Dryden and Lee had never written. But its
seeming excellence is greatly lessened when we recollect that _All for
Love_ and _Mithridates_, two great poems which are almost good
plays, appeared in 1678, and inspired our poor imitative Bancroft.
_Sertorius_ is written in smooth and well-sustained blank verse, which
is, however, nowhere quite good enough to be quoted. I suspect that
John Bancroft was a very interesting man. He was a surgeon, and his
practice lay particularly In the theatrical and literary world. He
acquired, it is said, from his patients "a passion for the Muses,"
and an inclination to follow in the steps of those whom he cured or
killed. The dramatist Ravenscroft wrote an epilogue to _Sertorius_, in
which he says that--

_Our Poet to learned critics does submit,
But scorns those little vermin of the pit,
Who noise and nonsense vent instead of wit_,

and no doubt Bancroft had aims more professional than those of the
professional playwrights themselves. He wrote three plays, and lived
until 1696. One fancies the discreet and fervent poet-surgeon, laden
with his secrets and his confidences. Why did he not write memoirs,
and tell us what it was that drove Nat Lee mad, and how Otway really
died, and what Dryden's habits were? Why did he not purvey magnificent
indiscretions whispered under the great periwig of Wycherley, or
repeat that splendid story about Etheredge and my Lord Mulgrave? Alas!
we would have given a wilderness of _Sertoriuses_ for such a series of
memoirs.

The volume of plays is not exhausted. Here is Weston's _Amazon Queen_,
of 1667, written in pompous rhymed heroics; here is _The Fortune
Hunters_, a comedy of 1689, the only play of that brave fellow, James
Carlile, who, being brought up an actor, preferred "to _be_ rather
than to _personate_ a hero," and died in gallant fight for William
of Orange, at the battle of Aughrim; here is _Mr. Anthony_, a comedy
written by the Right Honourable the Earl of Orrery, and printed in
1690, a piece never republished among the Earl's works, and therefore
of some special interest. But I am sure my reader is exhausted, even
if the volume is not, and I spare him any further examination of
these obscure dramas, lest he should say, as Peter Pindar did of Dr.
Johnson, that I

_Set wheels on wheels in motion--such a clatter!
To force up one poor nipperkin of water;
Bid ocean labour with tremendous roar
To heave a cockle-shell upon the shore_.