, upon lord Arlington, another of
the cabal. In June 1674, he resigned the chancellorship of Cambridge.
About this time he became a great favourer of the Nonconformists.
February 16, 1676, his grace, and James earl of Salisbury, Anthony
earl of Shaftsbury, and Philip lord Wharton, were committed to the
Tower by order of the House of Lords, for a contempt, in refusing to
retract what they had said the day before, when the duke, immediately
after his Majesty had ended his speech to both Houses, endeavoured to
shew from law and reason, that the long prorogation was nulled, and
the Parliament was consequently dissolved.

The chief of our author's works is,

The Rehearsal, a Comedy, first acted on December 7, 1671. It is said
that the duke was assisted in writing this play, by his Chaplain Dr.
Thomas Sprat, Martin Clifford, esquire, master of the Charterhouse,
and Mr. Samuel Butler, author of Hudibras. Jacob, in his Lives of the
Poets, observes, 'that he cannot exactly learn when his grace began
this piece; but this much, says he, we may certainly gather from the
plays ridiculed in it, that it was before the end of 1663, and
finished before 1664, because it had been several times rehearsed, the
players were perfect in their parts, and all things in readiness for
its acting, before the great plague in 1665, and that then prevented
it, for what was then intended, was very different from what now
appears. In that he called his poet Bilboa, by which name Sir Robert
Howard was the person pointed at. During this interval, many plays
were published, written in heroic rhime, and on the death of Sir
William Davenant 1669, whom Mr. Dryden succeeded in the laurel, it
became still in greater vogue; this moved the duke to change the name
of his poet, from Bilboa to Bayes.'

This character of Bayes is inimitably drawn; in it the various foibles
of poets (whether good, bad or indifferent) are so excellently blended
as to make the most finished picture of a poetical coxcomb: 'Tis such
a master-piece of true humour as will ever last, while our English
tongue is understood, or the stage affords a good comedian to play it.
How shall I now avoid the imputation of vanity, when I relate, that
this piece, on being revived (when I[2] first appeared in the part of
Bayes) at the Theatre-Royal in Covent-Garden in the year 1739, was, in
that one season (continued to 1740) played upwards of forty nights, to
great audiences, with continued mirthful ap