appear that his images were by time become ftronger, and his language more energetick. The striking paffages are in every mouth; and the publick feems to judge rightly of the faults and excellencies of this play, that it is the work of a man not attentive to decency, nor zealous for virtue; but of one who conceived forcibly, and drew originally, by confulting nature in his own breast.

Together with thofe plays he wrote the poems which are in this collection, and tranflated from the French the Hiftory of the Triumvirate.

All this was performed before he was thirty-four years old; for he died April 14, 1685, in a manner which I am unwilling to mention.

Having been com

pelled

pelled by his neceffities to contract

:

debts, and hunted, as is, fuppofed, by the terriers of the law, he retired to a publick houfe on Tower-hill, where he died of want, or, as it is related by one of his biographers, by fwallowing, after a long faft, a piece of bread which charity had fupplied. He went out, as is reported, almoft naked, in the rage of hunger, and finding a gentleman in a neighbouring coffee-house, afked him for a fhilling. The gentleman gave him a guinea; and Otway going away bought a roll, and was choaked with the firft mouthful. this, I hope, is not true; but that indigence, and its concomitants, forrow and defpondency, brought him to the grave has never been denied.

All

Of

appear that his images were by time be come ftronger, and his language more energetick. The striking paffages are in every mouth; and the publick seems to judge rightly of the faults and excel

3

lencies of this play, that it is the work of a man not attentive to decency, nor zealous for virtue; but of one who conceived forcibly, and drew originally, by confulting nature in his own breaft.

Together with thofe plays he wrote the poems which are in this collection, and tranflated from the French the Hiftory of the Triumvirate.

All this was performed before he was thirty-four years old; for he died April 14, 1685, in a manner which I am unwilling to mention. Having been compelled

pelled by his neceffities to contract debts, and hunted, as is, fuppofed, by the terriers of the law, he retired to a publick houfe on Tower-hill, where he died of want, or, as it is related by one of his biographers, by fwallowing, after a long faft, a piece of bread which charity had fupplied. He went out, as is reported, almoft naked, in the rage of hunger, and finding a gentleman in a neighbouring coffee-house, afked him for a fhilling. The gentleman gave him a guinea; and Otway going away bought a roll, and was choaked with the firft mouthful.

All

this, I hope, is not true; but that indigence, and its concomitants, forrow and defpondency, brought him to the grave has never been denied.

Of

Of the poems which this collection admits, the longest is the Poet's Complaint of his Mufe, part of which I do not understand; and in that which is lefs obfcure I find little to commend." The language is often grofs, and the numbers are harth. Otway had not much cultivated verfification, nor much replenished his mind with general knowledge. His principal power was in moving the paffions, to which Dryden in his latter years left an illuftrious teftimony. He appears, by fome of his verses, to have been a zealous royalift and had what was in thofe times the common reward of loyalty ; he lived and died neglected.