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The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, with
Biographical and Critical Notices. By Leigh Hunt. 8vo. London: 1840.
We have a kindness for Mr. Leigh Hunt. We form our judgment of him, indeed, only
from events of universal notoriety, from his own works, and from the works of
other writers, who have generally abused him in the most rancorous manner. But,
unless we are greatly mistaken, he is a very clever, a very honest, and a very
good-natured man. We can clearly discern, together with many merits, many faults
both in his writings and in his conduct. But we really think that there is
hardly a man living whose merits have been so grudgingly allowed, and whose
faults have been so cruelly expiated.
In some respects Mr. Leigh Hunt is excellently qualified for the task which he
has now undertaken. His style, in spite of its mannerism, nay, partly by reason
of its mannerism, is well-suited for light, garrulous, desultory ana, half
critical, half biographical. We do not always agree with his literary judgments;
but we find in him what is very rare in our time, the power of justly
appreciating and heartily enjoying good things of very different kinds. He can
adore Shakespeare and Spenser without denying poetical genius to the author of
Alexander's Feast, or fine observation, rich fancy and exquisite humor to him
who imagined Will Honeycomb and Sir Roger de Coverley. He has paid particular
attention to the history of the English drama, from the age of Elizabeth down to
our own time, and has every right to be heard with respect on that subject.
The plays to which he now acts as introducer are, with few exceptions, such as,
in the opinion of many very respectable people, ought not to be reprinted. In
this opinion we can by no means concur. We cannot wish that any work or class of
works which has exercised a great influence on the human mind, and which
illustrates the character of an important epoch in letters, politics, and
morals, should disappear from the world. If we err in this matter, we err with
the gravest men and bodies of men in the empire, and especially with the Church
of England, and with the great schools of learning which are connected with her.
The whole liberal education of our countrymen is conducted on the principle,
that no book which is valuable, either by reason of the excellence of its style,
or by reason of the light which it throws on the history, polity, and manners of
nations, should be withheld from the student on account of its impurity. The
Athenian Comedies, in which there are scarcely a hundred lines together without
some passage of which Rochester would have been ashamed, have been reprinted at
the Pitt Press, and the Clarendon Press, under the direction of Syndics, and
delegates appointed by the Universities, and have been illustrated with notes by
reverend, very reverend, and right reverend commentators. Every year the most
distinguished young men in the kingdom are examined by bishops and professors of
divinity in such works as the Lysistrata of Aristophanes and the Sixth Satire of
Juvenal. There is certainly something a little ludicrous in the idea of a
conclave of venerable fathers of the Church praising and rewarding a lad on
account of his intimate acquaintance with writings compared with which the
loosest tale in Prior is modest. But, for our own part, we have no doubt that
the greatest societies which direct the education of the English gentry have
herein judged wisely. It is unquestionable that an extensive acquaintance with
ancient literature enlarges and enriches the mind. It is unquestionable that a
man whose mind has been thus enlarged and enriched is likely to be far more
useful to the State and to the Church than one who is unskilled or little
skilled, in classical learning. On the other hand, we find it difficult to
believe that, in a world so full of temptation as this, any gentleman whose life
would have been virtuous if he had not read Aristophanes and Juvenal will be
made vicious by reading them. A man who, exposed to all the influences of such a
state of society as that in which we live, is yet afraid of exposing himself to
the influences of a few Greek or Latin verses, acts, we think, much like the
felon who begged the sheriffs to let him have an umbrella held over his head
from the door of Newgate to the gallows, because it was a drizzling morning, and
he was apt to take cold.
The virtue which the world wants is a healthful virtue, not a valetudinarian
virtue, a virtue which can expose itself to the risks inseparable from all
spirited exertion, not a virtue which keeps out of the common air for fear of
infection, and eschews the common food as too stimulating. It would be indeed
absurd to attempt to keep men from acquiring those qualifications which fit them
to play their part in life with honor to themselves and advantage to their
country, for the sake of preserving a delicacy which cannot be preserved, a
delicacy which a walk from Westminster to the Temple is sufficient to destroy.
