On which lines occurs this explanatory note:—"An Ode, composed by His Grace, on the death of the late Queen Mary, justly adjudged by the ingenious Mr. Dryden to have exceeded all that had been written on that occasion."
[25] Dr. Birch refers to the authority of Richard Graham, junior; but no such letter has been recovered.
[26] The authority, however respectable, has a very long chain of links. Warton heard it from A, who heard it from B, who heard it from Pope, who heard it from Bolingbroke.—Ed.
[27] This discovery was made by the researches of Mr. Malone. Dr. Burney describes Clarke as excelling in the tender and plaintive, to which he was prompted by a temperament of natural melancholy. In the agonies which arose from an unfortunate attachment, he committed suicide in July 1707. See a full account of the catastrophe in Malone's "Life of Dryden," p. 299.
[28] It was first performed on February 19, 1735-6, at opera prices. "The public expectations and the effects of this representation (says Dr. Burney) seem to have been correspondent, for the next day we are told in the public papers [London Daily Post, and General Advertiser, Feb. 20,] that 'there never was, upon the like occasion, so numerous and splendid an audience at any theatre in London, there being at least thirteen hundred persons present; and it is judged that the receipts of the house could not amount to less than £450. It met with general applause, though attended with the inconvenience of having the performers placed at too great a distance from the audience, which we hear will be rectified the next time of performance."—Hist. of Music, iv. 391.
[29] See vol. xviii.
[30] "Thine be the laurel, then; thy blooming age
Can best, if any can, support the stage,
Which to declines, that shortly we may see
Players and plays reduced to second infancy.
Sharp to the world, but thoughtless of renown,
They plot not on the stage, but on the town;
And in despair their empty pit to fill,
Set up some foreign monster in a bill:
Thus they jog on, still tricking, never thriving,
And murth'ring plays, which they miscall—reviving.
Our sense is nonsense, through their pipes conveyed;
Scarce can a poet know the play he made,
'Tis so disguised in death; nor thinks 'tis he
That suffers in the mangled tragedy:
Thus Itys first was killed, and after dressed
For his own sire, the chief invited guest."
This gave great offence to the players; one of whom (Powell) made a petulant retort, which the reader will find in a note upon the Epistle itself, vol. xi.
[31] Milbourne, in a note on that passage in the dedication to the Aeneid—"He who can write well in rhyme, may write better in blank verse," says,—"We shall know that, when we see how much better Dryden's Homer will be than his Virgil."
[32] "Much the same character he gave of it (i.e. Paradise Lost) to a north-country gentleman, to whom I mentioned the book, he being a great reader, but not in a right train, coming to town seldom, and keeping little company. Dryden amazed him with speaking so loftily of it. 'Why, Mr. Dryden, says he (Sir W.L. told me the thing himself), 'tis not in rhyme.' 'No, [replied Dryden;] nor would I have done Virgil in rhyme, if I was to begin it again.'"—This conversation is supposed by Mr. Malone to have been held with Sir Wilfrid Lawson, of Isell in Cumberland.