POSTSCRIPT.
This preface being wholly written before the death of my late royal
master, (_quem semper acerbum, semper honoratum, sic dii voluistis,
habebo_) I have now lately reviewed it, as supposing I should find
many notions in it, that would require correction on cooler thoughts.
After four months lying by me, I looked on it as no longer mine,
because I had wholly forgotten it; but I confess with some
satisfaction, and perhaps a little vanity, that I found myself
entertained by it; my own judgment was new to me, and pleased me when
I looked on it as another man's. I see no opinion that I would retract
or alter, unless it be, that possibly the Italians went not so far as
Spain, for the invention of their operas. They might have it in their
own country; and that by gathering up the shipwrecks of the Athenian
and Roman theatres, which we know were adorned with scenes, music,
dances, and machines, especially the Grecian. But of this the learned
Monsieur Vossius, who has made our nation his second country, is the
best, and perhaps the only judge now living. As for the opera itself,
it was all composed, and was just ready to have been performed, when
he, in honour of whom it was principally made, was taken from us.
He had been pleased twice or thrice to command, that it should be
practised before him, especially the first and third acts of it; and
publicly declared more than once, that the composition and choruses
were more just, and more beautiful, than any he had heard in England.
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