--He has, with too much reason: and I am sorry to say that all our
best comic writers after Shakespeare and Johnson, except Addison and
Steele, are as liable as he to that heavy charge. Fletcher is shocking.
Etheridge, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar have painted the
manners of the times in which they wrote with a masterly hand; but they
are too often such manners that a virtuous man, and much more a virtuous
woman, must be greatly offended at the representation.
_Boileau_.--In this respect our stage is far preferable to yours. It is
a school of morality. Vice is exposed to contempt and to hatred. No
false colours are laid on to conceal its deformity, but those with which
it paints itself are there taken off.
_Pope_.--It is a wonderful thing that in France the comic Muse should be
the gravest lady in the nation. Of late she is so grave, that one might
almost mistake her for her sister Melpomene. Moliere made her indeed a
good moral philosopher; but then she philosophised, like Democritus, with
a merry, laughing face. Now she weeps over vice instead of showing it to
mankind, as I think she generally ought to do, in ridiculous lights.
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