a plot to assassinate King
William. His 'Essays on Moral Subjects' were published in 1697; 2nd
vol., 1705; 3rd vol., 1709. But the only way to put out a firebrand like
this is to let it alone, and Jeremy, being, no longer persecuted, began,
at last, to think the game was grown stupid, and gave it up. He was a
well-meaning man, however, and as long as he had the luxury of a
grievance, would injure no one.

He found one now in the immorality of his age, and if he had left
politics to themselves from the first, he might have done much more good
than he did. Against the vices of a court and courtly circles it was
useless to start a crusade single-handed; but his quaint clever pen
might yet dress out a powerful Jeremiad against those who encouraged the
licentiousness of the people. Jeremy was no Puritan, for he was a
Nonjuror and a Jacobite, and we may, therefore, believe that the cause
was a good one, when we find him adopting precisely the same line as the
Puritans had done before him. In 1698 he published, to the disgust of
all Drury and Lincoln's Inn, his 'Short View of the Immorality and
Profaneness of the English Stage, together with the Sense of Antiquity
upon this Argument.'

While the King of Naples is supplying his ancient Venuses with gowns,
and putting his Mars and Hercules into pantaloons, there are--such are
the varieties of opinion--respectable men in this country who call Paul
de Kock the greatest moral writer of his age, and who would yet like to
see 'The Relapse,' 'Love for Love,' and the choice specimens of
Wycherley, Farquhar, and even of Beaumont and Fletcher, acted at the
Princess's and the Haymarket in the year of grace 1860. I am not writing
'A Short View' of this or any other moral subject; but this I must
say--the effect of a sight or sound on a human being's silly little
passions must of necessity be relative. Staid people read 'Don Juan,'
Lewis's 'Monk,' the plays of Congreve, and any or all of the
publications of Holywell Street, without more than disgust at their
obscenity and admiration for their beauties. But could we be pardoned
for putting these works into the hands of 'sweet seventeen,' or making
Christmas presents of them to our boys? Ignorance of evil is, to a
certain extent, virtue: let boys be boys in purity of mind as long as
they can: let the unrefined 'great unwashed' be treated also much in the
same way as young people. I maintain that to a coarse mind all improper
ideas, however