My Lord,

The Publication of these Poems falling to my Lot, the Merit of the Poet soon determin'd me in the Choice of a Patron; the greatest Genius in Poetry naturally flying to the Protection of the greatest Genius

in War, for the Muse has always found herself dear to the Heroes Race, whose Glory, and Praise it is her Duty and Delight to transmit to Posterity. And a Maxim, that has now been long admitted as Authentic, made me think, that these less known Works of Shakespear, wou'd not be displeasing to Your Lordship: For

Shou'd we therefore, my Lord, judge of Your Love to the Muse by the Deeds You have done worthy of her most noble and lofty Harmony, we must necessarily conclude it to be of the first Magnitude, since the Themes Your Lordship has given her admits of nothing equal. For Your Actions, my Lord, can borrow nothing from Fiction, or the Ornaments of Art, since the bare and naked Truth supplies Beauties more wonderful and more engaging. This, my Lord, securing me from the Imputation of Flatery, a Rock that few Authors have escap'd in Dedications, furnish'd another Motive of making this Address to Your Lordship. For Your Merits are too public; Your Friends with Joy, Your Enemies with Regret confess, and all Europe is witness to infinitely more, than is sufficient to guard me from that Evil, which I wou'd always with the

utmost Caution avoid. No, my Lord, I can say nothing of Your Courage or Your Conduct, of which there are not already attested Proofs in the Hands of all Men. The Taking, and Relief of Barcelona, the stony Cliffs of Albocazars; the Surrender of Nules, and Molviedro, or the ancient Saguntum; the Relief of Valentia, and the Reduction of that Kingdom, and the Promise of all Spain by the particular Force of Your Lordship's own Genius, and various other Wonders, testify'd by that royal Hand, into which Your Lordship's Valour and Conduct put a Scepter, secure me from any Suspicion of Adulation.

What can, I, my Lord, say of your Generosity, a heav'nly Quality, and visible in all the Actions of a great Heroe? What, I say, can I speak of it equal to those noble Proofs which are on Record? If I shou'd assert, that Your Lordship was always liberal of Your own, and always frugal of the Treasure of the Public, are there not a thousand Instances, as well as Witnesses of so evident a Truth? When You took whole Countries almost without Men, and maintain'd Armies without Money? But, my Lord, what can a Poet? what can all the Art of the best Orator say equal to that unparalell'd Act of Beneficence to the Public, when Your Lordship

refus'd a Compensation for the Loss of Your Baggage at Huete? Where with a Generosity, peculiar to Your Lordship, You transferr'd the Amends due to Your self, to the Advantage of the Public, by obliging the Inhabitants to furnish the Confederate Army with Magazines of Corn (sufficiently then wanted by them) large enough to suffice a Body of 20000 Men for two Months? Oh! my Lord, this is so unfashionable an Act, so out of the Mode of the Times, when the Public, is perpetually the Dupe of private Interest, that it must raise Envy as well as Admiration; it relishes indeed of those happy Ages, when public Corruption was unknown, and the Public Good, the Chief if not only Endeavour of Heroes.

How famous have Curius and Fabritius been about two thousand Years for their Refusal of the Glod of the Samnites, and of Pyrrhus, in all the Nations, that know any thing of the Roman Story? Yet certainly there is not the least Comparison betwixt the Deeds. The Roman Worthies refus'd what they cou'd not receive without the Imputation of Villany or Treason to their Country, and the Undertaking the Cause of Foreigners; and this e'r yet the Roman Virtue and Simplicity were debauch'd by Power, the Wealth, and Vices of Asia, and that Luxury and Avarice, which sunk at last the Roman Glory into

an empty Name. On the other Hand, my Lord, what the Castilians offer'd, was Your Due; it was but the just Compensation of a Robbery, they had committed on Your Lordship's Baggage; and therefore might have been receiv'd without the least Blemish to Honour; for Your Lordship, therefore to sacrifice Your own just Right to the Public, when few Generals are to be found, who in the Conquest of Kingdoms wou'd not sacrifice abundantly to their own Coffers; when Avarice is so epidemic, that few escape the Infection, which is so much the stronger by how much the Power of gratifying it is greater, is a Miracle, that none but my Lord Peterborow cou'd perform, and equal to those other Wonders of Your Conduct, and Valour, scarce once to be paralell'd in all the Histories of Antiquity.

But, my Lord, tho' what I have said must be allow'd to be no Flatery, because no more than the bare, and publickly attested Matter of Fact, yet I am sensible, that Envy, uneasie at the meer Repetition of Deeds, which are yet the Admiration of all the World, will condemn my Zeal in the Recital. The Envious indeed, and those, that are conscious of wanted Worth, are the chief Enemies of Praise, as offensive to Modesty; yet the true Reason is

because they are too modest to do any thing worthy of Praise. But if they are offended at what I have said as a Praise, they must at the same time confess with your Lordship's Friends, that a simple and unartful Narration of what you have done, is it self a Panegyric too grating to Ingratitude, to be repeated.

