ports his ignorance by
his courage, and want of learning by contempt of it.

AC. Dear sir, hold: what you have told me already of this change in
conversation, is too miserable to be heard with any delight; but,
methinks, as these new creatures appear in the world, it might give an
excellent field to writers for the stage, to divert us with the
representation of them there.

FRIEND. No, no: as you say, there might be some hopes of redress of
these grievances, if there were proper care taken of the theatre; but
the history of that is yet more lamentable than that of the decay of
conversation I gave you.

AC. Pray, sir, a little: I haven't been in town these six years, till
within this fortnight.

FRIEND. It is now some years since several revolutions in the gay world
had made the empire of the stage subject to very fatal convulsions,
which were too dangerous to be cured by the skill of little King
Oberon,[181] who then sat in the throne of it. The laziness of this
prince threw him upon the choice of a person who was fit to spend his
life in contentions, an able and profound attorney, to whom he mortgaged
his whole empire. This Divito[182] is the most skilful of all
politicians: he has a perfect art in being unintelligible in discourse,
and uncomeatable in business. But he having no understanding in this
polite way, brought in upon us, to get in his money,
ladder-dancers,[183] rope-dancers, jugglers, and mountebanks, to strut
in the place of Shakespeare's heroes, and Jonson's humorists. When the
seat of wit was thus mortgaged, without equity of redemption, an
architect[184] arose, who has built the muse a new palace, but secured
her no retinue; so that instead of action there, we have been put off
by song and dance. This latter help of sound has also begun to fail for
want of voices; therefore the palace has since been put into the hands
of a surgeon,[185] who cuts any foreign fellow into an eunuch, and
passes him upon us for a singer of Italy.

AC. I'll go out of town to-morrow.

FRIEND.[186] Things are come to this pass; and yet the world will not
understand, that the theatre has much the same effect on the manners of
the age, as the bank on the credit of the nation. Wit and spirit, humour
and good sense, can never be revived, but under the government of those
who are judges of such talents, who know, that whatever is put up in
their stead, is but a short and trifling expedient, to support the
appearance of them