Ravenscroft thus proceeds against Mr. Dryden:  ’That I may maintain the character of impartial, to which I pretend, I must pull off his disguise, and discover the politic plagiary that lurks under it.  I know he has endeavoured to shew himself matter of the art of swift writing, and would persuade the world that what he writes is extempore wit, currente calamo.  But I doubt not to shew that tho’ he would be thought to imitate the silk worm that spins its webb from its own bowels, yet I shall make him appear like the leech that lives upon the blood of men, drawn from the gums, and when he is rubbed with salt, spues it up again.  To prove this, I shall only give an account of his plays, and by that little of my own knowledge, that I shall discover, it will be manifest, that this rickety poet, (tho’ of so many years) cannot go without others assistance; for take this prophecy from your humble servant, or Mr. Ravenscroft’s Mamamouchi, which you please,

  ’When once our poet’s translating vein is past,
  From him, you can’t expect new plays in haste.

Thus far Mr. Ravenscroft has censured Dryden; and Langbain, in order to prove him guilty of the same poetical depredation, has been industrious to trace the plots of his plays, and the similarity of his characters with those of other dramatic poets; but as we should reckon it tedious to follow him in this manner, we shall only in general take notice of those novels from which he has drawn his plots.

We cannot ascertain the year in which this man died; he had been bred a templer, which he forsook as a dry unentertaining study, and much beneath the genius of a poet.

His dramatic works are,

1.  The Careless Lovers, a Comedy, acted at the duke’s theatre, 4to. 1673.  The scene Covent-Garden, part of this play is borrowed from Moliere’s Monsieur de Pourceaugnac.

2.  Mamamouchi; or the Citizen turned Gentleman, a Comedy, acted at the duke’s theatre, 4to. 1675, dedicated to his Highness prince Rupert.  Part of this play is taken from Moliere’s le Bourgeois Gentilliome.  Scene London.

3.  Scaramouch a Philosopher, Harlequin a schoolboy, Bravo Merchant and Magician; a Comedy, after the Italian manner, acted at the theatre-royal 1677.  The poet in his preface to this play boasts his having brought a new sort of Comedy on our stage; but his critics will not allow any one scene of it to be the genuine offspring of his own brain, and denominate him rather the midwife than the parent of this piece; part of it is taken from le Burgeois Gentilhome, & la Marriage Force.

4.  The Wrangling Lovers; or the Invisible Mistress, a Comedy, acted at the duke’s theatre, 4to. 1677.  This play is founded upon Corneille’s Les Engagements du Hazard, and a Spanish Romance, called, Deceptio visus; or seeing and believing are two things.

5.  King Edgar, and Alfreda, a Tragedy, acted at the theatre-royal 1677.  The story is taken from the Annals of Love, a novel, and Malmesbury, Grafton, Stow, Speed, and other English chronicles.