All I have to fear on this Head, that I value, is from your Lordship, who take more Pleasure in doing great things, than in hearing of them: Yet, my Lord, as You have sacrific'd so much to the Public, so I perswade my self, that Your Lordship cannot refuse to offer up a Modesty, which with Obstinacy preserv'd, must be injurious to the World. For as Horace and Reason assure us

Such Actions as Your Lordship has done ought always to be before our Eyes; the Poets shou'd take all Occasions of writing upon them; the Painters shou'd give us fresh Draughts of them every Day; and the Masters of Music shou'd add a greater and more sublime Soul to their Harmony by sounding their Praise; the Old should recommend, and the Young admire and emulate them: For

nothing begets Vertue, like such Examples, and the just Glory and Praise, that attend them.

Cicero rightly observes, that Glory and the Desire of Praise are the true Source of great Actions.—Trahimur omnes Laudis Studio (says he in his Oration for Archias the Poet) & optimus quisq; Gloriâ ducitur. Ipsi illi Philosophi etiam in illis Libellis, quos de contemnendâ Gloriâ scribunt, Nomen suum inscribunt; in eo ipso, in quo Prædicationem Nobilitatemq; despiciunt, prædicari de se, & nominari volunt. I cannot but take Notice, that he says, Optimus quisq;— that the best and most worthy are drawn by the Love of Glory: For to that Principle we owe all the great Examples of Antiquity; whereas the Hate and Contempt of Glory, the Product of a decaying Age, and begot by the Affectation of some talkative Greeklings, and revived by some Enthusiastic, or Hipocritical Christians, have never given us one Hero compleat enough to recommend the Power and Excellence of the Principle, for the Benefit of Mankind. For the Contemners of Praise and Glory have always been eminent for Vices as odious, as injurious, to Mankind, viz. a sordid voracious Avarice; or a mean and sinister Ambition; Men of narrow Souls, who find it easier to declare against Praise, than to do Actions worthy of it.

If we consider human Nature justly, my Lord, we must know, that those refin'd Notions of loving Virtue for Virtue's Sake, and the doing great Deeds purely for the Benefit of Mankind, without any other End, Motive, and Regard whatsoever, was a Stoical Pretence, and is a modern Amusement, if not a dangerous Vizor of Motives more criminal. For Self, my Lord, is so unavoidably well or ill mingled in all our Actions and Designs, that it is impossible to expel it in Fact, whatever Pretenders may affect in Speculation. Since therefore there can be no Motive of our Actions, but what gratifies our Inclinations, those are the most Godlike, and most to be valued, whose Satisfaction is in the good Will and Love of Mankind, or of the Society of which they are a Part; and that is only the Love of Praise and Glory. But it Self be ill mingled in our Inclinations, and give them a downward Bent, to Riches, Gain or Power, that sure must by all Men of Sense be look'd on, as a much less valuable Motive of acting, since that is entirely over-run with Self-Love very ill understood, because it has not the least Respect to any Person, or thing, besides ourselves; sacrificing the Good of all Mankind to our own Caprice, or Avarice. As much therefore as the whole is preferable to a Part, and Millions to one Man, so much is the Love of Praise and

Glory to be preferr'd before all other Motives to our Actions.

This, My Lord, I hope is sufficient to justify what I have said to Your Lordship; and proves, that, as I have been so fearful of bordering on Flatery, that I have not given even Truth its most charming Dress; so I have done nothing worthy of Reproof by renewing the Memory of those glorious Actions, which no true-born Briton ought to forget, and if I have made Your Lordships Modesty uneasie, it has been for the Benefit of that Public, to which Your Lordship has still sacrific'd all other Considerations.

As I have thus given Your Lordship the Reasons of my dedicating that, which is Shakespear's in this Volume, so I think my self oblig'd to let Your Lordship know what gave me the Assurance of sheltring my own Performance under Your Name. The Subject of my Essay and Remarks, is the Drama. A Sort of Poetry, my Lord, that the very Enemies of the Stage have, in their Invectives against its present Abuses, allow'd to be the most useful to Virtue, of any the Wit of Man can invent; that is in that Perfection I propose it, and in which it was on its first Establishment in Greece. Yes, my Lord, the wise States of Athens and Rome, thought

the immediate Inspection of the Theatre worthy of Heroes, and Themistocles was Choragus, that is Intendant of the Stage; and the chief of the Roman Nobility were Ediles who had the same Office in this Particular, with the Choragi of Athens. But the Statesmen of our Nation, have not yet thought it worth their while to rescue the Drama from private Interest, to the public Service; by which Neglect it is become a Province over-run with such numerous and strange Monsters, that require a Hercules to destroy them. But in an Age and in a Nation that is so fond of, and so prodigal in the Support of such monstrous Productions of Nonsense and Sound, as the Opera's, there is little Hope of such a Deliverer, unless Your Lordship would undertake so noble a Design.

I am, my Lord, aware of the Objection, that may be made against this Hope; yet, Melpomene, by a sort of Prophetic Foresight, believes, Wonders being so familiar to Your Lordship, that there is nothing which You cannot by Your great Penetration and Address effect, tho' as ill supply'd with the common Means, as in the Miracles of your warlike Transactions. The Undertaking is worthy a Conqueror since perhaps of greater Value Service and Glory to your own Country, than the subduing of foreign Nations.

I have only therefore, to commend to Your Lordships Protection the Art, and its Defender; of the first I can make no Manner of Doubt; and of the second Your Lordships Favours afford me some Hope; which is sufficient to give me Assurance enough to subscribe my self

My Lord,
Your Lordships most Oblig'd
most Humble and
most Obedient Servant,
S. N.

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