an encomium, Drummond of Hawthornden, Jonson's contemporary and friend, has left the following anecdote: 'When his play of The Silent Woman was first acted, there were found verses after on the stage against him, concluding that the play was well named The Silent Woman, because there was never one man to say plaudite to it.' (Malone.)
78. 18. Hor. de Arte Poet. 90.
25. Vell. Paterc. ii. 36.
80. 13. Macrob. Saturnalia, ii. 13. The 'other poet' was Publius Syrus.
81. 1. Aristotle's Poetics, iv. 18.
83. 9. M. Seneca, Controv. ix.,5, quoting from Ovid, Met. xiii. 503-5.
11. Ovid, Met. i. 292. This line is quoted by Lucius, not by Marcus Seneca.
29. The Indian Queen and The Indian Emperor were the only plays, altogether in rhyme, which Dryden had produced before this was written. The Rival Ladies is partly prose, partly rhyme.
84. 3. Sir Robert Howard (Malone.); in the preface to his plays, published in 1665.
85. 29. 'prevail himself,' se prévaloir, a Gallicism.
87. 10. 'Vide Daniel, his Defence of Rhyme.' (Dryden's note.) This short tract was written by Daniel in 1603, in reply to Campion's Observations in the Art of English Poesie.
88. 4. The Siege of Rhodes (1656) was one of the plays produced by Sir William Davenant under the Protectorate; 'a kind of nondescript entertainments, as they were called, which were dramatic in everything but the names and form; and some of them were called operas.' (Hazlitt.)
90. 3. Virg. Georg. iii. 9; for possum should be read possim.
19. Geo. Sandys, son of an archbishop of York, published a metrical version of the Psalms in 1636.
90. 24. Our author here again has quoted from memory. Horace's line is [Epist. ii. 1. 63]:—
'Interdum vulgus rectum videt; est ubi peccat.'
(Malone.)
