or _scowerers_, as they were then termed, and
expected the public should sympathise in their brutal orgies. True
it is, that the heroes are _whig_ scowerers; and, whilst breaking
windows, stabbing watchmen, and beating passengers, do not fail to
express a due zeal for the Protestant religion, and the liberty of
the subject. Much of the interest also turns, it must be allowed,
upon the Protestant scowerers aforesaid baffling and beating,
without the least provocation, a set of inferior scowerers, who
were Jacobites at least, if not Papists. Shadwell is thus described
in the "Sessions of the Poets:"

Next into the crowd Tom Shadwell does wallow,
And swears by his guts, his paunch, and his tallow,
'Tis he that alone best pleases the age,
Himself and his wife have supported the stage.
Apollo, well pleased with so bonny a lad,
To oblige him, he told him he should be huge glad,
Had he half so much wit as he fancied he had.
However, to please so jovial a wit,
And to keep him in humour, Apollo thought fit
To bid him drink on, and keep his old trick
Of railing at poets--

Those, who consult the full passage, will see good reason to think
Dryden's censure on Shadwell's brutality by no means too severe.

33. In 1444, Ladislaus king of Hungary, in breach of a treaty solemnly
sworn upon the gospel, invaded Bulgaria, at the instigation of the
Cardinal Legate. He was slain, and his army totally routed in the
bloody battle of Warna, where ten thousand Christians fell before
the janissaries of Amurath II. It is said, that while the battle
remained undecided, the sultan displayed the solemn treaty, and
invoked the God of truth, and the blessed name of Jesus, to revenge
the impious infidelity of the Hungarian. This battle would have
laid Hungary under the Turkish yoke, had it not been for the
exploits of John Corvinus Huniades, the white knight of Walachia,
and the more dubious prowess of the famous John Castriot, king of
Epirus.

34. In the preface to which the author alleges, that Hunt contributed
no small share towards the composition of "Julian the Apostate."
See WOOD'S _Ath. Oxon._ v. ii. p. 729.

35. The song against the bishops is probably a ballad, upon their
share in throwing out the bill of exclusion, beginning thus:

The grave house of Commons, by hook, or by crook,
Resolved to ro