But we should be justly chargeable with gross inconsistency if, while we defend
the policy which invites the youth of our country to study such writers as
Theocritus and Catullus, we were to set up a cry against a new edition of the
Country Wife or the Wife of the World. The immoral English writers of the
seventeenth century are indeed much less excusable than those of Greece and
Rome. But the worst English writings of the seventeenth century are decent,
compared with much that has been bequeathed to us by Greece and Rome. Plato, we
have little doubt, was a much better man than Sir George Etherege. But Plato has
written things at which Sir George Etherege would have shuddered. Buckhurst and
Sedley, even in those wild orgies at the Cock in Bow Street for which they were
pelted by the rabble and fined by the Court of King's Bench, would never have
dared to hold such discourse as passed between Socrates and Phaedrus on that
fine summer day under the plane-tree, while the fountain warbled at their feet,
and the cicadas chirped overhead. If it be, as we think it is, desirable that an
English gentleman should be well informed touching the government and the
manners of little commonwealths which both in place and time are far removed
from us, whose independence has been more than two thousand years extinguished,
whose language has not been spoken for ages, and whose ancient magnificence is
attested only by a few broken columns and friezes, much more must it be
desirable that he should be intimately acquainted with the history of the public
mind of his own country, and with the causes, the nature, and the extent of
those revolutions of opinion and feeling which, during the last two centuries,
have alternately raised and depressed the standard of our national morality. And
knowledge of this sort is to be very sparingly gleaned from Parliamentary
debates, from State papers, and from the works of grave historians. It must
either not be acquired at all, or it must be acquired by the perusal of the
light literature which has at various periods been fashionable. We are therefore
by no means disposed to condemn this publication, though we certainly cannot
recommend the handsome volume before us as an appropriate Christmas present for
young ladies.
We have said that we think the present publication perfectly justifiable. But we
can by no means agree with Mr. Leigh Hunt, who seems to hold that there is
little or no ground for the charge of immorality so often brought against the
literature of the Restoration. We do not blame him for not bringing to the
judgment-seat the merciless rigor of Lord Angelo; but we really think that such
flagitious and impudent offenders as those who are now at the bar deserved at
least the gentle rebuke of Escalus. Mr. Leigh Hunt treats the whole matter a
little too much in the easy style of Lucio; and perhaps his exceeding lenity
disposes us to be somewhat too severe.
And yet it is not easy to be too severe. For in truth this part of our
literature is a disgrace to our language and our national character. It is
clever, indeed, and very entertaining; but it is, in the most emphatic sense of
the words, "earthly, sensual, devilish." Its indecency, though perpetually such
as is condemned not less by the rules of good taste than by those of morality,
is not, in our opinion, so disgraceful a fault as its singularly inhuman spirit.
We have here Belial, not as when he inspired Ovid and Ariosto, "graceful and
humane," but with the iron eye and cruel sneer of Mephistopheles. We find
ourselves in a world, in which the ladies are like very profligate, impudent and
unfeeling men, and in which the men are too bad for any place but Pandemonium or
Norfolk Island. We are surrounded by foreheads of bronze, hearts like the nether
millstone, and tongues set on fire of hell.
Dryden defended or excused his own offences and those of his contemporaries by
pleading the example of the earlier English dramatists; and Mr. Leigh Hunt seems
to think there is force in the plea. We altogether differ from this opinion. The
crime charged is not mere coarseness of expression. The terms which are delicate
in one age become gross in the next. The diction of the English version of the
Pentateuch is sometimes such as Addison would not have ventured to imitate; and
Addison, the standard of moral purity in his own age, used many phrases which
are now proscribed. Whether a thing shall be designated by a plain
noun-substantive or by a circumlocution is mere matter of fashion. Morality is
not at all interested in the question. But morality is deeply interested in
this, that what is immoral shall not be presented to the imagination of the
young and susceptible in constant connection with what is attractive. For every
person who has observed the operation of the law of association in his own mind
and in the minds of others knows that whatever is constantly presented to the
imagination in connection with what is attractive will itself become attractive.
There is undoubtedly a great deal of indelicate writing in Fletcher and
Massinger, and more than might be wished even in Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, who
are comparatively pure. But it is impossible to trace in their plays any
systematic attempt to associate vice with those things which men value most and
desire most, and virtue with every thing ridiculous and degrading. And such a
systematic attempt we find in the whole dramatic literature of the generation
which followed the return of Charles the Second. We will take, as an instance of
what we mean, a single subject of the highest importance to the happiness of
mankind, conjugal fidelity. We can at present hardly call to mind a single
English play, written before the civil war, in which the character of a seducer
of married women is represented in a favorable light. We remember many plays in
which such persons are baffled, exposed, covered with derision, and insulted by
triumphant husbands. Such is the fate of Falstaff, with all his wit and
knowledge of the world. Such is the fate of Brisac in Fletcher's Elder Brother,
and of Ricardo and Ubaldo in Massinger's Picture. Sometimes, as in the Fatal
Dowry and Love's Cruelty, the outraged honor of families is repaired by a bloody
revenge. If now and then the lover is represented as an accomplished man, and
the husband as a person of weak or odious character, this only makes the triumph
of female virtue the more signal, as in Johnson's Celia and Mrs. Fitzdottrel,
and in Fletcher's Maria. In general we will venture to say that the dramatists
of the age of Elizabeth and James the First either treat the breach Of the
marriage-vow as a serious crime, or, if they treat it as matter for laughter,
turn the laugh against the gallant.
