VENICE PRESERVED;

OR,

A PLOT DISCOVERED,

Is a play evidently the result of acute remark upon the influence of passion on life. The Author seems to have consulted nature in his own mind, and unfor. tunately his own mind was corrupt.

Hence his characters, except indeed Belvidera, excite little sympathy at their fate.-The Traitor to his Country expires upon the wheel, and the Betrayer of his Friend is the slayer of himself.

In the works of some dramatists, there is danger lest Vice should wear the wreath of Virtue from the fascination of specious qualities-it is thus in the School for Scandal; where the character of Charles is a seducing poison to our blood.-Otway's Rascals are, however, sufficiently despised-PIERRE is sunken by cruel ambition—JAFFIER by meanness unmanly and contemptible. On the side of the amor patriæ he is paralytic-he can support the idea of destroying his Country, but poverty, the importunities of a wife, or

the reflections of treachery to a friend, agonize him with compunction and hurry him to despair.

BELVIDERA, unhappy, duteous, tender, and virtuous, claims our full commiseration, and claims it alone.

PROLOGUE.

IN these distracted times, when each man dreads
The bloody stratagems of busy heads:

Whence we had fear'd three years we know not what, 'Till witnesses began to die o' th' rot;

What made our poet meddle with a plot?
Was't that he fancy'd for the very sake

And name of plot, his trifling play might take?
For there's not in't one inch-board evidence;
But 'tis, he says, to reason plain and sense;
And that he thinks a plausible defence.
Were truth by sense and reason to be try'd,
Sure all our swearers might be laid aside.
No; of such tools our author has no need,
To make his plot, or make his play succeed
He of Black Bills has no prodigious tales,
Or Spanish pilgrims cast ashore in Wales:
Here's not one murder'd magistrate, at least,
Kept rank, like ven’son for a city feast,
Grown four days stiff, the better to prepare
And fit his pliant limbs to ride in chair.
Yet here's an army rais'd, tho' under ground,
But no man seen, nor one commission found:
Here is a traitor too, that's very old,
Turbulent, subtle, mischievous, and bold.

Bloody, revengeful, and—to crown his part,
Loves fumbling with a wench with all his heart:
Till, after having many changes past,

In spite of age (thanks t' heaven) is hang'd at last ;
Next is a senator that keeps a whore,
In Venice none a higher office bore,

To lewdness ev'ry night the leacher ran;
Shew me, all London, such another man;
Match him at Mother Creswell's, if you can.
O Poland! Poland! had it been thy lot
T'have heard in time of this Venetian plot,
Thou surely chosen hadst one king from thence,
And honour'd them, as thou hast England since.