Four of these characters are entirely new, yet general and important, drawn truly, and graphically and artfully opposed to each other, Surly to Sir Courtly, and Hot-head to Testimony:  those extremes of behaviour, the one of which is the grievance, and the other the plague of society and conversation; excessive ceremony on the one side, and on the other rudeness, and brutality are finely exposed in Surly and Sir Courtly:  those divisions and animosities in the two great parties of England, which have so long disturbed the public quiet, and undermined the general interest, are happily represented and ridiculed in Testimony and Hot-head.  Mr. Dennis, speaking of this comedy, says, ’that though he has more than twenty times read it, yet it still grows upon him, and he delivers it as his opinion, that the greatest comic poet, who ever lived in any age, might have been proud to have been the author of it.’

The play was now just ready to appear to the world.  Every one that had seen it rehearsed, was highly pleased with it.  All who had heard of it conceived great expectations, and Mr. Crowne was delighted with the flattering hope of being made happy for the remaining part of his life, by the performance of the King’s promise:  But upon the very last day of the rehearsal, he met Underhill coming from the playhouse, as he himself was going towards it, upon which the poet reprimanding the player for neglecting so considerable a part as he had in the comedy, and on a day of so much consequence, as the very last of the rehearsal.  Oh Lord, says Underhill, we are all undone! how! says Crowne, is the Playhouse on fire? the whole nation, replies the player, will quickly be so, for the King is dead; at the hearing of which dismal words, the author was thrown almost into distraction; for he who the moment before was ravished with the thought of the pleasure he was about to give the King, and the favours which he was afterwards to receive from him, this moment found, to his unspeakable sorrow, that his Royal patron was gone for ever, and with him all his hopes.  The King indeed revived from this apoplectic fit, but three days after died, and Mr. Crowne by his death was replunged into the deepest melancholly.

Thus far Mr. Dennis has traced the life of Crowne; in the same letter he promises a further account of him upon another occasion, which, it seems, never occurred, for we have not been able to find that he has any where else mentioned our author.

The King’s death having put a period to Mr. Crowne’s expectations of court-favour (for the reign of his successor was too much hurried with party designs, to admit of any leisure to reward poetical merit, though the Prince himself, with all his errors about him, was a man of taste, and had a very quick discernment of the power of genius) he, no doubt, had recourse to writing plays again for bread, and supporting himself the best way he could by his wits, the most unpleasing, and precarious manner of life, to which any man can be exposed.  We cannot be absolutely certain when Mr. Crowne died; Mr. Coxeter in his notes says, he was alive in the year 1703, and as he must then have been much advanced in years, in all probability he did not long survive it.  He is the author of 17 Plays.