On the contrary, during the forty years which followed the Restoration, the
whole body of the dramatists invariably represent adultery, we do not say as a
peccadillo, we do not say as an error which the violence of passion may excuse,
but as the calling of a fine gentleman, as a grace without which his character
would be imperfect. It is as essential to his breeding and to his place in
society that he should make love to the wives of his neighbors as that he should
know French, or that he should have a sword at his side. In all this there is no
passion, and scarcely anything that can be called preference. The hero intrigues
just as he wears a wig; because, if he did not, he would be a queer fellow, a
city prig, perhaps a Puritan. All the agreeable qualities are always given to
the gallant. All the contempt and aversion are the portion of the unfortunate
husband. Take Dryden for example; and compare Woodall with Brainsick, or Lorenzo
with Gomez. Take Wycherley; and compare Horner with Pinchwife. Take Vanbrugh;
and compare Constant with Sir John Brute. Take Farquhar; and compare Archer with
Squire Sullen. Take Congreve; and compare Bellmour with Fondlewife, Careless
with Sir Paul Plyant, or Scandal with Foresight. In all these cases, and in many
more which might be named, the dramatist evidently does his best to make the
person who commits the injury graceful, sensible, and spirited, and the person
who suffers it a fool, or a tyrant, or both.
Mr. Charles Lamb, indeed, attempted to set up a defense for this way of writing.
The dramatists of the latter part of the seventeenth century are not, according
to him, to be tried by the standard of morality which exists, and ought to exist
in real life. Their world is a conventional world. Their heroes and heroines
belong, not to England, not to Christendom, but to an Utopia of gallantry, to a
Fairyland, where the Bible and Burn's justice are unknown, where a prank which
on this earth would be rewarded with the pillory is merely matter for a peal of
elfish laughter. A real Homer, a real Careless, would, it is admitted, be
exceedingly bad men. But to predicate morality or immorality of the Horner of
Wycherley and the Careless of Congreve is as absurd as it would be to arraign a
sleeper for his dreams. "They belong to the regions of pure comedy, where no
cold moral reigns. When we are among them we are among a chaotic people. We are
not to judge them by our usages. No reverend institutions are insulted by their
proceedings, for they have none among them. No peace of families is violated,
for no family ties exist among them. There is neither right nor wrong, gratitude
or its opposite, claim or duty, paternity or sonship."
This is, we believe, a fair summary of Mr. Lamb's doctrine. We are sure that we
do not wish to represent him unfairly. For we admire his genius; we love the
kind nature which appears in all his writings; and we cherish his memory as much
as if we had known him personally. But we must plainly say that his argument,
though ingenious, is altogether sophistical.
Of course we perfectly understand that it is possible for a writer to create a
conventional world in which things forbidden by the Decalogue and the Statute
Book shall be lawful, and yet that the exhibition may be harmless, or even
edifying. For example, we suppose that the most austere critics would not accuse
Fenelon of impiety and immorality on account of his Telemachus and his Dialogues
of the Dead. In Telemachus and the Dialogues of the Dead we have a false
religion, and consequently a morality which is in some points incorrect. We have
a right and a wrong differing from the right and the wrong of real life. It is
represented as the first duty of men to pay honor to Jove and Minerva.
Philocles, who employs his leisure in making graven images of these deities, is
extolled for his piety in a way which contrasts singularly with the expressions
of Isaiah on the same subject. The dead are judged by Minos, and rewarded with
lasting happiness for actions which Fenelon would have been the first to
pronounce splendid sins. The same may be said of Mr. Southey's Mahommedan and
Hindoo heroes and heroines. In Thalaba, to speak in derogation of the Arabian
impostor is blasphemy: to drink wine is a crime: to perform ablutions and to pay
honor to the holy cities are works of merit. In the Curse of Kehama, Kailyal is
commended for her devotion to the statue of Mariataly, the goddess of the poor.
