George Digby, Earl of Bristol, was the author of the following play. He was, as Mr. Walpole[1] observes, "a singular person, whose life was one contradiction. He wrote against Popery, and embraced it; he was a zealous opposer of the Court, and a sacrifice for it; was conscientiously converted in the midst of his prosecution of Lord Strafford, and was most unconscientiously a prosecutor of Lord Clarendon. With great parts, he always hurt himself and his friends; with romantic bravery, he was always an unsuccessful commander. He spoke for the Test Act, though a Roman Catholic; and addicted himself to astrology on the birthday of true philosophy." The histories of England abound with the adventures of this inconsistent and eccentric nobleman who, amongst his other pursuits, esteemed the drama not unworthy of his attention. Downes, the prompter,[2] asserts that he wrote two plays between the years 1662 and 1665, made out of the Spanish; one called "'Tis better than it was," and the other entitled "Worse and Worse." Whether either of these is the present performance cannot now be ascertained. It is, however, at least probable to be one of them with a new title.[3] The same writer says he also joined with Sir Samuel Tuke in the composition of "The Adventures of Five Hours." "Elvira" was printed in the year 1667, and Mr Walpole imagines that it occasioned our author being introduced into Sir John Suckling's Session of Poets, a conjecture which, however, will by no means correspond with the time in which Lord Bristol and Sir John Suckling are supposed to have written the respective works before mentioned. From the notice taken of him by Sir John Suckling as a poet, he seems to have been the author of some pieces which are now lost to the world.[4] After a life, which at different periods of it commanded both the respect and contempt of mankind, and not unfrequently the same sentiments at one time, he died, neither loved nor regretted by any party, in the year 1676.
[A MS. note in one of the former editions says: "A play of pure intrigue.—Style feeble and drawling.—Plot extremely complicated, and quite unintelligible without a most fixed attention, which, however, the play has not merit enough to excite. July 1819.">[
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors," ii. 25.
[2] "Roscius Anglicanus," 1708, p. 25.
[4] It is not easy to find out why this inference is drawn, since Sir J. Suckling only mentions him by name, with three others comparatively little known.
"Sands with Townshend, for they kept no order;
Digby and Shillingsworth a little further."
"Session of the Poets."—Collier. [But the Digby here mentioned was Sir Kenelm Digby, surely.]