etry has
always been, and will still be the entertainment of all wise men, that
have any delicacy in their knowledge." Then, after wasting a little
necessary flattery on the noble marquis, he starts off into an
unblushing eulogy of King William III., whose clemency was mirrored,
supposedly, by the hero of the tragedy. "Some people [who do me a very
great honour in it] have fancy'd, that in the person of Tamerlane, I
have alluded to the greatest character of the present age. I don't
know whether I ought not to apprehend a great deal of danger from
avowing a design like that: It may be a task indeed worthy of the
greatest genius, which this or any other time has produc'd; but
therefore I ought not to stand the shock of a parallel lest it should
be seen, to my disadvantage, how far the _Hero has transcended the
poet's thoughts_"--and so on, _ad nauseam_.

To turn the leaves of the play, after wading through the slime of the
"Epistle," is to find amusing proof of the high-flown and at times
bombastic expression which elicited such admiration from audiences of
the old _regime_. (Do not laugh at it, reader; you tolerate an equal
amount of absurdity in modern melodrama). The very first lines are
charmingly suggestive of the starched and stately past. "Hail to the
sun!" says the Prince of Tanais:

"Hail to the sun! from whose returning light
The cheerful soldier's arms new lustre take
To deck the pomp of battle."

Playwrights of Rowe's cult loved to hail the sun. Just why the orb
of day had to be saluted with such frequency no one seemed able to
determine, but the honour was continually bestowed, to the great
edification of the groundlings. When Young wrote "Busiris," he paid
so much attention to old Sol that Fielding burlesqued the learned
doctor's weakness through the medium of "Tom Thumb," and wrote that
"the author of 'Busiris' is extremely anxious to prevent the sun's
blushing at any indecent object; and, therefore, on all such
occasions, he addresses himself to the sun, and desires him to keep
out of the way."

After the Prince of Tanais's homage to the sun we hear something
fulsome about the virtues of King William, alias Tamerlane:

"No lust of rule, the common vice of Kings,
No furious zeal, inspir'd by hot-brain'd priests,
Ill hid beneath religion's specious name,
E'er drew his temp'rate courage to the field:
But to redress an injur'd people's wrongs,
To save the weak one from the strong opp