But certainly no person will accuse Mr. Southey of having promoted or intended
to promote either Islamism or Brahminism.
It is easy to see why the conventional worlds of Fenelon and Mr. Southey are
unobjectionable. In the first place, they are utterly unlike the real world in
which we live. The state of society, the laws even of the physical world, are so
different from those with which we are familiar, that we cannot be shocked at
finding the morality also very different. But in truth the morality of these
conventional worlds differs from the morality of the real world only in points
where there is no danger that the real world will ever go wrong. The generosity
and docility of Telemachus, the fortitude, the modesty, the filial tenderness of
Kailyal, are virtues of all ages and nations. And there was very little danger
that the Dauphin would worship Minerva, or that an English damsel would dance,
with a bucket on her head, before the statue of Mariataly.
The case is widely different with what Mr. Charles Lamb calls the conventional
world of Wycherley and Congreve. Here the garb, the manners, the topics of
conversation are those of the real town and of the passing day. The hero is in
all superficial accomplishments exactly the fine gentleman whom every youth in
the pit would gladly resemble. The heroine is the fine lady whom every youth in
the pit would gladly marry. The scene is laid in some place which is as well
known to the audience as their own houses, in St. James's Park, Park, or Hyde
Park, or Westminster Hall. The lawyer bustles about with his bag, between the
Common Pleas and the Exchequer. The Peer calls for his carriage to go to the
House of Lords on a private bill. A hundred little touches are employed to make
the fictitious world appear like the actual world. And the immorality is of a
sort which never can be out of date, and which all the force of religion, law,
and public opinion united can but imperfectly restrain.
In the name of art, as well as in the name of virtue, we protest against the
principle that the world of pure comedy is one into which no moral enters. If
comedy be an imitation, under whatever conventions, of real life, how is it
possible that it can have no reference to the great rule which directs life, and
to feelings which are called forth by every incident of life? If what Mr.
Charles Lamb says were correct, the inference would be that these dramatists did
not in the least understand the very first principles of their craft. Pure
landscape-painting into which no light or shade enters, pure portrait-painting
into which no expression enters, are phrases less at variance with sound
criticism than pure comedy into which no moral enters.
But it is not the fact that the world of these dramatists is a world into which
no moral enters. Morality constantly enters into that world, a sound morality,
and an unsound morality; the sound morality to be insulted, derided, associated
with everything mean and hateful; the unsound morality to be set off to every
advantage, and inculcated by all methods, direct and indirect. It is not the
fact that none of the inhabitants of this conventional world feel reverence for
sacred institutions and family ties. Fondlewife, Pinchwife, every person in
short of narrow understanding and disgusting manners, expresses that reverence
strongly. The heroes and heroines, too, have a moral code of their own, an
exceedingly bad one, but not, as Mr. Charles Lamb seems to think, a code
existing only in the imagination of dramatists. It is, on the contrary, a code
actually received and obeyed by great numbers of people. We need not go to
Utopia or Fairyland to find them. They are near at hand. Every night some of
them cheat at the hells in the Quadrant, and others pace the Piazza in Covent
Garden. Without flying to Nephelococcygia or to the Court of Queen Mab, we can
meet with sharpers, bullies, hard-hearted impudent debauchees, and women worthy
of such paramours. The morality of the Country Wife and the Old Bachelor is the
morality, not, as Mr. Charles Lamb maintains, of an unreal world, but of a world
which is a great deal too real. It is the morality, not of a chaotic people, but
of low town-rakes, and of those ladies whom the newspapers call "dashing
Cyprians."
And the question is simply this, whether a man of genius who constantly and
systematically endeavors to make this sort of character attractive, by uniting
it with beauty, grace, dignity, spirit, a high social position, popularity,
literature, wit, taste, knowledge of the world, brilliant success in every
undertaking, does or does not make an ill use of his powers. We own that we are
unable to understand how this question can be answered in any way but one.
It must, indeed, be acknowledged, in justice to the writers of whom we have
spoken thus severely, that they were to a great extent the creatures of their
age, And if it be asked why that age encouraged immorality which no other age
would have tolerated, we have no hesitation in answering that this, great
depravation of the national taste was the effect of the prevalence of Puritanism
under the Commonwealth.
