There's enough. Does not quotation sound as well as I[20a]?
"But the four sons of Aminon, the three bold Beachams, the four London Prentices, Tamerlain, the Scythian Shepherd, Muleasses, Amurath, and Bajazet, or any raging Turk at the Red-bull and Fortune, might as well have been urged by you as a pattern of your Almanzor, as the Achilles in Homer; but then our laureate had not passed for so learned a man as he desires his unlearned admirers should esteem him.
"But I am strangely mistaken, if I have not seen this very Almanzor of your's in some disguise about this town, and passing under another name. Prithee tell me true, was not this huff-cap once the Indian Emperor, and, at another time, did not he call himself Maximme? Was not Lyndaraxa once called Almeria, I mean under Montezuma the Indian Emperor? I protest and vow they are either the same, or so alike, that I can't for my heart distinguish one from the other. You are, therefore, a strange unconscionable thief, that art not content to steal from others, but do'st rob thy poor wretched self too."
[20a] [There is no I in the original where Clifford quotes:
[Greek: Oinobares, kunos ommat echon kradiaen d elaphoio.
Daemoboros basileus.]
I owe my copy of this curious monument of belated spite to the kindness of Mr. Austin Dobson.—ED.]
[21] "Amongst several other late exercises of the Athenian virtuosi in the Coffee-academy, instituted by Apollo for the advancement of Gazette Philosophy, Mercury's, Diurnalli, etc., this day was wholly taken up in the examination of the 'Conquest of Granada.' A gentleman on the reading of the First Part, and there in the description of the bull-baiting, said, that Almanzor's playing at the bull was according to the standard of the Greek heroes, who, as Mr. Dryden had learnedly observed (Essay of Dramatic Poesy), were great beef-eaters. And why might not Almanzor as well as Ajax, or Don Quixote, worry mutton, or take a bull by the throat, since the author had elsewhere explained himself, by telling us the heroes were more noble beasts of prey, in his Epistle to his 'Conquest of Granada,' distinguishing them into wild and tame; and in his play we have Almanzor shaking his chains, and frighting his keeper, broke loose, and tearing those that would reclaim his rage. To this he added, that his bulls excelled other heroes, as far as his own heroes surpassed his gods; that the champion bull was divested of flesh and blood, and made immortal by the poet, and bellowed after death; that the fantastic bull seemed fiercer than the true, and the dead bellowings in verse were louder than the living; concluding with a wish, that Mr. Dryden had the good luck to have varied that old verse quoted in his dramatic essay:
'Atque Ursum, el Pugiles media inter carmina poscunt Tauros, et Pugiles pruna inter carmina posco;'
and prefixed it to the front of his play, instead of
'Major rerum mihi nascitur ordo, Majus ojius moveo.'"