tness, and supplementing single French plots by the
addition of others.[225] At the same time, the higher efforts of French
comedy of character, as well as the refinement of expression in the list
of their models, notably in Moliere, were alike seasoned to suit the
coarser appetites and grosser palates of English patrons. The English
comic writers often succeeded in strengthening the borrowed texture of
their plays, but they never added comic humour without at the same time
adding coarseness of their own. Such were the productions of Sir George
Etheredge, Sir Charles Sedley, and the "mob of gentlemen who wrote with
ease"; nor was there any signal difference between their productions and
those of a playwright-actor such as J. Lacy (d. 1681), and a
professional dramatist of undoubted ability such as J. Crowne. Such,
though often displaying the brilliancy of a genius which even where it
sank could never wholly abandon its prerogative, were, it must be
confessed, the comedies of Dryden himself. On the other hand, the lowest
literary deeps of the Restoration drama were sounded by T. D'Urfey,
while of its moral degradation the "divine Astraea," the "unspeakable"
Mrs Aphra Behn, has an indefeasible title to be considered the most
faithful representative. T. Shadwell, fated, like the tragic poet
Elkanah Settle, to be chiefly remembered as a victim of Dryden's satire,
deserves more honourable mention. Like J. Wilson, whose plays seem to
class him with the pre-Restoration dramatists, Shadwell had caught
something not only of the art, but also of the spirit, of Ben Jonson;
but in most of his works he was, like the rest of his earlier
contemporaries, and like the brilliant group which succeeded them,
content to take his moral tone from the reckless society for which, or
in deference to the tastes of which, he wrote.[226] The absence of a
moral sense, which, together with a grossness of expression often
defying exaggeration, characterizes English comic dramatists from the
days of Dryden to those of Congreve, is the main cause of their failure
to satisfy the demands which are legitimately to be made upon their art.
They essayed to draw character as well as to paint manners, but they
rarely proved equal to the former and higher task; and, while choosing
the means which most readily commended their plays to the favour of
their immediate public, they achieved but little as interpreters of
those essential distinctions which their art is ca