reign, in which his own brother made so conspicuous a
figure, maintained the neutrality of Pomponius Atticus.
2. When Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I. and queen-dowager of
England, visited her son after the Restoration, she chose
Somerset-House for her residence, and added all the buildings
fronting the river. Cowley, whom she had long patronised, composed
a poem on the "Queen's repairing Somerset-House," to which our
author refers. Mr Malone's accuracy has detected a slight
alteration in the verses, as quoted by Dryden, and as written by
Cowley:
If any prouder virtuoso's sense
At that part of my prospect take offence,
By which the meaner cabanes are descried
Of my imperial river's humbler side;
If they call that a blemish, let them know,
God and my godlike mistress think not so;
For the distressed and the afflicted lie
Most in _their care_, and always in _their_ eye.
3. Our poet's house was in Gerard-Street, looking upon the gardens of
Leicester-House.
THE
PREFACE.
Whether it happened through a long disuse of writing, that I forgot
the usual compass of a play, or that, by crowding it with characters
and incidents, I put a necessity upon myself of lengthening the main
action, I know not; but the first day's audience sufficiently
convinced me of my error, and that the poem was insupportably too
long.
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