[224] In this are several portraits; one of Sir Francis Page of severe memory, with a halter round his neck—
"Hard words or hanging, if your judge be Page."
[225] In this, as in almost all his dedications, the poet is very lavish of his panegyric. Thus does it begin:—
"May it please your Grace,—The favour which heroic plays have lately found upon our theatres, has been wholly derived to them from the countenance and approbation they have received at Court. The most eminent persons for wit and honour in the royal circle having so far owned them, that they have judged no way so fit as verse to entertain a noble audience or to express a noble passion. And among the rest which have been written in this kind, they have been so indulgent to this poem, as to allow it no inconsiderable place. Since, therefore, to the Court I owe its fortune on the stage; so, being now more publicly exposed in print, I humbly recommend it to your Grace's protection, who by all knowing persons is esteemed a principal ornament of the Court. But though the rank which you hold in the royal family might direct the eyes of a poet to you, yet your beauty and goodness detain and fix them," etc. etc. etc.
In the fourth act is the line about which Dryden has been so unmercifully laughed at, and which I have invariably seen quoted:
"I follow fate, which does too fast pursue."
This might be, and has been defended, by supposing that the race was run in a circle; but the line in a song, warbled by an Indian woman at the side of a fountain, is as follows:—
"Ah, fading joy, how quickly art thou past!
Yet we thy ruin haste:
As if the cares of human life were few,