We seek out new,
And follow fate, which would too fast pursue," etc.
[226] The following was given to me by a collector of dramatic curiosities, who in the course of a long life has raked together as many quires of ancient and modern play-bills as would cover every dead wall in the metropolis, and I am assured that of the above-mentioned handbill it is
A TRUE COPY.
"Connection of the Indian Emperor to the Indian Queen.
"The conclusion of the Indian Emperor (part of which poem was written by me) left little matter for another story to be built on, there remaining but two of the considerable characters alive, viz. Montezuma and Orazia: thereupon the author of this thought it necessary to produce new persons from the old ones; and considering the late Indian Queen, before she loved Montezuma, lived in clandestine marriage with her great general Traxalla, from those two he has raised a son and two daughters, supposed to be grown up to man and woman's estate, and their mother Orazia (for whom there was no further use in the story) lately dead. So that you are to imagine about twenty years elapsed since the coronation of Montezuma, who in the truth of the history was a great and glorious prince, and in whose time happened the discovery and invasion of Mexico by the Spaniards (under the command of Cortez), who joined with the Traxallan Indians, the inveterate enemies of Montezuma, wholly subverted that flourishing empire, the conquest of which is the subject of this dramatic poem.
"I have neither wholly followed the story, nor varied from it, and, as near as I could, have traced the native simplicity and ignorance of the Indians in relation to European customs: the shipping, armour, horses, swords, and guns of the Spaniards, being as new to them as their habits and manners were to the Christians.
"The difference of their religion from ours, I have taken from the story itself; and that which you find of it in the first and fifth acts, touching the sufferings and constancy of Montezuma in his opinions, I have only illustrated, not altered from those who have written of it.
"John Dryden."
[227] Some eighteen or twenty years ago, a person of quality in the neighbourhood of Lichfield, dragged together a shoal of little holiday fry, to give an infantine exhibition of a new sentimental comedy.