careful in censuring what was, after all, only one necessary stage
in the development of our own civilization. It must be said, also, that
the coarseness of the eighteenth century was a healthy coarseness, bred
of energetic natures and animal spirits. In our time, and in the midst
of our advanced refinement there lurks a sickly sentimentality, a false
modesty, and an unhealthy delicacy which are in a degree inimical to
morality. We have novels in great numbers, not broadly coarse, as those
of Fielding or Smollett, but insidiously immoral, painting vice and
unbridled passions in an attractive light.

The same rude and physical coarseness controlled the standard of taste,
and introduced boisterousness and violence even into amusements. "The
present grandeur of the British nation might make us expect," wrote
Steele, "that we should rise in our public diversions and manner of
enjoying life, in proportion to our advancement in glory and power.
Instead of that, survey this town, and you will find rakes and
debauchees are your men of pleasure; thoughtless atheists and
illiterate drunkards call themselves free-thinkers; and gamesters,
banterers, biters, swearers, and twenty new-born insects more, are, in
their several species, the modern men of wit."[131] Walpole[132] wrote
in 1744: "The town has been trying all this winter to drive pantomimes
off the stage, very boisterously; for it is the way here to make even
an affair of taste and sense a matter of riot and arms. Fleetwood, the
master of Drury Lane, has omitted nothing to support them, as they
supported his house. About ten days ago he let into the pit great
numbers of bear-garden _bruisers_ (that is the term), to knock down
everybody that hissed. The pit rallied their forces and drove them out.
I was sitting very quietly in the boxes contemplating all this. On a
sudden the curtain flew up, and discovered the whole stage filled with
blackguards armed with bludgeons and clubs, to menace the audience.
This raised the greatest uproar."

Mrs. Delany, whose character has excited so much admiration in her own
and in succeeding generations, left, in her autobiography and letters,
a picture of the society about her as seen by one of the most refined
and cultivated women of the time. Like many others, she was struck with
disgust at the coarseness and immorality which surrounded her. "It is
enough to make one a cynic, to shun the world, and shut oneself up in a
tub as Diogenes did;