The Works of John Dryden | Page 2

animated hatred and detestation.
For the horrible spectacle of tortures and mangled limbs exhibited on
the stage, the author might plead the custom of his age. A stage
direction in Ravenscroft's alteration of "Titus Andronicus," bears, "A
curtain drawn, discovers the heads and hands of Demetrius and Chiron
hanging up against the wall; their bodies in chairs, in bloody linen."
And in an interlude, called the "Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru,"
written by D'Avenant, "a doleful pavin is played to prepare the change
of the scene, which represents a dark prison at a great distance; and
farther to the view are discerned racks and other engines of torment,
with which the Spaniards are tormenting the natives and English
mariners, who may be supposed to be lately landed there to discover
the coast. Two Spaniards are likewise discovered sitting in their cloaks,
and appearing more solemn in ruffs, with rapiers and daggers by their
sides; the one turning a spit, while the other is basting an Indian prince,
who is roasted at an artificial fire[1]." The rape of Isabinda is stated by
Langbaine to have been borrowed from a novel in the Decamerone of
Cinthio Giraldi.
This play is beneath criticism; and I can hardly hesitate to term it the
worst production Dryden ever wrote. It was acted and printed in 1673.
Footnote:
1. This extraordinary kitchen scene did not escape the
ridicule of the
wits of that merry age.
O greater cruelty yet,
Like a pig upon a spit;
Here lies one there,
another boiled to jelly;
Just as the people stare
At an ox in the fair,
Roasted whole, with a
pudding in's belly.
A little further in,
Hung a third by his chin,
And a fourth cut all in
quarters.

O that Fox had now been living,
They had been sure of heaven,
Or,
at the least, been some of his martyrs.
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
THE
LORD CLIFFORD
OF
CHUDLEIGH[1].
MY LORD,
After so many favours, and those so great, conferred on me by your
lordship these many years,--which I may call more properly one
continued act of your generosity and goodness,--I know not whether I
should appear either more ungrateful in my silence, or more
extravagantly vain in my endeavours to acknowledge them: For, since
all acknowledgements bear a face of payment, it may be thought, that I
have flattered myself into an opinion of being able to return some part
of my obligements to you;--the just despair of which attempt, and the
due veneration I have for his person, to whom I must address, have
almost driven me to receive only with a profound submission the
effects of that virtue, which is never to be comprehended but by
admiration; and the greatest note of admiration is silence. It is that
noble passion, to which poets raise their audience in highest subjects,
and they have then gained over them the greatest victory, when they are
ravished into a pleasure which is not to be expressed by words. To this
pitch, my lord, the sense of my gratitude had almost raised me: to
receive your favours, as the Jews of old received their law, with a mute
wonder; to think, that the loudness of acclamation was only the praise
of men to men, and that the secret homage of the soul was a greater
mark of reverence, than an outward ceremonious joy, which might be
counterfeit, and must be irreverent in its tumult. Neither, my lord, have

I a particular right to pay you my
acknowledgements: You have been
a good so universal, that almost every man in the three nations may
think me injurious to his propriety, that I invade your praises, in
undertaking to celebrate them alone; and that I have assumed to myself
a patron, who was no more to be circumscribed than the sun and
elements, which are of public benefit to human kind.
As it was much in your power to oblige all who could pretend to merit
from the public, so it was more in your nature and inclination. If any
went ill-satisfied from the treasury, while it was in your lordship's
management, it proclaimed the want of desert, and not of friends: You
distributed your master's favour with so equal hands, that justice herself
could not have held the scales more even; but with that natural
propensity to do good, that had that treasure been your own, your
inclination to bounty must have ruined you. No man attended to be
denied: No man bribed for expedition: Want and desert were pleas
sufficient. By your own integrity, and your prudent choice of those
whom you employed, the king gave all that he intended; and gratuities
to his officers made not vain his bounty. This, my lord, you were in
your public capacity of high treasurer, to which you ascended by such
degrees,