sure to have said with
Sosie:

"Peste! ou prend mon esprit toutes ces gentillesses?"

As for the final result of these wars and love-makings, it is a very
airy one; for Crowne seems to have entertained a higher ideal of purity
than even Montausier and Orinda. His ladies bestow upon their lovers
nothing at all, not even marriage, and the author, after having been at
some trouble to re-establish order in Thessaly and other countries,
gives up all idea of getting Pandion and Amphigenia wedded, this lady,
she of the pillow above described, being as he says so very "coy."

Though not quite a match for Crowne's it must be conceded that neither
is Dryden's bombast of a mean order. The following passage which very
nearly bears comparison with the above, will show how heroism appeared
when transferred to the stage. In one of the dramas, the plot of which
Dryden took from the French romances, Almanzor thus addresses a rival:

"If from thy hands alone my death can be,
I am immortal and a god to thee,
If I would kill thee now, thy fate's so low
That I must stoop ere I can give the blow:
But mine is fixed so far above thy crown,
That all thy men,
Piled on thy back, can never pull it down:
But at my ease, thy destiny I send,
By ceasing from this hour to be thy friend.
Like heaven, I need but only to stand still,
And not concurring to thy life, I kill."[348]

[Illustration: HEROES (MOORISH ONES) AS THEY APPEARED ON THE STAGE, FROM
SETTLE'S "EMPRESS OF MOROCCO," 1673.]

Any number of speeches of this sort are to be found in the heroical
dramas of Dryden, Settle, Lee, and their contemporaries. Roman, Arab,
Turk, Greek or Moorish heroes, pirates or princes, when they mean to set
anything at defiance, choose nothing less than heaven and earth as their
object; they divide the world between them as if it were an orange; they
rush to the fight or stop for a speech with a fine shake of the head
which sends a majestic undulation round the wig worn by them, even by
the Moors, as we may see in one of the very rare dramas then published
with engravings. They are represented there with embroidered
justaucorps, wigs and ribbons.[349]

Crowne besides his romance wrote several dramas that secured him a wide,
if temporary, popularity. He also adapted Racine's "Andromaque" for the
English stage, but he was very much disgusted with this work; the French
original, though not "the worst"