Enter LADY BLUEBOTTLE, MISS LILAC,

LADY BLUEMOUNT, MR BOTHERBY, INKEL, TRACY, MISS MAZARINE, and others, with SCAMP the Lecturer, etc., etc.

Lady Blueb. Ah! Sir Richard, good morning: I've brought you some friends.

Sir Rich. (bows, and afterwards

aside). If friends, they're the first. Lady Blueb. But the luncheon attends.

I pray ye be seated, "sans cérémonie." Mr Scamp, you're fatigued; take your chair there, next me. [They all sit. Sir Rich. (aside). If he does, his fatigue is to come.

Lady Blueb.

Mr Tracy

Bluemount Miss Lilac pleased, pray, to place ye;

30

be

That is, if he lives.

And why not?

Ink. No reason whatever, save that

he's a sot.

Wild Nature! - Grand Shakespeare! Both.

And down Aristotle!

Lady Bluem. Sir George' thinks exactly with Lady Bluebottle: And my Lord Seventy-four, who protects our dear Bard,

I [Sir George Beaumont, Bart., of Coleorton, Leicestershire (1753-1827), landscape-painter, art critic, and picture-collector, married, in 1778, Margaret Willis, granddaughter of Chief Justice Willis. She corresponded with Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, and with Coleridge.]

[It was not Wordsworth's patron, William

For which poor Prometheus was chained to his mountain:

'Tis the source of all sentiment-feel

12,

[Sardana palus was begun January finished May 27, and published in the same volume with The Two Foscari, and Cain, December 19, 1821.]

["A manuscript dedication of Sardana palus was forwarded to him, with an obliging inquiry whether it might be prefixed to the tragedy. The German, who, at his advanced age, was conscious of his own powers, and of their effects, could only gratefully and modestly consider this Dedication as the expression of an inexhaustible intellect, deeply feeling and creating its own object. He was by no means dissatisfied when, after long delay, Sardana palus appeared without the Dedication; and was made happy by the possession of a facsimile of it, engraved on stone, which he considered a precious memorial."

Lebensverhältnik zu Byron, Werke, 1833, xlvi. 221-225. (See, too, for translation, Life, p. 593.)]

by the managers in a former instance, the public opinion has been already expressed. With regard to my own private feelings, as it seems that they are to stand for nothing, I shall say nothing.

For the historical foundation of the following compositions the reader is referred to the Notes.

The Author has in one instance attempted to preserve, and in the other to approach, the "unities"; conceiving that with any very distant departure from them, there may be poetry, but can be no drama. He is aware of the unpopularity of this notion in present English literature; but it is not a system of his own, being merely an opinion, which, not very long ago, was the law of literature throughout the world, and is still so in the more civilised parts of it. But "nous avons changé tout cela," and are reaping the advantages of the change. The writer is far from conceiving that anything he can adduce by personal precept or example can at all approach his regular, or even irregular predecessors: he is merely giving a reason why he preferred the more regular formation of a structure, however feeble, to an entire abandonment of all rules whatsoever.

Where he has failed, the failure is in the architect, and not in the art.

IN this tragedy it has been my intention to follow the account of Diodorus Siculus; reducing it, however, to such dramatic regularity as I best could, and trying to approach the unities. I therefore suppose the rebellion to explode and succeed in one day by a sudden conspiracy, instead of the long war of the history.

1

* ["Sardanapalus, the Thirtieth from Ninus, and the last King of the Assyrians, exceeded all his Predecessors in Sloth and Luxury; for besides that he was seen of none out of his family, he led a most effeminate life: for wallowing in Pleasure and wanton Dalliances, he clothed himself in Women's attire, and spun fine Wool and Purple amongst the throngs of his Whores and Concubines. He painted likewise his Face, and decked his whole Body with other Allurements. . . . He imitated likewise a Woman's voice... ; and proceeded to such

Ταῦτ ̓ ἔχω ὅσ ̓ ἔφαγον καὶ ἐφύβρισα, καὶ μετ' ἔρωτος

Τέρπν ̓ ἔπαθον· τὰ δὲ πολλὰ καὶ ὄλβια κείνα λέλειπται.

'What once I gorged I now enjoy,
And wanton Lusts me still employ;
All other things by Mortals prized
Are left as dirt by me despised.'

The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian, made English by G. Booth, of the City of Chester, Esquire, 1700, p. 65.

"Another king of the sort was Sardanapalus.

And so, when Arbaces, who was one of the generals under him, a Mede by birth, endeavoured to manage by the assistance of one of the eunuchs, whose name was Sparamizus, to see Sardanapalus: and when... he saw him painted with vermilion, and adorned like a woman, sitting among his concubines, carding purple wool, and sitting among them with his feet up, wearing a woman's robe, and with his beard carefully scraped, and his face smoothed with pumice stone (for he was whiter than milk, and pencilled under his eyes and eyebrows; and when he saw Arbaces he was putting a little more white under his eyes). Most historians, of whom Duris is one, relate that Arbaces, being indignant at his countrymen being ruled over by such a monarch as that, stabbed him and slew him. But Ctesias says that he went to war with him, and collected a great army, and then that Sardanapalus, being dethroned by Arbaces, died, burning himself alive in his palace, having heaped up a funeral pile four plethra in extent, on which he placed 150 golden couches." The Deipnosophista of Athenæus, bk. xii. c. 38, translated by C. D. Yonge, 1854, iii. 847.]