To punish public outrages on morals and religion is unquestionably within the
competence of rulers. But when a government, not content with requiring decency,
requires sanctity, it oversteps the bounds which mark its proper functions. And
it may be laid down as a universal rule that a government which attempts more
than it ought will perform less. A lawgiver who, in order to protect distressed
borrowers, limits the rate of interest, either makes it impossible for the
objects of his care to borrow at all, or places them at the mercy of the worst
class of usurers. A lawgiver who, from tenderness for laboring men, fixes the
hours of their work and the amount of their wages, is certain to make them far
more wretched than he found them. And so a government which, not content with
repressing scandalous excesses, demands from its subjects fervent and austere
piety, will soon discover that, while attempting to render an impossible service
to the cause of virtue, it has in truth only promoted vice.
For what are the means by which a government can effect its ends? Two only,
reward and punishment; powerful means, indeed, for influencing the exterior act,
but altogether impotent for the purpose of touching the heart. A public
functionary who is told that he will be promoted if he is a devout Catholic, and
turned out of his place if he is not, will probably go to mass every morning,
exclude meat from his table on Fridays, shrive himself regularly, and perhaps
let his superiors know that he wears a hair shirt next his skin. Under a Puritan
government, a person who is apprised that piety is essential to thriving in the
world will be strict in the observance of the Sunday, or, as he will call it,
Sabbath, and will avoid a theatre as if it were plague-stricken. Such a show of
religion as this the hope of gain and the fear of loss will produce, at a week's
notice, in any abundance which a government may require. But under this show,
sensuality, ambition, avarice, and hatred retain unimpaired power, and the
seeming convert has only added to the vices of a man of the world all the still
darker vices which are engendered by the constant practice of dissimulation. The
truth cannot be long concealed. The public discovers that the grave persons who
are proposed to it as patterns are more utterly destitute of moral principle and
of moral sensibility than avowed libertines. It sees that these Pharisees are
farther removed from real goodness than publicans and harlots. And, as usual, it
rushes to the extreme opposite to that which it quits. It considers a high
religious profession as a sure mark of meanness and depravity. On the very first
day on which the restraint of fear is taken away, and on which men can venture
to say what they think, a frightful peal of blasphemy and ribaldry proclaims
that the short-sighted policy which aimed at making a nation of saints has made
a nation of scoffers.
It was thus in France about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Lewis the
Fourteenth in his old age became religious: he determined that his subjects
should be religious too: he shrugged his shoulders and knitted his brows if he
observed at his levee or near his dinner-table any gentleman who neglected the
duties enjoined by the Church, and rewarded piety with blue ribands, invitations
to Marli, governments, pensions, and regiments. Forthwith Versailles became, in
everything but dress, a convent. The pulpits and confessionals were surrounded
by swords and embroidery. The Marshals of France were much in prayer; and there
was hardly one among the Dukes and Peers who did not carry good little books in
his pocket, fast during Lent, and communicate at Easter. Madame de Maintenon,
who had a great share in the blessed work, boasted that devotion had become
quite the fashion. A fashion indeed it was; and like a fashion it passed away.
No sooner had the old king been carried to St. Denis than the whole Court
unmasked. Every man hastened to indemnify himself, by the excess of
licentiousness and impudence, for years of mortification. The same persons who,
a few months before, with meek voices and demure looks, had consulted divines
about the state of their souls, now surrounded the midnight table where, amidst
the bounding of champagne corks, a drunken prince, enthroned between Dubois and
Madame de Parabere, hiccoughed out atheistical arguments and obscene jests. The
early part of the reign of Lewis the Fourteenth had been a time of license; but
the most dissolute men of that generation would have blushed at the orgies of
the Regency.
It was the same with our fathers in the time of the Great Civil War. We are by
no means unmindful of the great debt which mankind owes to the Puritans of that
time, the deliverers of England, the founders of the American Commonwealths. But
in the day of their power, those men committed one great fault, which left deep
and lasting traces in the national character and manners. They mistook the end
and overrated the force of government. They determined, not merely to protect
religion and public morals from insult, an object for which the civil sword, in
discreet hands, may be beneficially employed, but to make the people committed
to their rule truly devout. Yet, if they had only reflected on events which they
had themselves witnessed and in which they had themselves borne a great part,
they would have seen what was likely to be the result of their enterprise. They
had lived under a government which, during a long course of years, did all that
could be done, by lavish bounty and by rigorous punishment, to enforce
conformity to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England. No person
suspected of hostility to that Church had the smallest chance of obtaining favor
at the Court of Charles. Avowed dissent was punished by imprisonment, by
ignominious exposure, by cruel mutilations, and by ruinous fines. And the event
had been that the Church had fallen, and had, in its fall, dragged down with it
a monarchy which had stood six hundred years. The Puritan might have learned, if
from nothing else, yet from his own recent victory, that governments which
attempt things beyond their reach are likely not merely to fail, but to produce
an effect directly the opposite of that which they contemplate as desirable.
