TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

CHARLES MONTAGUE,

ONE OF THE

LORDS OF THE TREASURY.

SIR,

I Heartily wish this play were as perfect as I intended it, that it might be the more worthy your acceptance; and that my Dedication of it to you might be more becoming that honour and esteem which I, with every body who is so fortunate as to know you, have for you. It had your countenance when yet unknown; and now it is made public, it wants your protection.

I would not have any body imagine, that I think this play without its faults, for I am conscious of several. I confess I designed (whatever vanity or ambition occasioned that design) to have written a true and regular comedy; but I found it an undertaking which put me in mind of -Sudet multum, frustraque laboret ausus idem. And now to make amends for the vanity of such a design, I do confess both the attempt, and the imperfect performance. Yet I must take the boldness to say, I have not miscarried in the whole; for the mechanical part of it is regular, That I may say with a little vanity, as a builder may say, he has built a house according to the model laid

down before him; or a gardner that he has set his flowers in a knot of such or such a figure. I designed the moral first, and to that moral I invented the fable, and do not know that I have borrowed one hint of it any where. I made the plot as strong as I could, because it was single; and I made it single, because I would avoid confusion, and was resolved to preserve the three unities of the Drama. Sir, this dis course is very impertinent to you, whose judgment much better can discern the faults, than I can excuse them; and whose good-nature, like that of a lover, will find out those hidden beauties (if there are any such) which it would be great immodesty for me to discover. I think I do not speak improperly when I call you a Lover of Poetry; for it is very well known she has been a very kind mistress to you; she has not denied you the last favour, and she has been fruitful to you in a most beautiful issue.-If I break off abruptly here, I hope every body will understand that it is to avoid a commendation, which, as it is your due, would be most easy for me to pay, and too troublesome for you to receive.

I have, since the acting of this play, hearkened after the objections which have been made to it; for I was conscious where a true critic might have put me upon my defense, I was prepared for the attack; and am pretty confident I could have vindicated some parts, and excised others: and where there were any plain miscarriages, I would most ingenuously have confessed them. But I have not heard aux

That

thing said sufficient to provoke an answer. which looks most like an objection, does not relate in particular to this play, but to all or most thas ever have been written; and that is soloquy. Therefore I will answer it, not only for my own sake, but to save others the trouble, to whom it may hereafter be objected.

upon

the

I grant, that for a man to talk to himself, appears absurd and unnatural; and indeed it is so in most cases: but the circumstances which may attend the occasion make great alteration. It oftentimes happens to a man, to have designs which require him to him self, and in their nature cannot admit of a confident. Such, for certain, is all villany; and other less mischievous intentions may be very improper to be com municated to a second person. In such a case, therc fore, the audience must observe whether the person stage takes any notice of them at all, or no. For if he supposes any one to be by, when he talks to himself, it is monstrous and ridiculous to the last degree; nay, not only in this case, but in any part of a play, if there is expressed any knowledge of an audience, it is insufferable. But otherwise, when a man in soloquy reasons with himself, and pro's and con's, and weighs all his designs, we ought not to imagine that this man either talks to us, or to himself; he is only thinking, and thinking such matter as were inexcusable folly in him to speak. But beeause we are concealed spectators of the plot in agita. sion, and the poet finds it necessary to let us know

the whole mystery of this contrivance, he is willing to inform us of this person's thoughts; and to that end is forced to make use of the expedient of speech, no better way being yet invented for the communica tion of thought.

Another very wrong objection has been made by some who have not taken leisure to distinguish the characters. The hero of the play, as they are pleased to call him, (meaning Mellefont) is a gull, and made a fool, and cheated. Is every man a gull and a fool that is deceived? At that rate I am afraid the two classes of men will be reduced to one, and the knaves themselves be at a loss to justify their title; but if an open-hearted honest man, who has an entire confidence in one whom he takes to be his friend, and whom he has obliged to be so; and who (to confirm him in his opinion) in all appearance, and upon several trials, has been so; if this man be deceived by the treachery of the other, must he of necessity commence fool immediately, only because the other has proved a villain? Ay, but there was a caution given to Mellefont, in the first act, by his friend Careless. Of what nature was that caution? only to give the audience some light into the character of Maskwell before his appearance, and not to convince Mellefont of his treachery; for that was more than Careless was then able to do: he never knew Maskwell guilty of any villany; he was only a sort of man which he did not like. As for his suspecting his familiarity with my Lady Touchwood, let them examine the

ane

swer that Mellefont makes him, and compare it with the conduct of Maskwell's character through the play.

I would beg them again to look into the character of Maskwell before they accuse Mellefont of weakness for being deceived by him. For upon summing up the enquiry into this objection, it may be found they have mistaken cunning in one character for folly in another.

But there is one thing, at which I am more concerned than all the false criticisms that are made upon me; and that is, some of the ladies are offended. I am heartily sorry for it; for I declare I would rather disoblige all the critics in the world, than one of the fair-sex. They are concerned that I have represented some women vicious and affected: How can I help it? It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human-kind; and there are but too sexes, male and female, men and women, which have a title to humanity: and if I leave one half of them out, the work will be imperfect. I should be very glad of an opportunity to make my compliment to those ladies who are offended; but they can no more expect it in a comedy, than to be tickled by a surgeon when he is letting them blood. They who are virtuous or discreet should not be offended; for such characters as these distinguish them, and make their beauties more shining and observed: and they who are of the other kind, may nevertheless pass for such,