[130] The peace of Ryswick, which was proclaimed at London in the following month, October 19, 1697, O. S.
[131] She means, I suppose,—by the same way her son’s letter came to her.
[132] To account for the difference between the exquisite orthography of Lady Elizabeth’s present epistle, and that to Dr Busby, Mr Malone suggests, that Dryden probably revised the latter before it was sent.
[133] Tom Brown had, in the year of the Revolution, published “The Reasons of Mr Bayes changing his Religion;” and in 1690, a second Part, called the “Late Converts Exposed.” What this small wit now had in hand is difficult to guess; none of his direct attacks against Dryden appear in his works: but his insignificant enmity survived Dryden, for he wrote a burlesque account of the poet’s funeral in verse, and libelled his memory in prose, in his “Letters from the Dead to the Living.”
[134] This labour he never resumed.
[135] The Rev. Dr Knightly Chetwood, an intimate friend of our author.
[136] Mary Leigh, the wife of Sir George Chudleigh of Ashton, in the same county, Bart. She died in the year 1710. Her life is among those of Ballard’s “Learned Ladies.” The verses mentioned in the text are not prefixed to the “Virgil,” but printed in Lady Chudleigh’s Poems.
[137] The preface to the “Pastorals.”
[138] The “Ode for St Cecilia’s Day.” It is pleasing to be assured, that the best of English lyrics was received with due honour on its first appearance.
[139] Our author only translated the First Book. See Vol. XII. p. 231.