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REGOGE was the thirty-fourth emperor Japan, and began his reign in the year 341 of the Christian era, succeeding to Nenat, a princess who governed with great felicity.

There had been a revolution in that empire about twenty-six years before, which made some breaches in the hereditary line; and Regoge, suc cessor to Nena, although of the royal family, was a distant relation.

There were two violent parties in the empire, which began in the time of the revolution above mentioned; and at the death of the empress Nena, were in the highest degree of animosity, each

Much as the Dean seems to have been disposed to defend queen Anne and her ministers, he seems to have been equally disposed to ridicule her successor and his family; and it is probable that the pieces in which he does it (this "account of the Court of Japan," and the "Directions for making a Birth-day Song,") were the occasion of most of the other posthumous articles having been so long withheld from the publick. BURKE. King George. D. S.

Queen Anne.

D. S.

charging

charging the other with a design of introducing new gods, and changing the civil constitution. The names of these two parties were Husiges and Yortes*. The latter were those whom Nena the late empress most favoured toward the end of her reign, and by whose advice she governed.

The Husige faction, enraged at their loss of power, made private applications to Regoge, during the life of the empress; which prevailed so far, that, upon her death, the new emperor wholly disgraced the Yortes, and employed only the Husiges in all his affairs. The Japanese author highly blames his imperial majesty's proceeding in this affair; because it was allowed on all hands, that he had then a happy opportunity of reconciling parties for ever, by a moderating scheme. But he, on the contrary, began his reign by openly disgracing the principal and most popular Yortes, some of which had been chiefly instrumental in raising him to the throne. By this mistaken step, he occasioned a rebellion: which, although it were soon quelled by some very surprising turns of fortune; yet the fear, whether real or pretended, of new attempts, engaged him in such immense charges, that instead of clearing any part of that prodigious debt, left on his kingdom by the former war, which might have been doue, by any tolerable management, in twelve years of the most profound peace, he left his empire loaded with a vast addition to the old incumbrance.

This prince, before he succeeded to the empire

Whigs and Tories. D. S.

of

of Japan, was king of Tedsu, a dominion seated on the continent, to the west side of Japan. Tedsu was the place of his birth, and more beloved by him than his new empire; for there he spent some months almost every year, and thither was supposed to have conveyed great sums of money, saved out of his imperial revenues.

There were two maritime towns of great importance bordering upon Tedsu: of these he purchased a litigated title; and to support it, was forced not only to entrench deeply on his Japanese revenues, but to engage in alliances very dangerous to the Japanese empire.

Japan was at that time a limited monarchy, which, some authors are of opinion, was introduced there by a detachment from the numerous army of Brennus, who ravaged a great part of Asia; and those of them who fixed in Japan, left behind them that kind of military institution, which the northern people in ensuing ages carried through most parts of Europe; the generals becoming kings, the great officers a senate of nobles, with a representative from every centenary of private soldiers; and in the assent of the majority in these two bodies, confirmed by the general, the legislature consisted.

I need not farther explain a matter so universally known; but return to my subject.

The Husige fa tiou, by a gross piece of negli gence in the Yortes, had so far insinuated themselves and their opinions into the favour of Regoge, before he came to the empire, that this prince firmly believed them to be his only true friends,

and

and the others his mortal enemies. By this opinion he governed all the actions of his reign.

The emperor died suddenly, in his journey to Tedsu; where, according to his usual custom, he was going to pass the summer.

This prince, during his whole reign, continued an absolute stranger to the language, the manners, the laws, and the religion of Japan; and passing his whole time among old mistresses, or a few pri vadoes, left the whole management of the empire in the hands of a minister, upon the condition of being made easy in his personal revenues, and the management of parties in the senate. His last minister*, who governed in the most arbitrary manner for several years, he was thought to hate more than he did any other person in Japan, except his only son, the heir to the empire. The dislike he bore to the former was, because the minister, under pretence that he could not govern the senate without disposing of employments among them, would not suffer his master to oblige one single person, but disposed of all to his own relations and dependents. But, as to that continued and virulent hatred he bore to the prince his son, from the beginning of his reign to his death, the historian has not accounted for it, farther than by various conjectures, which do not deserve to be related.

The minister above mentioned was of a family not contemptible, had been early a senator, and from his youth a mortal enemy to the Yortes. He had

Sir Robert Walpole, D. S.

been