Lisideius, Crites, Eugenius, and Neander, the speakers
are Sir Charles Sedley, Sir Robert Howard, Lord Buckhurst, and Dryden.
Nothing can exceed the grace with which the dialogue is conducted--the
choice of scene is most happy--and the description of it in the highest
degree striking and poetical.

"It was that memorable day, in the first summer of the late war,
when our navy engaged the Dutch; a day wherein the two most mighty
and best appointed fleets which any age had ever seen, disputed the
command of the greater half of the globe, the commerce of nations,
and the riches of the universe. While these vast floating bodies,
on either side, moved against each other in parallel lines, and our
countrymen, under the happy conduct of his Royal Highness, went
breaking, little by little, into the line of the enemies, the noise
of the cannon from both navies reached our ears about the city; so
that all men being alarmed with it, and in a dreadful suspense of
the event which they knew was then deciding, every one went
following the sound as his fancy led him; and leaving the town
almost empty, some took towards the Park, some cross the river,
some down it, all seeking the noise in the depth of silence.

"Amongst the rest, it was the fortune of Eugenius, Crites,
Lisideius, and Neander, to be in company together, three of them
persons whom their wit and quality have made known to all the town,
and whom I have chose to hide under these borrowed names, that they
may not suffer by so ill a narration as I am going to make of their
discourse.

"Taking, then, a barge, which a servant of Lisideius had provided
for them, they made haste to shoot the bridge, and left behind them
that great fall of waters which hindered them from hearing what
they desired; after which, having disengaged themselves from many
vessels which rode at anchor in the Thames, and almost blocked up
the passage towards Greenwich, they ordered the watermen to let
fall their oars more gently; and then every one favouring his own
curiosity with a strict silence, it was not long ere they perceived
the air to break about them like the noise of distant thunder, or
of swallows in a chimney--those little undulations of sound, though
almost vanishing before they reached them, yet still seeming to
retain somewhat of t