The Works of John Dryden | Page 3

that your royal master saw your virtues still growing to his
favours, faster than they could rise to you. Both at home and abroad,
with your sword and with your counsel, you have served him with
unbiassed honour, and unshaken resolution; making his greatness, and
the true interest of your country, the standard and measure of your
actions. Fortune may desert the wise and brave, but true virtue never
will forsake itself[2]. It is the interest of the world, that virtuous men
should attain to greatness, because it gives them the power of doing
good: But when, by the iniquity of the times, they are brought to that
extremity, that they must either quit their virtue or their fortune, they
owe themselves so much, as to retire to the private exercise of their
honour;--to be great within, and by the constancy of their resolutions,
to teach the inferior world how they ought to judge of such principles,
which are asserted with so generous and so unconstrained a trial.
But this voluntary neglect of honours has been of rare example in the
world[3]: Few men have frowned first upon fortune, and precipitated

themselves from the top of her wheel, before they felt at least the
declination of it. We read not of many emperors like Dioclesian and
Charles the Fifth, who have preferred a garden and a cloister before a
crowd of followers, and the troublesome glory of an active life, which
robs the possessor of his rest and quiet, to secure the safety and
happiness of others. Seneca, with the help of his philosophy, could
never attain to that pitch of virtue: He only endeavoured to prevent his
fall by descending first, and offered to resign that wealth which he
knew he could no longer hold; he would only have made a present to
his master of what he foresaw would become his prey; he strove to
avoid the jealousy of a tyrant,--you dismissed yourself from the
attendance and privacy of a gracious king. Our age has afforded us
many examples of a contrary nature; but your lordship is the only one
of this. It is easy to discover in all governments, those who wait so
close on fortune, that they are never to be shaken off at any turn: Such
who seem to have taken up a resolution of being great; to continue their
stations on the theatre of business; to change with the scene, and shift
the vizard for another part--these men condemn in their discourses that
virtue which they dare not practise: But the sober part of this present
age, and impartial posterity, will do right, both to your lordship and to
them: And, when they read on what accounts, and with how much
magnanimity, you quitted those honours, to which the highest ambition
of an English subject could aspire, will apply to you, with much more
reason, what the historian said of a Roman emperor, "_Multi diutius
imperium tenuerunt; nemo fortius reliquit._"
To this retirement of your lordship, I wish I could bring a better
entertainment than this play; which, though it succeeded on the stage,
will scarcely bear a serious perusal; it being contrived and written in a
month, the subject barren, the persons low, and the writing not
heightened with many laboured scenes. The consideration of these
defects ought to have prescribed more modesty to the author, than to
have presented it to that person in the world for whom he has the
greatest honour, and of whose patronage the best of his endeavours had
been unworthy: But I had not satisfied myself in staying longer, and
could never have paid the debt with a much better play. As it is, the
meanness of it will shew; at least, that I pretend not by it to make any

manner of return for your favours; and that I only give you a new
occasion of exercising your goodness to me, in pardoning the failings
and imperfections of,
MY LORD,
Your Lordship's
Most humble, most obliged,
Most obedient servant,

JOHN DRYDEN.
Footnotes:
1. Sir Thomas Clifford, just then created Lord Clifford of
Chudleigh,
and appointed Lord High Treasurer, was one of the six ministers, the
initials of whose names furnished the word Cabal, by which their junto
was distinguished. He was the most virtuous and honest of the junto,
but a Catholic; and, what was then synonymous, a warm advocate for
arbitrary power. He is said to have won his promotion by advising the
desperate measure of shutting the Exchequer in 1671, the hint of which
he is said to have stolen from Shaftesbury. This piece may have been
undertaken by his command; for, even at the very time of the triple
alliance, he is reported to have said, "For all this, we must have another
Dutch war." Upon the defection of