ved by the
king of Portugal. Though, if I had taken the whole story, and wrought
it up into a play, I might have done it exactly according to the
practice of almost all the ancients, who were never accused of being
plagiaries for building their tragedies on known fables. Thus,
Augustus Caesar wrote an "Ajax," which was not the less his own,
because Euripides had written a play before him on that subject. Thus,
of late years, Corneille writ an "OEdipus" after Sophocles; and I have
designed one after him, which I wrote with Mr Lee; yet neither the
French poet stole from the Greek, nor we from the Frenchman. It is the
contrivance, the new turn, and new characters, which alter the
property, and make it ours. The _materia poetica_ is as common to all
writers, as the _materia medica_ to all physicians. Thus, in our
Chronicles, Daniel's history is still his own, though Matthew Paris,
Stow, and Hollingshed writ before him; otherwise we must have been
content with their dull relations, if a better pen had not been
allowed to come after them, and writ his own account after a new and
better manner.

I must further declare freely, that I have not exactly kept to the
three mechanic rules of unity. I knew them, and had them in my eye,
but followed them only at a distance; for the genius of the English
cannot bear too regular a play: we are given to variety, even to a
debauchery of pleasure. My scenes are therefore sometimes broken,
because my underplot required them so to be, though the general scene
remains,--of the same castle; and I have taken the time of two days,
because the variety of accidents, which are here represented, could
not naturally be supposed to arrive in one: but to gain a greater
beauty, it is lawful for a poet to supersede a less.

I must likewise own, that I have somewhat deviated from the known
history, in the death of Muley Moluch, who, by all relations, died of
a fever in the battle, before his army had wholly won the field; but
if I have allowed him another day of life, it was because I stood in
need of so shining a character of brutality as I have given him; which
is indeed the same with that of the present emperor Muley-Ishmael, as
some of our English officers, who have been in his court, have
credibly informed me.

I have been listening--what objections had been made against the
conduct of the play; but found them all so trivial, that if I should
name them, a true critic would imagine that I played bo