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82 The Empress of Morocco Revised. One may perhaps be permitted to suggest here that another famous theatrical “impromptu,”

is not altogether free from suspicion; some person may, of course, have delivered himself of it during a performance of Thomson’s play, but if he did, I think it most probable that he had previously seen it in A Criticism On The New Sophonisba, … 1730, which was published within a few days of the first performance.

The Person of Honour, “according to Antony Wood, was Villiers Duke of Buckingham.” This is Malone’s statement, made more than once, which has been accepted without question by all succeeding editors and biographers of Dryden, while Lady Burghclere, who perhaps had access to special sources of information, tells us:

Wood is apt to be unreliable in his statements as to the authorship of poetical tracts; he thought Azaria and Hushai was written by Settle, and ascribed The Tribe of Levi to Dryden himself—but in this particular case it is but due to him to refer to what he actually does say, which is—