All this was overlooked. The saints were to inherit the earth. The theatres were
closed. The fine arts were placed under absurd restraints. Vices which had never
before been even misdemeanors were made capital felonies. It was solemnly
resolved by Parliament "that no person shall be employed but such as the House
shall be satisfied of his real godliness." The pious assembly had a Bible lying
on the table for reference. If they had consulted it they might have learned
that the wheat and the tares grow together inseparably, and must either be
spared together or rooted up together. To know whether a man was really godly
was impossible. But it was easy to know whether he had a plain dress, lank hair,
no starch in his linen, no gay furniture in his house; whether he talked through
his nose, and showed the whites of his eyes; whether he named his children
Assurance, Tribulation, Mahershalal-hash-baz; whether he avoided Spring Garden
when in town, and abstained from hunting and hawking when in the country;
whether he expounded hard scriptures to his troop of dragoons, and talked in a
committee of ways and means about seeking the Lord. These were tests which could
easily be applied. The misfortune was that they were tests which proved nothing.
Such as they were, they were employed by the dominant party. And the consequence
was that a crowd of impostors, in every walk of life, began to mimic and to
caricature what were then regarded as the outward signs of sanctity. The nation
was not duped. The restraints of that gloomy time were such as would have been
impatiently borne, if imposed by men who were universally believed to be saints.
Those restraints became altogether insupportable when they were known to be kept
up for the profit of hypocrites. It is quite certain that, even if the royal
family had never returned, even if Richard Cromwell or Henry Cromwell had been
at the head of the administration, there would have been a great relaxation of
manners. Before the Restoration many signs indicated that a period of license
was at hand. The Restoration crushed for a time the Puritan party, and placed
supreme power in the hands of a libertine. The political counter-revolution
assisted the moral counter-revolution, and was in turn assisted by it. A period
of wild and desperate dissoluteness followed. Even in remote manor-houses and
hamlets the change was in some degree felt; but in London the outbreak of
debauchery was appalling; and in London the places most deeply infected were the
Palace, the quarters inhabited by the aristocracy, and the Inns of Court. It was
on the support of these parts of the town that the playhouses depended. The
character of the drama became conformed to the character of its patrons. The
comic poet was the mouthpiece of the most deeply corrupted part of a corrupted
society. And in the plays before us we find, distilled and condensed, the
essential spirit of the fashionable world during the anti-Puritan reaction.
The Puritan had affected formality; the comic poet laughed at decorum. The
Puritan had frowned at innocent diversions; the comic poet took under his
patronage the most flagitious excesses. The Puritan had canted; the comic poet
blasphemed. The Puritan had made an affair of gallantry felony without benefit
of clergy; the comic poet represented it as an honorable distinction. The
Puritan spoke with disdain of the low standard of popular morality; his life was
regulated by a far more rigid code; his virtue was sustained by motives unknown
to men of the world. Unhappily it had been amply proved in many cases, and might
well be suspected in many more, that these high pretensions were unfounded.
Accordingly, the fashionable circles, and the comic poets who were the spokesmen
of those circles, took up the notion that all professions of piety and integrity
were to be construed by the rule of contrary; that it might well be doubted
whether there was such a thing as virtue in the world; but that, at all events,
a person who affected to be better than his neighbors was sure to be a knave.
In the old drama there had been much that was reprehensible. But whoever
compares even the least decorous plays of Fletcher with those contained in the
volume before us will see how much the profligacy which follows a period of
overstrained austerity goes beyond the profligacy which precedes such a period.
The nation resembled the demoniac in the New Testament. The Puritans boasted
that the unclean spirit was cast out. The house was empty, swept, and garnished;
and for a time the expelled tenant wandered through dry places seeking rest and
finding none. But the force of the exorcism was spent. The fiend returned to his
abode; and returned not alone. He took to him seven other spirits more wicked
than himself. They entered in, and dwelt together: and the second possession was
worse than the first.
We will now, as far as our limits will permit, pass in review the writers to
whom Mr. Leigh Hunt has introduced us. Of the four, Wycherley stands, we think,
last in literary merit, but first in order of time, and first, beyond all doubt,
in immorality.
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Critical And Historical Essays, Volume II
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Critical And Historical Essays, Volume II, Thomas Babbington Macaulay,
1843 |
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