So _Chærea_ is made happy by Terence, in marrying her whom he had deflowered: and so are _Wildblood_ and the _Astrologer_ in this play. There is another crime with which I am charged, at which I am yet much less concerned, because it does not relate to my manners, as the former did, but only to my reputation as a poet: a name of which I assure the reader I am nothing proud; and therefore cannot be very solicitous to defend it. I am taxed with stealing all my plays, and that by some, who should be the last men from whom I would steal any part of them. There is one answer which I will not make; but it has been made for me, by him to whose grace and patronage I owe all things, _Et spes et ratio studiorum in Cæsare tantum_-- and without whose command they should no longer be troubled with any thing of mine;--that he only desired, that they, who accused me of theft, would always steal him plays like mine. But though I have reason to be proud of this defence, yet I should wave it, because I have a worse opinion of my own comedies than any of my enemies can have. It is true, that wherever I have liked any story in a romance, novel, or foreign play, I have made no difficulty, nor ever shall, to take the foundation of it, to build it up, and to make it proper for the English stage. And I will be so vain to say, it has lost nothing in my hands: But it always cost me so much trouble to heighten it for our theatre, (which is incomparably more curious in all the ornaments of dramatic poesy than the French or Spanish,) that when I had finished my play, it was like the hulk of Sir Francis Drake, so strangely altered, that there scarcely remained any plank of the timber which first built it. To witness this, I need go no farther than this play: it was first Spanish, and called "El Astrologo Fingido;" then made French by the younger Corneille; and is now translated into English, and in print, under the name of "The Feigned Astrologer." What I have performed in this will best appear by comparing it with those: You will see that I have rejected some adventures which I judged were not divertising; that I have heightened those which I have chosen; and that I have added others, which were neither in the French nor Spanish. And, besides, you will easily discover, that the walk of the _Astrologer_ is the least considerable in my play: For the design of it turns more on the parts of _Wildblood_ and _Jacinta_, who are the chief persons in it. I have farther to add, that I seldom use the wit and language of any romance or play, which I undertake to alter: because my own invention (as bad as it is) can furnish me with nothing so dull as what is there. Those who have called Virgil, Terence, and Tasso, plagiaries, (though they much injured them) had yet a better colour for their accusation; for Virgil has evidently translated Theocritus, Hesiod, and Homer, in many places; besides what he has taken from Ennius in his own language. Terence was