-bred and clownish in it, and
which confessed the conversation of the authors.

And this leads me to the last and greatest advantage of our writing,
which proceeds from conversation. In the age wherein those poets
lived, there was less of gallantry than in ours; neither did they keep
the best company of theirs. Their fortune has been much like that of
Epicurus, in the retirement of his gardens; to live almost unknown,
and to be celebrated after their decease. I cannot find that any of
them had been conversant in courts, except Ben Jonson; and his genius
lay not so much that way, as to make an improvement by it. Greatness
was not then so easy of access, nor conversation so free, as now it
is. I cannot, therefore, conceive it any insolence to affirm, that, by
the knowledge and pattern of their wit who writ before us, and by the
advantage of our own conversation, the discourse and raillery of our
comedies excel what has been written by them. And this will be denied
by none, but some few old fellows who value themselves on their
acquaintance with the Black Friars; who, because they saw their plays,
would pretend a right to judge ours. The memory of these grave
gentlemen is their only plea for being wits. They can tell a story of
Ben Jonson, and, perhaps, have had fancy enough to give a supper in
the Apollo, that they might be called his sons[5]: And, because they
were drawn in to be laughed at in those times, they think themselves
now sufficiently entitled to laugh at ours. Learning I never saw in
any of them; and wit no more than they could remember. In short, they
were unlucky to have been bred in an unpolished age, and more unlucky
to live to a refined one. They have lasted beyond their own, and are
cast behind ours; and, not contented to have known little at the age
of twenty, they boast of their ignorance at threescore.

Now, if they ask me, whence it is that our conversation is so much
refined? I must freely, and without flattery, ascribe it to the court;
and, in it, particularly to the king, whose example gives a law to it.
His own misfortunes, and the nation's, afforded him an opportunity,
which is rarely allowed to sovereign princes, I mean of travelling,
and being conversant in the most polished courts of Europe; and,
thereby, of cultivating a spirit which was formed by nature to receive
the impressions of a gallant and generous education. At his return, he
found a nation lost as much in barbarism as in rebellion