"She'll have too great content to find him true;
And therefore since his love is not for me,
I'll help to make my rival's misery.
Spaniard, I never thought you false before;
Can you at once two mistresses adore?
Keep the poor soul no longer in suspense,
Your change is such, it does not need defence."
The scene of Hogarth's last drama was Newgate; and in this it is a
Mexican prison, where his pigmy personages are playing their little
parts in one of Dryden's heroic tragedies.
That these minor performers should prefer rhyme to prose, I can
readily conceive--the jingling of verse is a great help to your short
memory; but that Dryden, "the great high priest of all the Nine,"
should so far deviate from nature and outrage common sense as thus
to fetter his dramatic dialogue, is to be accounted for on no other
principle than the vile taste of Charles the Second's vile Court. The
play is dedicated to the most excellent and most illustrious Princess
Anne, Duchess of Monmouth and Buccleuch, wife to the most illustrious
and high-born James Duke of Monmouth; and by that dedication[225]
appears to have been warmly patronized by the most eminent persons of
wit and honour.
It is a sequel to the _Indian Queen_, written by Dryden and Sir
Robert Howard, which was published two years before. Of this
connection between the two tragedies, notice was given to the
audience by printed bills distributed at the door,[226]--an
expedient which the Duke of Buckingham very happily ridicules in
_The Rehearsal_, when Bayes boasts of the number of bills he has
printed, to instil into the audience some conception of his plot. By
the age of the warlike William of Cumberland, I conjecture that these
embryotic heroes and heroines strutted away their little hour about
the year 1731; and though the play which they are enacting is beneath
the blazing genius of John Dryden, it is well worthy the puny powers
of these puny performers.[227] Lady Sophia Fermor, who plays the
part of Almeria, in 1744 married Lord Granville, and died in 1750.
The prompter was a Mr. T. Hill; and though this reverend gentleman is
in rather too conspicuous a situation, he is not quite so obtrusive
an object as the prompter at the Opera House. The governess playing
with one of the children was Lady Deloraine. Miss Conduit, who
appears as Alibeck, was daughter to Catherine, the niece of Sir Isaac
Newton, and in 1740 married Lord Lymington, eldest son to John first
Earl of Portsmouth.
The names and additions of three of the auditors are inserted under
the small print. One of the figures has a resemblance to the courtly
Lord Chesterfield. Upon the chimney-piece is the bust of Sir Isaac
Newton, and it is fair to conjecture that the two framed portraits
represent Mr. and Mrs. Conduit.
The figure leaning on the back of a chair is said to be intended for
the Duke of Montagu; and the two in the background, for the Duke and
Duchess of Richmond.
Hogarth's original painting is the property of Lord Holland.
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