aitors unformed to his second sight are clear.
And squadrons here and squadrons there appear;
Rebellion is the burden of the seer.
To Bayes, in vision, were of late revealed,
_Whig armies, that at Knightsbridge lay concealed;_
And though no mortal eye could see't before,
_The battle just was entering at the door._
A dangerous association, signed by none,
The joiner's plot to seize the king alone.
Stephen with College[3] made this dire compact;
The watchful Irish took them in the fact.
Of riding armed; O traitorous overt act!
With each of them an ancient Pistol sided,
Against the statute in that case provided.
But, why was such a host of swearers pressed?
Their succour was ill husbandry at best.
Bayes's crowned muse, by sovereign right of satire,
Without desert, can dub a man a traitor;
And tories, without troubling law or reason,
By loyal instinct can find plots and treason.

A more formal attack was made in a pamphlet, entitled, "Some
Reflections on the pretended parallel in the Play called the Duke of
Guise." This Dryden, in the following Vindication, supposes to have
been sketched by Shadwell, and finished by a gentleman of the
Temple[4]. In these Reflections, the obvious ground of attack,
occupied by Hunt, is again resumed. The general indecency of a
theatrical exhibition, which alluded to state-transactions of a grave
and most important nature; the indecorum of comparing the king to such
a monarch as Henry III., infamous for treachery, cruelty, and vices of
the most profligate nature; above all, the parallel betwixt the Dukes
of Monmouth and Guise, by which the former is exhibited as a traitor
to his father, and recommended as no improper object for
assassination--are topics insisted on at some length, and with great
vehemence.

Our author was not insensible to these attacks, by which his loyalty
to the king, and the decency of his conduct towards Monmouth, the
king's offending, but still beloved, son, and once Dryden's own
patron, stood painfully compromised. Accordingly, shortly after these
pamphlets had appeared, the following advertisement was annexed to
"The Duke of Guise:"

"There was a preface intended to this play in vindication of it,
against two scurrilous libels lately printed; but it was judged,
that a defence of this nature would require more room than a preface
reasonably could allow. For this cause, and for the importunities of
the stationers,