The part of _Maximin_, against which these holy critics so much declaim, was designed by me to set off the character of _St Catharine_. And those, who have read the Roman history, may easily remember, that Maximin was not only a bloody tyrant, _vastus corpore, animo ferus_, as Herodian describes him; but also a persecutor of the church, against which he raised the Sixth Persecution. So that whatsoever he speaks or acts in this tragedy, is no more than a record of his life and manners; a picture, as near as I could take it, from the original. If, with much pains, and some success, I have drawn a deformed piece, there is as much of art, and as near an imitation of nature, in a lazar, as in a Venus. Maximin was an heathen, and what he speaks against religion, is in contempt of that which he professed. He defies the gods of Rome, which is no more than St Catharine might with decency have done. If it be urged, that a person of such principles, who scoffs at any religion, ought not to be presented on the stage; why then are the lives and sayings of so many wicked and profane persons, recorded in the Holy Scriptures? I know it will be answered, That a due use may be made of them; that they are remembered with a brand of infamy fixed upon them; and set as sea-marks for those who behold them to avoid. And what other use have I made of Maximin? have I proposed him as a pattern to be imitated, whom, even for his impiety to his false gods, I have so severely punished? Nay, as if I had foreseen this objection, I purposely removed the scene of the play, which ought to have been at Alexandria in Egypt, where St Catharine suffered, and laid it under the walls of Aquileia in Italy, where Maximin was slain; that the punishment of his crime might immediately succeed its execution. This, reader, is what I owed to my just defence, and the due reverence of that religion which I profess, to which all men, who desire to be esteemed good, or honest, are obliged. I have neither leisure nor occasion to write more largely on this subject, because I am already justified by the sentence of the best and most discerning prince in the world, by the suffrage of all unbiassed judges, and, above all, by the witness of my own conscience, which abhors the thought of such a crime; to which I ask leave to add my outward conversation, which shall never be justly taxed with the note of atheism or profaneness. In what else concerns the play, I shall be brief: For the faults of the writing and contrivance, I leave them to the mercy of the reader. For I am as little apt to defend my own errors, as to find those of other poets. Only, I observe, that the great censors of wit and poetry, either produce nothing of their own, or what is more ridiculous than any thing they reprehend. Much of ill nature, and a very little judgment, go far in finding the mistakes of writers.