THE GREATER PART OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEFORE BY EDMOND MALONE, Esq. VOLUME THE SECOND. LONDON: PRINTED BY H. BALDWIN AND SON, NEW BRIDGE-STREET, FOR T. CADELL, JUN. AND W. DAVIES, IN THE STRAND, M.DCCC. DEDICATION OF ALL FOR LOVE, OR, THE WORLD WELL LOST.* TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THOMAS, EARL OF DANBY, VISCOUNT LATIMER, AND BARON OSBORNE OF KIVETON, IN YORKSHIRE; LORD HIGH TREASURER OF ENGLAND, ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL, AND KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER, &c.2 MY LORD, THE gratitude of poets is so troublesome a virtue to great men, that you are often in danger of your own benefits; for you are threatened with some Epistle, and not suffered to do good in quiet, or to compound for their silence whom you have ' ALL FOR LOVE was represented at the Theatre Royal, and first printed in 1678. Our author has told us, that it is the only play he wrote for himself: the rest were given to the people. "It is (says Dr. Johnson) by universal consent accounted the work in which he has admitted the fewest improprieties of style or character.” 2 of the rise and character of this nobleman, who was born in 1631, and died in his 81st year in 1712, Burnet obliged. Yet I confess I neither am nor ought to be surprised at this indulgence; for your Lordship has the same right to favour poetry which the great and noble have ever had : Carmen amat, quisquis carmine digna gerit. There is somewhat of a tie in nature betwixt those. who are born for worthy actions, and those who gives the following account :-" As soon as Lord Clifford saw he must lose the white staff, [June 1673,] he went to the Duke of Buckingham, who had contributed much to the procuring it for him, and told him he brought him the first notice that he was to lose that place to which he had helped him; and that he would assist him to procure it to some of his friends. After they had talked round all that were in any sort capable of it, and had found great objections to every one of them, they at last pitched on Sir Thomas Osborne, a gentleman of Yorkshire, whose estate was much sunk. He was a very plausible speaker, but too copious, and could not easily make an end of his discourse. He had been always among the high Cavaliers; and missing preferment, he had opposed the Court much, and was one of Lord Clarendon's bitterest enemies. He gave himself great liberties in discourse, and did not seem to have any regard to truth, or so much as to the appearances of it; and was an implacable enemy: but he had a peculiar way to make his friends depend on him, and to believe he was true to them. He was a positive and undertaking man: so he gave the King much ease, by assuring him all things would go according to his mind in the next session of parliament; and when his hopes failed him, he had always some excuse ready to put the miscarriage upon. And by this means he got into the highest degree of confidence with the King, and maintained it the longest of all that ever served him." MEMOIRS, i. 490. |