Your change is such, it does not need defence."
The scene of Hogarth's last drama was Newgate; and in this it is a Mexican prison, where his pigmy personages are playing their little parts in one of Dryden's heroic tragedies.
That these minor performers should prefer rhyme to prose, I can readily conceive—the jingling of verse is a great help to your short memory; but that Dryden, "the great high priest of all the Nine," should so far deviate from nature and outrage common sense as thus to fetter his dramatic dialogue, is to be accounted for on no other principle than the vile taste of Charles the Second's vile Court. The play is dedicated to the most excellent and most illustrious Princess Anne, Duchess of Monmouth and Buccleuch, wife to the most illustrious and high-born James Duke of Monmouth; and by that dedication[225] appears to have been warmly patronized by the most eminent persons of wit and honour.
It is a sequel to the Indian Queen, written by Dryden and Sir Robert Howard, which was published two years before. Of this connection between the two tragedies, notice was given to the audience by printed bills distributed at the door,[226]—an expedient which the Duke of Buckingham very happily ridicules in The Rehearsal, when Bayes boasts of the number of bills he has printed, to instil into the audience some conception of his plot. By the age of the warlike William of Cumberland, I conjecture that these embryotic heroes and heroines strutted away their little hour about the year 1731; and though the play which they are enacting is beneath the blazing genius of John Dryden, it is well worthy the puny powers of these puny performers.[227] Lady Sophia Fermor, who plays the part of Almeria, in 1744 married Lord Granville, and died in 1750. The prompter was a Mr. T. Hill; and though this reverend gentleman is in rather too conspicuous a situation, he is not quite so obtrusive an object as the prompter at the Opera House. The governess playing with one of the children was Lady Deloraine. Miss Conduit, who appears as Alibeck, was daughter to Catherine, the niece of Sir Isaac Newton, and in 1740 married Lord Lymington, eldest son to John first Earl of Portsmouth.
The names and additions of three of the auditors are inserted under the small print. One of the figures has a resemblance to the courtly Lord Chesterfield. Upon the chimney-piece is the bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and it is fair to conjecture that the two framed portraits represent Mr. and Mrs. Conduit.
The figure leaning on the back of a chair is said to be intended for the Duke of Montagu; and the two in the background, for the Duke and Duchess of Richmond.
Hogarth's original painting is the property of Lord Holland.
