OR, THE

World well Loft.

A

TRAGEDY,

As it is A&ted at the

THEATRE-ROYAL;

And Written in Imitation of Shakespeare's Stile.

Facile eft verbum aliquod ardens (ut ita dicam) notare : idque reftināti ammorum incendiis irridere. Cicero..

In the SAVOT:

Printed by Tho. Newcomb, for Henry Herringman, at the Blew Anchor in the Lower Walk of the New-Exchange. 1678.

THE SOURCE

The source of All for Love is Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, especially the last two acts. The story has been considerably modified; see the Introduction, p. xviii. In what he has retained, Dryden follows Shakespeare (cf. notes to 1, 123, and v, 328) and not Plutarch, much less Appian and Dion Cassius, to whom he refers in his Preface. For the numerous incidental borrowings from Shakespeare, see pp. xliii-xlv.

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.

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 threaten'd with some epistle, and not suffer'd to do good in quiet, or to compound for their silence whom you have oblig'd. Yet, I confess, I neither am nor ought to be surpriz'd 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.

5

There is somewhat of a tye in nature betwixt those who are born for worthy actions, and those who can transmit them to posterity; and though ours be much the inferiour part, it comes at least within the 10 verge of alliance; nor are we unprofitable members of the commonwealth, when we animate others to those virtues which we copy and describe from you.

'Tis indeed their interest, who endeavour the subversion of governments, to discourage poets and historians; for the best which can hap- 15 pen to them is to be forgotten; but such who under KINGS are the fathers of their country, and by a just and prudent ordering of affairs 5 nor Sb, or.

preserve it, have the same reason to cherish the chroniclers of their actions, as they have to lay up in safety the deeds and evidences of their estates; for such records are their undoubted titles to the love and rever- 20 ence of after-ages. Your lordships administration has already taken up a considerable part of the English annals; and many of its most happy years are owing to it. His MAJESTY, the most knowing judge of men, and the best master, has acknowledg'd the ease and benefit he receives in the incomes of his treasury, which you found not only dis- 25 order'd, but exhausted. All things were in the confusion of a chaos, without form or method, if not reduc'd beyond it, even to annihilation; so that you had not only to separate the jarring elements, but (if that boldness of expression might be allow'd me) to create them. Your enemies had so embroyl'd the management of your office, that they look'd 30 on your advancement as the instrument of your ruine. And as if the clogging of the revenue, and the confusion of accounts, which you found in your entrance, were not sufficient, they added their own weight of malice to the publick calamity, by forestalling the credit which shou'd cure it; your friends on the other side were only capable 35 of pitying, but not of aiding you; no farther help or counsel was remaining to you, but what was founded on your self; and that indeed was your security; for your diligence, your constancy, and your prudence, wrought more surely within, when they were not disturb'd by any outward motion. The highest virtue is best to be trusted with it 40 self, for assistance only can be given by a genius su periour to that which it assists. And 'tis the noblest kind of debt, when we are only oblig'd to God and nature. This then, my lord, is your just commendation, that you have wrought out your self a way to glory by those very means that were design'd for your destruction; you have not only restor'd but 45 advanc'd the revenues of your master, without grievance to the subject; and as if that were little yet, the debts of the exchequer, which lay heaviest both on the crown and on private persons, have by your conduct been establish'd in a certainty of satisfaction. An action so much the more great and honourable, because the case was without the ordinary 50 relief of laws; above the hopes of the afflicted, and beyond the narrowness of the treasury to redress, had it been manag'd by a less able hand. 'Tis certainly the happiest and most unenvy'd part of all your fortune, to do good to many, while you do injury to none; to receive at once the prayers of the subject and the praises of the prince; and, by the 55

care of your conduct, to give him means of exerting the chiefest (if any be the chiefest) of his royal virtues: his distributive justice to the deserv ing, and his bounty and compassion to the wanting. The disposition of princes towards their people cannot better be discover'd than in the choice of their ministers; who, like the animal spirits betwixt the soul 60 and body, participate somewhat of both natures, and make the communication which is betwixt them. A king, who is just and moderate in his nature, who rules according to the laws, whom God made happy by forming the temper of his soul to the constitution of his government, and who makes us happy, by assuming over us no other sover- 65 aignty than that wherein our welfare and liberty consists; a prince, I say, of so excellent a character, and so suitable to the wishes of all good men, could not better have convey'd himself into his peoples apprehensions than in your lordships person; who so lively express the same virtues, that you seem not so much a copy as an emanation of him. 70 Moderation is doubtless an establishment of greatness; but there is a steadiness of temper which is likewise requisite in a minister of state: so equal a mixture of both virtues, that he may stand like an isthmus betwixt the two encroaching seas of arbitrary power and lawless anarchy. The undertaking would be difficult to any but an extraordinary 75 genius, to stand at the line and to divide the limits; to pay what is due to the great representative of the nation, and neither to inhance nor to yeild up the undoubted prerogatives of the crown. These, my lord, are the proper virtues of a noble Englishman, as indeed they are properly English virtues; no people in the world being capable of using them 80 but we who have the happiness to be born under so equal and so wellpois'd a government, a government which has all the advantages of liberty beyond a commonwealth, and all the marks of kingly sovereignty without the danger of a tyranny. Both my nature, as I am an Englishman, and my reason, as I am a man, have bred in me a loathing to that 85 specious name of a republick; that mock-appearance of a liberty, where all who have not part in the government are slaves; and slaves they are of a viler note than such as are subjects to an absolute dominion. For no Christian monarchy is so absolute but 'tis circumscrib'd with laws; but when the executive power is in the law-makers, there is no farther 90 <heck upon them; and the people must suffer without a remedy, because

63 God made. Sb, God has made,

82 government, a. Q, period after government.