It was like Rochester to reproach him on this score--the man who showed the white feather to Lord Mulgrave, and made lackeys cudgel Dryden in Rose Alley. But Otway gave him as good as he got in the "Poet's Complaint." The matter is explained in the Epilogue to _Caius Marius_, which he produced in 1680, having written most of it in camp abroad. It is a barefaced, and indeed avowed plagiarism from _Romeo and Juliet_, though one or two scenes are his own, and have some merit. Marius, at all events, was a rather more dignified representative of Shaftesbury than old Antonio in _Venice Preserved_. This play occupied the place of _Romeo and Juliet_ on our stage for seventy years. With a more avowed party motive he likewise published in the same year "The Poet's Complaint of his Muse." When we think of "Absalom and Achitophel," the contrast is woeful indeed. All Otway's poems are bad, except the Epistle to Duke, his friend. The blunted insipidity of his conventional diction is worthy of Pope's followers. Before leaving England he had written his first comedy, _Friendship in Fashion_, which appeared in 1678. In the year 1680 Otway's second great play, _The Orphan_, appeared. Voltaire attacked it furiously, and will allow no merit to _le tendre_ _Otway_. Tenderness anywhere was not likely to find favour with the _tigre-singe_, whose fascinating wit was of an icy brilliance. But Jeremy Collier also attacked the play on other grounds, in his "Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage." Mrs. Barry has recorded that in the character of Monimia she could never pronounce the words "Poor Castalio!" without tears. May she not have been thinking of another Castalio? Let us believe it! Ah! if only Mrs. Barry had been the Belvidera of her poet's dream, she might have saved him from his evil genius, from his selfish patrons, and from himself.