ge his melting eyes, and bleeding soul:
Whilst his bent knees, to those remains divine,
Paid their last offering to that royal shrine."

On which lines occurs this explanatory note:--"An Ode, composed by His
Grace, on the death of the late Queen Mary, justly adjudged by the
ingenious Mr. Dryden to have exceeded all that had been written on that
occasion."

[25] Dr. Birch refers to the authority of Richard Graham, junior; but no
such letter has been recovered.

[26] The authority, however respectable, has a very long chain of links.
Warton heard it from A, who heard it from B, who heard it from Pope, who
heard it from Bolingbroke.--Ed.

[27] This discovery was made by the researches of Mr. Malone. Dr. Burney
describes Clarke as excelling in the tender and plaintive, to which he
was prompted by a temperament of natural melancholy. In the agonies
which arose from an unfortunate attachment, he committed suicide in July
1707. See a full account of the catastrophe in Malone's "Life of
Dryden," p. 299.

[28] It was first performed on February 19, 1735-6, at opera prices.
"The public expectations and the effects of this representation (says
Dr. Burney) seem to have been correspondent, for the next day we are
told in the public papers [London Daily Post, and General Advertiser,
Feb. 20,] that 'there never was, upon the like occasion, so numerous and
splendid an audience at any theatre in London, there being at least
thirteen hundred persons present; and it is judged that the receipts of
the house could not amount to less than L450. It met with general
applause, though attended with the inconvenience of having the
performers placed at too great a distance from the audience, which we
hear will be rectified the next time of performance."--_Hist. of Music_,
iv. 391.

[29] See vol. xviii.

[30] "Thine be the laurel, then; thy blooming age
Can best, if any can, support the stage,
Which to declines, that shortly we may see
Players and plays reduced to second infancy.
Sharp to the world, but thoughtless of renown,
They plot not on the stage, but on the town;
And in despair their empty pit to fill,
Set up some foreign monster in a bill:
Thus they jog on, still tricking, never thriving,
And murth'ring plays, which they miscall--reviving.
Our sense is nonsense, through their pipes conveyed;
Scarce can a poet know the play he made,
'Tis so disguised in death; nor thinks 'tis he
That suffers in t