Otway had drawn down any disgrace upon himself by misbehaviour in a military station.  If this had been the case, he wanted not enemies who would have improved the circumstance, and recorded it against him, with a malicious satisfaction; but if it did not proceed from actual cowardice, yet we have some reason to conjecture that Mr. Otway felt a strong disinclination to a military life, perhaps from a consciousness that his heart failed him, and a dread of misbehaving, should he ever be called to an engagement; and to avoid the shame of which he was apprehensive in consequence of such behaviour, he, in all probability, resigned his commission, which could not but disoblige the earl of Plymouth, and expose himself to necessity.  What pity is it, that he who could put such masculine strong sentiments into the mouth of such a resolute hero as his own Pierre, should himself fail in personal courage, but this quality nature withheld from him, and he exchanged the chance of reaping laurels in the field of victory, for the equally uncertain, and more barren laurels of poetry.  The earl of Rochester, in his Session of the Poets, has thus maliciously recorded, and without the least grain of wit, the deplorable circumstances of Otway.

Tom Otway came next, Tom Shadwell’s dear Zany,
And swears for heroics he writes best of any;
Don Carlos his pockets so amply had filled,
That his mange was quite cured, and his lice were all killed. 
But Apollo had seen his face on the stage,           }
And prudently did not think fit to engage            }
The scum of a playhouse, for the prop of an age.     }

Mr. Otway translated out of French into English, the History of the Triumvirate; the First Part of Julius Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, the Second Part of Augustus, Anthony and Lepidus, being a faithful collection from the best historians, and other authors, concerning the revolution of the Roman government, which happened under their authority, London 1686 in 8vo.  Our author finding his necessities press, had recourse to writing for the stage, which he did with various success:  his comedy has been blamed for having too much libertinism mixed with it; but in tragedy he made it his business, for the most part, to observe the decorum of the stage.  He has certainly followed nature in the language of his tragedy, and therefore shines in the passionate parts more than any of our English poets.  As there is something familiar and domestic in the fable of his tragedy, he has little pomp, but great energy in his expressions; for which reason, though he has admirably succeeded in the tender and melting parts of his tragedies, he sometimes falls into too great a familiarity of phrase in those, which, by Aristotle’s rule, ought to have been raised and supported by the dignity of expression.  It has been observed by the critics, that the poet has founded his tragedy of Venice Preservcd, on so wrong a plot, that the greatest characters in it are those of rebels and traitors.  Had the hero of this play discovered the same good qualities in defence of his country, that he shewed for his ruin and subversion, the audience could not enough pity and admire him; but as he is now represented, we can only say of him, what the Roman historian says of Catiline, that his fall would have been glorious (si pro Patria sic concidisset) had he so fallen, in the service of his country.