but
what the late queen had done. He asked her, if she meant to make
her, her example. More was said on this occasion than ever was
known before; but it was borne with all the submission of a good
wife, who leaves all to the direction of the k----, and diverts
herself with walking six or seven miles a-day, and looking after
her buildings, making of fringes, and such like innocent things;
and does not meddle in government, though she has better title to
do it than the late queen had."

TO

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

JOHN,

LORD HAUGHTON[1].

MY LORD,

When I first designed this play, I found, or thought I found, somewhat
so moving in the serious part of it, and so pleasant in the comic, as
might deserve a more than ordinary care in both; accordingly, I used
the best of my endeavour, in the management of two plots, so very
different from each other, that it was not perhaps the talent of every
writer to have made them of a piece. Neither have I attempted other
plays of the same nature, in my opinion, with the same judgment,
though with like success. And though many poets may suspect themselves
for the fondness and partiality of parents to their youngest children,
yet I hope I may stand exempted from this rule, because I know myself
too well to be ever satisfied with my own conceptions, which have
seldom reached to those ideas that I had within me; and consequently,
I may presume to have liberty to judge when I write more or less
pardonably, as an ordinary marksman may know certainly when he shoots
less wide at what he aims. Besides, the care and pains I have bestowed
on this, beyond my other tragi-comedies, may reasonably make the world
conclude, that either I can do nothing tolerably, or that this poem is
not much amiss. Few good pictures have been finished at one sitting;
neither can a true just play, which is to bear the test of ages, be
produced at a heat, or by the force of fancy, without the maturity of
judgment. For my own part, I have both so just a diffidence of myself,
and so great a reverence for my audience, that I dare venture nothing
without a strict examination; and am as much ashamed to put a loose
indigested play upon the public, as I should be to offer brass money
in a payment; for though it should be taken, (as it is too often on
the stage) yet it would b