An horrid ftillness firft invades the ear,
And in that filence we a tempeft fear.

for which he was perfecuted with perpetual ridicule, perhaps with more than was deferved. Silence is indeed mere privation; and, fo confidered, cannot invade; but privation likewife certainly is darkness, and probably cold; yet poetry has never been refused the right of afcribing effects or agency to them as to pofitive powers. No man fcruples to fay that darkness hinders him from his work; or that cold has killed the plants. Death is alfo privation, yet who has made any difficulty of affigning to Death a dart and the power of ftriking?

In fettling the order of his works, there is fome difficulty; for, even when they are important enough to be formally offered to a patron, he does not commonly date his dedi- ' cation; the time of writing and publishing is not always the fame; nor can the first edition's be eafily found, if even from them could be obtained the neceffary information.

The time at which his firft play was exhibited is not certainly known, because it was not printed

B 3

printed till it was fome years afterwards altered and revived; but fince the plays are said to be printed in the order in which they were written, from the dates of fome, thofe of others may be inferred; and thus it may be collected that in 1663, in the thirty-fecond year of his life, he commenced a writer for the ftage; compelled undoubtedly by neceffity, for he appears never to have loved that exercise of his genius, or to have much pleased himself with his own dramas,

Of the stage, when he had once invaded it, he kept poffeffion for many years; not indeed without the competition of rivals who fometimes prevailed, or the cenfure of criticks, which was often poignant and often juft; but with fuch a degree of reputation as made him at least secure of being heard, whatever might be the final determination of the public.

His first piece was a comedy called the Wild Gallant. He began with no happy auguries; for his performance was so much difapproved, that he was compelled to recall it, and change it from its imperfect state to the form in which it now appears, and which

is yet fufficiently defective to vindicate the criticks.

I wish that there were no neceffity of following the progrefs of his theatrical fame, or tracing the meanders of his mind through the whole series of his dramatick performances; it will be fit however to enumerate them, and to take efpecial notice of those that are distinguished by any peculiarity intrinfick or concomitant; for the compofition and fate of eight and twenty dramas include too much of a poetical life to be omitted.

In 1664 he published the Rival Ladies, which he dedicated to the Earl of Orrery, a man of high reputation both as a writer and a statesman. In this play he made his effay of dramatick rhyme, which he defends in his dedication, with fufficient certainty of a favourable hearing; for Orrery was himfelf a writer of rhyming tragedies.

He then joined with Sir Robert Howard in the Indian Queen, a tragedy in rhyme. The parts which either of them wrote are not distinguished.

The Indian Emperor was published in 1667. It is a tragedy in rhyme, intended for a fequel to Howard's Indian Queen. Of this connection notice was given to the audience by printed bills, diftributed at the door; an expedient fuppofed to be ridiculed in the Rehearsal, when Bayes tells how many reams he has printed, to inftill into the audience fome conception of his plot.

In this play is the description of Night, which Rymer has made famous by preferring it to those of all other poets.

The practice of making tragedies in rhyme was introduced foon after the Reftoration, as it seems, by the earl of Orrery, in compliance with the opinion of Charles the Second, who had formed his tafte by the French theatre; and Dryden, who wrote, and made no difficulty of declaring that he wrote, only to please, and who perhaps knew that by his dexterity of verfification he was more likely to excel others in rhyme than without it, very readily adopted his master's preference. He therefore made rhyming tragedies, till, by the prevalence of manifeft

propriety,

propriety, he feems to have grown ashamed of making them any longer.

To this play is prefixed a very vehement defence of dramatick rhyme, in confutation of the preface to the Duke of Lerma, in which Sir Robert Howard had cenfured it.

In 1667, he published Annus Mirabilis, the Year of Wonders, which may be efteemed one of his moft elaborate works.

It is addreffed to Sir Robert Howard by a letter, which is not properly a dedication; and, writing to a poet, he has interspersed many critical obfervations, of which fome are common, and fome perhaps ventured without much confideration. He began,

even now, to exercise the domination of confcious genius, by recommending his own performance: "I am fatisfied that as the "Prince and General [Rupert and Monk]

are incomparably the beft fubjects I ever "had, fo what I have written on them is "much better than what I have performed

on any other. As I have endeavoured to "adorn my poem with noble thoughts, so "much more to express those thoughts with "elocution."