridiculed by Shadwell under the character of Sir Positive Atall, in the "Impertinents."
[110] This was certainly Dr Robert Wild; an allusion to whose "Iter Boreale" occurs a little below. It is written in a harsh and barbarous style, filled with "clenches and carwhichets," as the time called them; which having been in fashion in the reign of James I. and his unfortunate son, now revived after the Restoration. One of these poets would perhaps have told us, in rugged verse, that the Muse having been long in mourning, it was no wonder that her gayer dress should appear unfashionable when resumed. The other scribbler, Mr Malone thinks, might be Flecnoe. Or it may have been Samuel Holland, a great scribbler on public occasions.
[111] Cleiveland, being a violent cavalier, had a sort of claim to become a model after the Restoration. He has such notable conceits as the following comparison of a weeping mistress, to the angel in the scripture, who moved the pool of Bethesda, the first passage which occurred at opening the book: