making familiar now and
then with the Backslidings of the Cassock.

* _The Griping Usurer_, whose daily labour and nightly Care and Study
is to oppress the Poor, or over-reach his Neighbour, to betray the
Trusts his Hypocrisy procured; in short to break all the Positive Laws
of Morality, crys out, Oh! Diabolical, at a poor harmless _Double
Entendre_ in a Play.

"'Tis preposterous to pretend to reform the _Stage_ before the Nation,
and particularly the Town, is _reform'd_. The Business of a Dramatick
Poet is to _copy Nature_, and represent things as they are; Let our
Peers give over _whoring_ and _drinking_; the Citizens, _Cheating_; the
Clergy, their _Quarrels, Covetousness and Ambition_; the Lawyers, their
_ambi-dextrous dealings_; and the Women _intriguing_, and the stage will
reform of Course.

"Formerly _Poets_ made _Players_, but now adays 'tis generally the
_Player_ that makes the _Poet_. How many Plays would have expired the
very first Night of their appearing upon the Stage, but for _Betterton_,
_Barry_, _Bracegirdle_, or _Wilks_'s inimitable Performance.

"Who ever goes about to expose the Follies of others upon the Stage,
runs great hazard of exposing himself first; and of being made
Ridiculous to those very People he endeavours to make so.

"I doubt whether a Man of Sense would ever give himself the trouble of
writing for the Stage, if he had before his Eyes the fatigue of
Rehearsals, the Pangs and Agonies of the first day his Play is Acted,
the Disappointments of the third, and the Scandal of a Damn'd Poet.

"The reason why in _Shakespear_ and _Ben. Johnson_'s Time Plays had so
good Success, and that we see now so many of 'em miscarry, is because
then the Poets _wrote better_ than the Audience _Judg'd_; whereas
now-a-days the _Audience_ judge _better than the Poets write_."

* He that pretends to confine a Damsel of the Theatre to his own Use,
who by her Character is a Person of an extended Qualification, acts as
unrighteous, at least as unnatural, a Part, as he that would Debauch a
Nun. But after all, such a Spark rather consults his _Vanity_, than his
_Love_, and would be thought to ingross what all the young Coxcombs of
the Town admire and covet.

"Is it not a kind of Prodigy, that in this wicked and censorious Age,
the shining _Daphne_ should preserve her Reputation in a Play-House?"

The Character of a Player was Infamous amongst the _Romans_, but with
the _Greeks_ Honourable: What is our Opi