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Page 1. Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset, author of the well-known song 'To all you ladies now on land,' and Lord Chamberlain to William III after the Revolution, was always a kind friend and patron to Dryden, and liberally assisted him when the loss of his office as poet-laureat, through his refusal to take the oaths to William, brought the poet to great distress. See the long dedication to Dryden's Essay on Satire (Yonge's edition).

2. 1. 17. The Tragedy of Pompey the Great, 'translated out of French by certain persons of honour': 4to. 1664. From Dryden's eulogium it appears that the fourth act was translated by Lord Buckhurst; the first was done by Waller. (Malone.) Sir Charles Sedley, Malone says in another place, had also a hand in this translation, which was from the Pompée of Corneille. The act translated by Waller is published among his works.

3. 6. See Valerius Maximus, 1. iv. c. 5. (Malone.)

8. Hor. Epod. xvi. 37.

13. To allow, in the last age, signified to approve. (Malone.)

3. 27. I have not, any more than former editors, succeeded in discovering from what French poet these lines are taken.

4. 13. These lines are found in a poem by Sir William Davenant, printed in 4to. in 1663, and republished in his works, fol. 1673, p. 268. (Malone.)

28. In the Dedication to The Rival Ladies [1664] (Malone.); where Dryden argues very ably for the superiority of rhyme over blank verse.

5. 18. See Cicero's Letters to Atticus, xii. 40, and Plutarch's Life of Julius Caesar, chap. 54.

7. 5. Dryden often uses adjectives as adverbs. In this Rh