'An Essay on Heroic Plays. Works of John Dryden' (1821), iv. 23-25.] [Footnote 9: With all the vulgar applause and critical abhorrence of puns, they have Aristotle on their side; who permits them to orators, and gives them consequence by a grave disquisition. ["Cicero also," says Addison, "has sprinkled several of his works with them; and in his book on Oratory, quotes abundance of sayings as pieces of wit, which, upon examination, prove arrant puns."--'Essay on Wit, Works' (1888), ii. 354.]] [Footnote 10: In Vanbrugh and Gibber's comedy of The Provoked Husband, first played at Drury Lane, January 10, 1728.]] [Footnote 11: "And in his ear I'll holla--Mortimer!" ['I Henry IV'., act i. sc. 3.]] [Footnote 12: Garrick's 'Lying Valet' was played for the first time at Goodman's Fields, November 30, 1741.] ["Peregrine" is a character in George Colman's 'John Bull', or 'An Englishman's Fire-Side', Covent Garden. March 5, 1803.] ] [Footnote 13: I have Johnson's authority for making Lear a monosyllable-- "Perhaps where Lear rav'd or Hamlet died On flying cars new sorcerers may ride." ["Perhaps where Lear has rav'd, and Hamlet dy'd." Prologue to 'Irene. Johnson's Works' (1806), i. 168.] and (if it need be mentioned) the 'authority' of the epigram on Barry and Garrick.--[Note 'erased, Proof b, British Museum'.]] [Footnote 14: "'Johnson'. Pray, Mr. Bayes, who is that Drawcansir? 'Bayes'. Why, Sir, a great [fierce] hero, that frights his mistress, snubs up kings, baffles armies, and does what he will, without regard to numbers, good sense, or justice [good manners, justice, or numbers]." 'The Rehearsal', act iv. sc. I. 'The Rehearsal', by George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham (1627-1688), appeared in 1671. Sprat and others are said to have shared the authorship. So popular was the play that "Drawcansir" passed into a synonime for a braggadocio. It is believed that "Bayes" (that is, of course, "laureate") was meant for a caricature of Dryden: "he himself complains bitterly that it was so." (See 'Lives of the Poets' (1890), i. 386; and Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' (1876), p. 235, and 'note'.)]] [Footnote 15: "Difficile est proprie communia dicere; tuque Rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus, Quam si proferres ignota indictaque primus." HOR: 'DE ARTE POET': 128-130. Mons. Dacier, Mons. de Sévigné, Boileau, and others, have left their dispute on the meaning of this sentence in a tract considerably longer than the poem of Horace. It is printed at the close of the eleventh volume of Madame de Sévigné's Letters, edited by Grouvelle, Paris, 1806. Presuming that all who can construe may venture an opinion on such subjects, particularly as so many who _can't_ have taken the same liberty, I should have held "my farthing candle" as awkwardly as another, had not my respect for the wits of Louis 14th's Augustan "Siècle" induced me to subjoin these illustrious authorities. I therefore offer: