character of Forefight was then common. Dryden calculated nativities; both Cromwell and king William had their lucky days; and Shaftesbury himself, though he had no religion, was faid to regard predictions. The Sailor is not accounted very natural, but he is very pleasant.

With this play was opened the New Theatre, under the direction of Betterton the tragedian; where he exhibited two years afterwards (1697) The Mourning Bride, a tragedy, so written as to fhew him fufficiently qualified for either kind of dramatick poetry.

In this play, of which, when he afterwards revised it, he reduced the verfification to greater regularity, there is more bustle than fentiment; the plot is bufy and intricate, and the events take hold on the attention; but, except a very few paffages, we are rather amused with noife, and perplexed with ftratagem, than entertained with any true delineation of natural characters. This, however, was received with more benevolence than any other of his works, and ftill continues to be acted and applauded.

But whatever objections may be made either to his comick or tragick excellence, they are loft at once in the blaze of admiration, when it is remembered that he had produced these four plays before he had paffed his twenty-fifth year; before other men, even fuch as are fome time to fhine in eminence, have paffed their probation of literature, or prefume to hope for any other notice than fuch as is bestowed on diligence and inquiry. Among all the efforts of early genius which literary history records, I doubt whether any one can be produced that more furpasses the common limits of nature than the plays of Congreve.

About this time began the long-continued controverfy between Collier and the poets. In the reign of Charles the Firft the Puritans had railed a violent clamour against the drama, which they confidered as an entertainment not lawful to Christians, an opinion held by them in common with the church of Rome; and Prynne published Hiftrio-maftix, a huge volume, in which ftage-plays were cenfured. The outrages and crimes of the Puritans brought afterwards their whole fyf

tem of doctrine into disrepute, and from the Restoration the poets and the players were left at quiet; for to have molested them would have had the appearance of tendency to puritanical malignity.

This danger, however, was worn away by time; and Collier, a fierce and implacable Nonjuror, knew that an attack upon the theatre would never make him fulpected for a Puritan; he therefore (1698) published A fhort View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, I believe with no other motive than religious zeal and honeft indignation. He was formed for a controvert ift; with fufficient learning; with diction vehement and pointed, though often vulgar and incorrect; with unconquerable pertinacity; with wit in the highest degree keen and sarcastick; and with all thofe powers exalted and invigorated by juft confidence in his caufe.

Thus qualified, and thus incited, he walked out to battle, and affailed at once moft of the living writers, from Dryden to Durfey. His onset was violent: those passages, which

3

which while they stood fingle had passed with little notice, when they were accumulated and exposed together, excited horror; the wife and the pious caught the alarm, and the nation wondered why it had fo long suffered irreligion and licentioufnefs to be openly taught at the publick charge.

Nothing now remained for the poets but to refift or fly. Dryden's confcience, or his prudence, angry as he was, withheld him from the conflict; Congreve and Vanbrugh attempted anfwers Congreve, a very young man, elated with fuccefs, and impatient of cenfure, affumed an air of confidence and fecurity. His chief artifice of controversy is to retort upon his adversary his own words: he is very angry, and, hoping to conquer Collier with his own weapons, allows himself in the use of every term of contumely

and contempt; but he has the fword without the arm of Scanderbeg; he has his antagonift's coarseness, but not his ftrength. Collier replied; for conteft was his delight, he not to be frighted from his purpose or

was

his

prey.

The cause of Congreve was not tenable: whatever gloffes he might use for the defence or palliation of fingle paffages, the general tenour and tendency of his plays must always be condemned. It is acknowledged, with univerfal conviction, that the perufal of his works will make no man better; and that their ultimate effect is to reprefent pleasure in alliance with vice, and to relax thofe obligations by which life ought to be regulated.

The ftage found other advocates, and the dispute was protracted through ten years; but at laft Comedy grew more modeft, and Collier lived to see the reward of his labour in the reformation of the theatre.

Of the powers by which this important victory was atchieved, a quotation from Love for Love, and the remark upon it, may afford a fpecimen.

Sir Sampf. Sampfon's a very good name; for your Sampfons were strong dogs from the beginning.

Angel,