"But we still declare (says his majesty) that no
irregularities of parliament shall make us out of love with them." Are
not you unfortunate quoters? why now should you rub up the remembrance
of those irregularities mentioned in that declaration, which caused,
as the king informs us, its dissolution?
The next paragraph is already answered; it is only a clumsy
commendation of the Duke of Monmouth, copied after Mr Hunt, and a
proof that he is unlike the Duke of Guise.
After having done my drudgery for me, and having most officiously
proved, that the English duke is no parallel for the French, which I
am sure he is not, they are next to do their own business, which is,
that I meant a parallel betwixt Henry III. and our most gracious
sovereign. But, as fallacies are always couched in general
propositions, they plead the whole course of the drama, which, they
say, seems to insinuate my intentions. One may see to what a miserable
shift they are driven, when, for want of any one instance, to which I
challenge them, they have only to allege, that the play SEEMS to
insinuate it. I answer, it does not seem; which is a bare negative to
a bare affirmative; and then we are just where we were before. Fat
Falstaff was never set harder by the Prince for a reason, when he
answered, "that, if reasons grew as thick as blackberries, he would
not give one." Well, after long pumping, lest the lie should appear
quite barefaced, they have found I said, that, at king Henry's birth,
there shone a regal star; so there did at king Charles the Second's;
therefore I have made a parallel betwixt Henry III.
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