[PREFACE.]
Sir Samuel Tuke, of Temple Cressy, in the county of Essex, was a colonel of horse in the king's army, and served against the Parliament, as long as the affairs of his master had any prospect of success. He was very active in that rising in the county of Essex which ended fatally to some of the chief actors in it. From the prologue to the present play, spoken at court, it appears that he intended to retire from business soon after the Restoration, but was diverted from that design for some time by his Majesty's recommending him to adapt a Spanish play[31] to the English stage, which he executed with some degree of success. On the 31st March,[32] 1664, he was created a baronet. He married Mary, the daughter of Edward Sheldon, a lady who was one of the dressers to Queen Mary, and probably a Roman Catholic, of which persuasion our author seems also to have been.[33] He died at Somerset House, on the 26th of January 1673, and was buried in the vault under the chapel there. Langbaine, by mistake, says he was alive at the time he (Langbaine) published his "Lives of the Dramatic Poets."
Sir Samuel did not escape the censure of his brother poets.[34] One of them, speaking of Cowley, says he
Writ verses unjustly in praise of Sam Tuke.[35]
And in the same poem—
Sam Tuke sat, and formally smiled at the rest;
But Apollo, who well did his vanity know,
Call'd him to the bar to put him to the test,
But his muse was so stiff, she scarcely could go.
She pleaded her age, desir'd a reward;
It seems in her age she doated on praise:
But Apollo resolv'd that such a bold bard
Should never be grac'd with a per'wig of bays.
There is some reason for assigning to Sir Samuel Take part authorship of "Pompey the Great," which is generally supposed to have been translated by Waller, Lord Dorset, Sir C. Sedley, and Godolphin, and printed in 1664. At the end of an edition of Sir John Denham's poems, "printed by J. M. for H. Herringman," 1684, is a catalogue of other works published by the same bookseller, and among them this entry:—"By Samuel Tuke, and several persons of honour. Pompey."