It is true, I
have no right to blast his memory with such a crime; but declaring it
to be fiction, I desire my audience to think it no longer true, than
while they are seeing it represented; for that once ended, he may be a
saint, for aught I know, and we have reason to presume he is. On this
supposition, it was unreasonable to have killed him; for the learned
Mr Rymer has well observed, that in all punishments we are to regulate
ourselves by poetical justice; and according to those measures, an
involuntary sin deserves not death; from whence it follows, that to
divorce himself from the beloved object, to retire into a desert, and
deprive himself of a throne, was the utmost punishment which a poet
could inflict, as it was also the utmost reparation which Sebastian
could make. For what relates to Almeyda, her part is wholly
fictitious. I know it is the surname of a noble family in Portugal,
which was very instrumental in the restoration of Don John de
Braganza, father to the most illustrious and most pious princess, our
queen-dowager. The French author of a novel, called "Don Sebastian,"
has given that name to an African lady of his own invention, and makes
her sister to Muley Mahomet; but I have wholly changed the accidents,
and borrowed nothing but the supposition, that she was beloved by the
king of Portugal. Though, if I had taken the whole story, and wrought
it up into a play, I might have done it exactly according to the
practice of almost all the ancients, who were never accused of being
plagiaries for building their tragedies on known fables.
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