coarse gross raillery of a barbarous age, was probably of no greater
injury to the morals of the audience, than it is to those of the lower
ranks of society, with whom similar language is everywhere admitted as
wit and humour. During the reigns of James I. and Charles I. this
licence was gradually disappearing. In the domination of the fanatics,
which succeeded, matters were so much changed, that, far from permitting
the use of indelicate or profane allusions, they wrapped up not only
their most common temporal affairs, but even their very crimes and
vices, in the language of their spiritual concerns. Luxury was _using
the creature_; avarice was _seeking experiences_; insurrection was
_putting the hand to the plough_; actual rebellion, _fighting the good
fight_; and regicide, _doing the great work of the Lord._ This
vocabulary became grievously unfashionable at the Reformation, and was
at once swept away by the torrent of irreligion, blasphemy, and
indecency, which were at that period deemed necessary to secure
conversation against the imputation of disloyalty and fanaticism. The
court of Cromwell, if lampoons can be believed, was not much less
vicious than that of Charles II., but it was less scandalous; and, as
Dryden himself expresses it,

"The sin was of our native growth, 'tis true;
The scandal of the sin was wholly new.
Misses there were, but modestly concealed,
Whitehall the naked Goddess first revealed;
Who standing, as at Cyprus, in her shrine,
The strumpet was adored with rites divine."

This torrent of licentiousness had begun in some degree to abate, even
upon the accession of James II., whose manners did not encourage the
same general licence as those of Charles. But after the Revolution, when
an affectation of profligacy was no longer deemed a necessary attribute
of loyalty, and when it began to be thought possible that a man might
have some respect for religion without being a republican, or even a
fanatic, the licence of the stage was generally esteemed a nuisance. It
then happened, as is not uncommon, that those, most bustling and active
to correct public abuses, were men whose intentions may, without doing
them injury, be estimated more highly than their talents. Thus, Sir
Richard Blackmore, a grave physician, residing and practising on the
sober side of Temple-Bar, was the first who professed to reform the
spreading pest of poetical licentiousness, and to correct such men as
Dryden, C