As Steele cannot claim the sole merit of having invented the form of the _Tatler_, so, too, it must be remembered that he could never have addressed society in the high moral tone assumed by Bickerstaff if the road had not been prepared for him by others. One name among his predecessors stands out with a special title to honourable record. Since the Restoration the chief school of manners had been the stage, and the flagrant example of immorality set by the Court had been bettered by the invention of the comic dramatists of the period. Indecency was the fashion; religion and sobriety were identified by the polite world with Puritanism and hypocrisy. Even the Church had not yet ventured to say a word in behalf of virtue against the prevailing taste, and when at last a clergyman raised his voice on behalf of the principles which he professed, the blow which he dealt to his antagonists was the more damaging because it was entirely unexpected. Jeremy Collier was not only a Tory but a Jacobite, not only a High Churchman but a Nonjuror, who had been outlawed for his fidelity to the principles of Legitimism; and that such a man should have published the _Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage_, reflecting, as the book did, in the strongest manner on the manners of the fallen dynasty, was as astounding as thunder from a clear sky. Collier, however, was a man of sincere piety, whose mind was for the moment occupied only by the overwhelming danger of the evil which he proposed to attack. It is true that his method of attack was cumbrous, and that his conclusions were far too sweeping and often unjust; nevertheless, the general truth of his criticisms was felt to be irresistible. Congreve and Vanbrugh each attempted an apology for their profession; both, however, showed their perception of the weakness of their position by correcting or recasting scenes in their comedies to which Collier had objected. Dryden accepted the reproof in a nobler spirit. Even while he had pandered to the tastes of the times, he had been conscious of his treachery to the cause of true art, and had broken out in a fine passage in his _Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Killigrew_: "O gracious God! how far have we Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy! Made prostitute and profligate the Muse, Debased to each obscene and impious use! * * * * * "O wretched we! why were we hurried down This lubrique and adulterous age (Nay, added fat pollutions of our own) To increase the streaming ordure of the stage?" When Collier attacked him he bent his head in submission. "In many things," says he, "he has taxed me justly, and I have pleaded guilty to all thought and expressions of mine which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance."[33]