lish crew before she could be carried into harbour. Lord
Mulgrave had a picture of the Katherine at his house in St James's
Park.--See CARLETON'S _Memoirs_, p. 5.

4. In 1548-9, there were insurrections in several counties of England,
having for their object the restoration of the Catholic religion,
and the redress of grievances. The insurgents in Northamptonshire
were 20,000 strong, headed by one Ket, a tanner, who possessed
himself of Norwich. The earl of Northampton, marching rashly and
hastily against him, at the head of a very inferior force, was
defeated with loss. In the rout lord Sheffield, ancestor of the
earl of Mulgrave, and the person alluded to in the text, fell with
his horse into a ditch, and was slain by a butcher with a club. The
rebels were afterwards defeated by the earl of Warwick.--DUGDALE'S
_Baron_, vol. ii. p. 386. HOLLINSHED, p. 1035.]

5. The entire passage of Lucretius is somewhat different from this
quotation:

_Quae bene, et eximie quamvis disposta ferantur,
Longe sunt tamen a vera ratione repulsa.
Omnia enim per se Divum natura necesse est
Immortali aevo summa cum pace fruatur,
Semota a nostris rebus, sejunctaque longe.
Nam privata dolore omni, privata periclis,
Ipsa suis pollens opibus, nihil indiga nostri,
Nec bene promeritis capitur, nec tangitur ira._
LIB. II.

Dryden ingeniously applies, to the calm of philosophical
retirement, the Epicurean tranquillity of the Deities of Lucretius.

6. The subject of this intended poem, was probably the exploits of the
Black Prince. See Life.

7. An incident in "Artemenes, ou Le Grand Cyrus," a huge romance,
written by Madame Scuderi.

PROLOGUE.

Our author, by experience, finds it true,
'Tis much more hard to please himself than you;
And out of no feigned modesty, this day
Damns his laborious trifle of a play:
Not that its worse than what before he writ,
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;
But spite of all his pride, a secret shame
Invades his breast at Shakespeare's sacred name: