[This worthless tragedy, the poorest of all Dryden's dramatic works, must have been performed before the end of 1672, since in a prologue included in Covent Garden Drollery (p. 33), printed in that year, there is an unmistakable reference to it:

But when fierce critics get them in their clutch,
They 're crueler then the tyrannic Dutch;
And with more art do dislocate each scene
Then in Amboyna they the limbs of men.

It was entered on the Stationers' Register June 26, 1673 (Malone, I, 1, 108), and published in the same year.

Amboyna was written for a political purpose, to stir up the national feeling against the Dutch, with whom England was then at war.

And you, I take it, have not much of that. Well monarchies may own religion's name, But states are atheists in their very frame. They share a sin, and such proportions fall, That, like a stink, 't is nothing to 'em all. How they love England, you shall see this day;

No map shews Holland truer then our play: Their pictures and inscriptions well we know;

We may be bold one medal sure to show. View then their falsehoods, rapine, cruelty; And think what once they were, they still would be;

30

But hope not either language, plot, or art; "T was writ in haste, but with an English heart:

And least hope wit; in Dutchmen that would be

As much improper, as would honesty.

And their new commonwealth has set 'em free

Only from honor and civility.

Venetians do not more uncouthly ride,

Than did their lubber state mankind bestride;

Their sway became 'em with as ill a mien, As their own paunches swell above their chin:

Yet is their empire no true growth, but humor.

And only two kings' touch can cure the tumor.

As Cato did his Afric fruits display,
So we before your eyes their Indies lay: 20
All loyal English will, like him, conclude,
Let Cæsar live, and Carthage be subdued!

PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD SPOKEN BY MR. HART, AT THE ACTING OF THE SILENT WOMAN

[These are evidently the pieces to which Dryden refers in a letter to Lord Rochester, dated 1673 by Malone, from internal evidence: "I have sent your lordship a prologue and epilogue which I made for our players, when they went down to Oxford. I hear they have succeeded; and by the event your lordship will judge how easy 't is to pass any thing upon an university, and how gross flattery the learned will endure " (Malone, I, 2, 11-13). Both poems were first printed in Miscellany Poems, 1684.]