rgument of a total
deprivation of taste, which in other respects does not appear to be
the case of Mr. Dennis.

We shall now take a view of our author in the light of a dramatist.
In the year 1697 a comedy of his was acted at the Theatre-Royal
in Drury-Lane, called A Plot and No Plot, dedicated to the Earl of
Sunderland. The scope of this piece is to ridicule the credulity and
principles of the Jacobites, the moral of which is this, 'That there
are in all parties, persons who find it their interest to deceive
the rest, and that one half of every faction makes a property in
fee-simple of the other, therefore we ought never to believe any thing
will, or will not be, because it is agreeable, or contrary to our
humours, but because it is in itself likely, or improbable. Credulity
in men, engaged in a party, proceeds oftner from pride than weakness,
and it is the hardest thing in the world to impose upon a humble man.'
In 1699 a tragedy called Rinaldo and Armida was acted at the Theatre
in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, dedicated to the Duke of Ormond. Scene the
top of a mountain in the Canaries. The hint of the chief characters
is owing to Tasso's Gierusalemme, but the manners of them being by our
author thought unequal in that great Italian, he has taken the liberty
to change them, and form his characters more agreeable to the subject.
The reasons for doing it are expressed in the preface and prologue to
the play.

Our author's next tragedy was upon the subject of Iphigenia, daughter
to Agamemnon King of Argos, acted at the Theatre in Lincoln's-Inn
1704. Iphigenia was to have been sacrificed by her father, who was
deluded by the fraud of Calchas, who proclaimed throughout the Grecian
fleet, that the offended gods demanded of Agamemnon the sacrifice of
his daughter to Lucina, and till, that oblation was offered, the fleet
would remain wind-bound. Accordingly, under pretence of marrying
her to Achilles, she was betrayed from Argos, but her mother,
Clytemnestra, discovering the cheat, by a stratagem prevented its
execution, and effected her rescue without the knowledge of any one
but her husband Agamemnon. A Grecian virgin being sacrificed in her
place, Iphigenia is afterwards wrecked on the Coast of Scythia, and
made the Priestess of Diana. In five years time her brother Orestes,
and his friend Pylades, are wrecked on the same shore, but saved from
slaughter by the Queen of Scythia, because she loved Orestes. Orestes,
on the other