. Aureng-Zebe also
murdered one or two nephews, and a few other near relations; but, in
expiation of his complicated crimes, renounced the use of flesh, fish,
and wine, living only upon barley-bread vegetables, and confections,
although scrupling no excesses by which he could extend and strengthen
his usurped power[1].

Dr Johnson has supposed, that, in assuming for his subject a living
prince, Dryden incurred some risque; as, should Aureng-Zebe have
learned and resented the freedom, our Indian trade was exposed to the
consequences of his displeasure. It may, however, be safely doubted,
whether a monarch, who had actually performed the achievements above
narrated, would have been scandalized by those imputed to him in the
text. In other respects, the distance and obscurity of the events gave
a poet the same authority over them, as if they had occurred in the
annals of past ages; a circumstance in which Dryden's age widely
differed from ours, when so much has our intimacy increased with the
Oriental world, that the transactions of Delhi are almost as familiar
to us as those of Paris.

The tragedy of "Aureng-Zebe" is introduced by the poet's declaration
in the prologue, that his taste for heroic plays was now upon the
wane:

But he has now another taste of wit;
And, to confess a truth, though out of time,
Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme.
Passion's too fierce to be in fetters bound,
And nature flies him, like enchanted ground,
What verse can do, he has performed in this,
Which he presumes the most correct of his.

Agreeably to what might be expected from this declaration, the verse
used in "Aureng-Zebe" is of that kind which may be most easily applied
to the purposes of ordinary dialogue. There is much less of ornate
structure and emphatic swell, than occurs in the speeches of Almanzor
and Maximin; and Dryden, though late, seems to have at length
discovered, that the language of true passion is inconsistent with
that regular modulation, to maintain which, the actor must mouth each
couplet in a sort of recitative. The ease of the verse in
"Aureng-Zebe," although managed with infinite address, did not escape
censure. In the "just remonstrance of affronted _That_," transmitted
to the Spectator, the offended conjunction is made to plead, "What
great advantage was _I_ of to Mr Dryden, in his "Indian Emperor?"

You force me still to answer you in _that,_
To furnish out a rhime to Morat.