Dryden ever wrote. It was acted and printed in
1673.

Footnote:
1. This extraordinary kitchen scene did not escape the ridicule of the
wits of that merry age.

O greater cruelty yet,
Like a pig upon a spit;
Here lies one there, another boiled to jelly;
Just as the people stare
At an ox in the fair,
Roasted whole, with a pudding in's belly.

A little further in,
Hung a third by his chin,
And a fourth cut all in quarters.
O that Fox had now been living,
They had been sure of heaven,
Or, at the least, been some of his martyrs.

TO

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

THE

LORD CLIFFORD

OF

CHUDLEIGH[1].

MY LORD,

After so many favours, and those so great, conferred on me by your
lordship these many years,--which I may call more properly one
continued act of your generosity and goodness,--I know not whether I
should appear either more ungrateful in my silence, or more
extravagantly vain in my endeavours to acknowledge them: For, since
all acknowledgements bear a face of payment, it may be thought, that I
have flattered myself into an opinion of being able to return some
part of my obligements to you;--the just despair of which attempt, and
the due veneration I have for his person, to whom I must address, have
almost driven me to receive only with a profound submission the
effects of that virtue, which is never to be comprehended but by
admiration; and the greatest note of admiration is silence. It is that
noble passion, to which poets raise their audience in highest
subjects, and they have then gained over them the greatest victory,
when they are ravished into a pleasure which is not to be expressed by
words. To this pitch, my lord, the sense of my gratitude had almost
raised me: to receive your favours, as the Jews of old received their
law, with a mute wonder; to think, that the loudness of acclamation
was only the praise of men to men, and that the secret homage of the
soul was a greater mark of reverence, than an outward ceremonious joy,
which might be counterfeit, and must be irreverent in its tumult.
Neither, my lord, have I a particular right to pay you my
acknowledgements: You have been a good so universal, that almost every