But, why was such a host of swearers pressed?
Their succour was ill husbandry at best.
Bayes's crowned muse, by sovereign right of satire,
Without desert, can dub a man a traitor;
And tories, without troubling law or reason,
By loyal instinct can find plots and treason.
A more formal attack was made in a pamphlet, entitled, "Some
Reflections on the pretended parallel in the Play called the Duke of
Guise." This Dryden, in the following Vindication, supposes to have
been sketched by Shadwell, and finished by a gentleman of the
Temple[4]. In these Reflections, the obvious ground of attack,
occupied by Hunt, is again resumed. The general indecency of a
theatrical exhibition, which alluded to state-transactions of a grave
and most important nature; the indecorum of comparing the king to such
a monarch as Henry III., infamous for treachery, cruelty, and vices of
the most profligate nature; above all, the parallel betwixt the Dukes
of Monmouth and Guise, by which the former is exhibited as a traitor
to his father, and recommended as no improper object for
assassination--are topics insisted on at some length, and with great
vehemence.
Our author was not insensible to these attacks, by which his loyalty
to the king, and the decency of his conduct towards Monmouth, the
king's offending, but still beloved, son, and once Dryden's own
patron, stood painfully compromised.
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