"For kings and priests are in a manner bound, For reverence' sake, to be close hypocrites."[262] And he proceeds thereupon boldly to lay bare his own despotism. In reality, his sophisms and his shamelessness serve Dryden as a means of decrying by rebound the arbitrary Divinity of the theologians. He lets Jupiter say: "Fate is what I, By virtue of omnipotence, have made it; And power omnipotent can do no wrong! Not to myself, because I will it so; Nor yet to men, for what they are is mine.-- This night I will enjoy Amphitryon's wife; For when I made her, I decreed her such As I should please to love."[263] This open pedantry is changed into open lust as soon as Jupiter sees Alemena. No detail is omitted: Jupiter speaks his whole mind to her, and before the maids; and next morning, when he is going away, she outdoes him: she hangs on to him, and indulges in the most familiar details. All the noble externals of high gallantry are torn off like a troublesome garment; it is a cynical recklessness in place of aristocratic decency; the scene is written after the example of Charles II and Castlemaine, not of Louis XIV and Mme de Montespan.[264] Section VIII.--Wycherley I pass over several writers: Crowne, author of "Sir Courtly Nice"; Shadwell, an imitator of Ben Jonson; Mrs. Aphra Behn, who calls herself Astræa, a spy and a courtesan, paid by government and the public. Etherege is the first to set the example of imitative comedy in his "Man of Fashion" and to depict only the manners of his age; for the rest he is an open roisterer, and frankly describes his habits: "From hunting whores, and haunting play, And minding nothing all the day, And all the night too, you will say...." Such were his pursuits in London; and further on, in a letter from Ratisbon to Lord Middleton, "He makes grave legs in formal fetters, Converses with fools and writes dull letters;"