s, could have been able to
perform the like. The Author of the following Letter, it seems, has been
of the Audience at one of these Entertainments, and has accordingly
complained to me upon it; but I think he has been to the utmost degree
Severe against what is exceptionable in the Play he mentions, without
dwelling so much as he might have done on the Author's most excellent
Talent of Humour. The pleasant Pictures he has drawn of Life, should
have been more kindly mentioned, at the same time that he banishes his
Witches, who are too dull Devils to be attacked with so much Warmth.

_Mr_. SPECTATOR, [1]

'Upon a Report that _Moll White_ had followed you to Town, and was to
act a Part in the _Lancashire-Witches_, I went last Week to see that
Play. [2] It was my Fortune to sit next to a Country Justice of the
Peace, a Neighbour (as he said) of Sir ROGER'S, who pretended to shew
her to us in one of the Dances. There was Witchcraft enough in the
Entertainment almost to incline me to believe him; _Ben Johnson_ was
almost lamed; young _Bullock_ narrowly saved his Neck; the Audience
was astonished, and an old Acquaintance of mine, a Person of Worth,
whom I would have bowed to in the Pit, at two Yards distance did not
know me.

If you were what the Country People reported you, a white Witch, I
could have wished you had been there to have exorcised that Rabble of
Broomsticks, with which we were haunted for above three Hours. I could
have allowed them to set _Clod_ in the Tree, to have scared the
Sportsmen, plagued the Justice, and employed honest _Teague_ with his
holy Water. This was the proper Use of them in Comedy, if the Author
had stopped here; but I cannot conceive what Relation the Sacrifice of
the Black Lamb, and the Ceremonies of their Worship to the Devil, have
to the Business of Mirth and Humour.

The Gentleman who writ this Play, and has drawn some Characters in it
very justly, appears to have been misled in his Witchcraft by an
unwary following the inimitable _Shakespear_. The Incantations in
_Mackbeth_ have a Solemnity admirably adapted to the Occasion of that
Tragedy, and fill the Mind with a suitable Horror; besides, that the
Witches are a Part of the Story it self, as we find it very
particularly related in _Hector Boetius_, from whom he seems to have
taken it. This therefore is a proper Machine where the Business is
dark, horrid, and bloody; but i