[Footnote 2: Memoirs of Mr. Farquhar, before his Works.]
[Footnote 3: For the moral character of Mrs. Oldfield, see the Life of
Savage.]
[Footnote 4: Farquhar's Letters.]
[Footnote 5: Memoirs, ubi. supra.]
* * * * *
EDWARD RAVENSCROFT.
This gentleman is author of eleven plays, which gives him a kind of right to be named in this collection. Some have been of opinion, he was a poet of a low rate, others that he was only a wit collector; be this as it may, he acquired, some distinction by the vigorous opposition he made to Dryden: And having chosen so powerful an antagonist, he has acquired more honour by it, than by all his other works put together; he accuses Dryden of plagiary, and treats him severely.
Mr. Dryden, indeed, had first attacked his Mamamouchi; which provoked Ravenscroft to retort so harshly upon him; but in the opinion of Mr. Langbain, the charge of plagiarism as properly belonged to Ravenfcroft himself as to Dryden; tho' there was this essential difference between the plagiary of one and that of the other; that Dryden turned whatever he borrowed into gold, and Ravenscroft made use of other people's materials, without placing them in a new light, or giving them any graces, they had not before.
Ravenscroft thus proceeds against Mr. Dryden: 'That I may maintain the character of impartial, to which I pretend, I must pull off his disguise, and discover the politic plagiary that lurks under it. I know he has endeavoured to shew himself matter of the art of swift writing, and would persuade the world that what he writes is extempore wit, currente calamo. But I doubt not to shew that tho' he would be thought to imitate the silk worm that spins its webb from its own bowels, yet I shall make him appear like the leech that lives upon the blood of men, drawn from the gums, and when he is rubbed with salt, spues it up again. To prove this, I shall only give an account of his plays, and by that little of my own knowledge, that I shall discover, it will be manifest, that this rickety poet, (tho' of so many years) cannot go without others assistance; for take this prophecy from your humble servant, or Mr. Ravenscroft's Mamamouchi, which you please,
'When once our poet's translating vein is past,
From him, you can't expect new plays in haste.