Note 80 — THE HIND AND THE PANTHER.

"In short, the whole poem, if it may deserve that name, is a piece of deformed, arrogant nonsense, and self-contradiction, drest up in fine language, like an ugly brazen-faced whore, peeping through the costly trappings of a point de Venise cornet. I call it nonsense, because unseasonable; and arrogant, because impertinent: For could Mr Bayes have so little wit, to think himself a sufficient champion to decide the high mysteries of faith and transubstantiation, and the nice disputes concerning traditions and infallibility, in a discourse between "The Hind and the Panther," which, undetermined hitherto, have exercised all the learning in the world? Or, could he think the grand arcana of divinity a subject fit to be handled in flourishing rhyme, by the author of "The Duke of Guise," or "The Conquest of Peru," or "The Spanish Friar:" Doubts which Mr Bayes is no more able to unfold, than Saffold to resolve a question in astrology. And all this only as a tale to usher in his beloved character, and to shew the excellency of his wit in abusing honest men. If these were his thoughts, as we cannot rationally otherwise believe, seeing that no man of understanding will undertake an enterprise, wherein he does not think himself to have some advantage of his predecessors; then does this romance, I say, of The Panther and the Hind, fall under the most fatal censure of unseasonable folly and saucy impertinence. Nor can I think, that the more solid, prudent, and learned persons of the Roman Church, con him any thanks for laying the prophane fingers of a turn-coat upon the altar of their sacred debates."—The Revolter, a tragi-comedy, acted between The Hind and Panther and Religio Laici, &c. 1687.