The favourable reception which your excellent lady afforded to one of my former plays[L], has encouraged me to double my presumption, in addressing this to your grace's patronage. So dangerous a thing it is to admit a poet into your family, that you can never afterwards be free from the chiming of ill verses, perpetually sounding in your ears, and more troublesome than the neighbourhood of steeples. I have been favourable to myself in this expression; a zealous fanatick would have gone farther, and have called me the serpent, who first presented the fruit of my poetry to the wife, and so gained the opportunity to seduce the husband. Yet, I am ready to avow a crime so advantageous to me; but the world, which will condemn my boldness, I am sure will justify and applaud my choice. All men will join with me in the adoration which I pay you; they would wish only I had brought you a more noble sacrifice. Instead of an heroick play, you might justly expect an heroick poem, filled with the past glories of your ancestors, and the future certainties of your own. Heaven has already taken care to form you for an hero. You have all the advantages of mind and body, and an illustrious birth, conspiring to render you an extraordinary person. The Achilles and the Rinaldo are present in you, even above their originals; you only want a Homer, or a Tasso, to make you equal to them. Youth, beauty, and courage (all which you possess in the height of their perfection) are the most desirable gifts of heaven: and heaven is never prodigal of such treasures, but to some uncommon purpose. So goodly a fabric was never framed by an Almighty architect for a vulgar guest. He shewed the value which he set upon your mind, when he took care to have it so nobly, and so beautifully lodged. To a graceful fashion and deportment of body, you have joined a winning conversation, and an easy greatness, derived to you from the best, and best-beloved of princes. And with a great power of obliging, the world has observed in you a desire to oblige, even beyond your power. This, and all that I can say on so excellent and large a subject, is only history, in which fiction has no part; I can employ nothing of poetry in it, any more than I do in that humble protestation which I make, to continue ever Your Grace's most obedient And most devoted servant, JOHN DRYDEN. [Footnote K: For some account of the Duke of Monmouth, we refer our readers to the poem of Absalom and Achitophel, in which Dryden has described that unfortunate young nobleman under the character of Absalom]. [Footnote L: See the Dedication to the "Indian Emperor."] PREFACE.