will might be managed with so much judgment, as to render it the most agreeable, as well as the most surprising part of the whole fable; let Dacier, and all the rest of the modern critics, who are too much bigotted to the ancients, contend ever so much to the contrary. I was afraid that I had been the inventor of a new sort of designing, when, in my third act, I make a discovery of my Alphonso's true parentage. If it were so, what wonder had it been, that dramatic poetry, though a limited art, yet might be capable of receiving some innovations for the better? But afterwards I casually found, that Menander and Terence, in the "Heautontimoroumenos," had been before me; and made the same kind of discovery in the same act. As for the mechanic unities;--that of time is much within the compass of an astrological day, which begins at twelve, and ends at the same hour the day following: that of place is not observed so justly by me, as by the ancients; for their scene was always one, and almost constantly in some public place. Some of the late French poets, and, amongst the English, my most ingenious friend, Mr Congreve, have observed this rule strictly; though the place was not altogether so public as a street. I have followed the example of Corneille, and stretched the latitude to a street and palace, not far distant from each other in the same city. They, who will not allow this liberty to a poet, make it a very ridiculous thing for an audience to suppose themselves, sometimes to be in a field, sometimes in a garden, and at other times in a chamber. There are not, indeed, so many absurdities in their supposition, as in ours; but it is an original absurdity for the audience to suppose themselves to be in any other place, than in the very theatre in which they sit; which is neither chamber, nor garden, nor yet a public place of any business, but that of the representation. For my action it is evidently double; and in that I have the most of the ancients for my examples. Yet I dare not defend this way by reason, much less by their authority; for their actions, though double, were of the same species; that is to say, in their comedies, two amours; and their persons were better linked in interests than mine. Yet even this is a fault which I should often practise, if I were to write again, because it is agreeable to the English genius. We love variety more than any other nation; and so long as the audience will not be pleased without it, the poet is obliged to humour them. On condition they were cured of this public vice, I could be content to change my method, and gladly give them a more reasonable pleasure. This digression, my lord, is not altogether the purpose of an epistle dedicatory; yet it is expected, that somewhat should be said, even here, in relation to criticism; at least in vindication of my address, that you may not be desired to patronize a poem, which is wholly unworthy of your protection. Though, after all, I