Note 351 — PROLOGUE TO CÆSAR BORGIA. BY MR N. LEE, 1680.

In Dryden's days, as in our own, there were provided by the hawkers a plentiful assortment of wonders and prodigies to captivate the people; with this difference, that, in that earlier period, the readers and believers of these wonders were more numerous, and of higher rank. I cannot point out the particular prodigies referred to; but I suppose they were of the same description as "The wonderful blazing star; with the dreadful apparition of two armies in the air; the one out of the north, the other out of the south, seen on the 17th December, 1680, betwixt four and five o'clock in the evening, at Ottery, ten miles eastward of Exon;" or as "The strange and dreadful relation of a horrible tempest of thunder and lightning, and of strange apparitions in the air, accompanied with whirlwinds, gusts of hail and rain, which happened the 10th of June, 1680, at a place near Weatherby, in the county of York: with the account how the top of strong oak, containing one load of wood, was taken off by a sheet of fire, wrapped in a whirlwind, and carried through the air, half a mile distant from the place, &c. As, likewise, another strange relation of a monstrous child with two heads, four arms, four legs, and all things thereunto belonging; born at a village, called Ill-Brewers, in the county of Somerset, on the 19th of May last, with several other circumstances and curious observations, to the wonder of all that have beheld it."