He had, moreover, the worst of audiences, debauched and frivolous, void of individual taste, floundering amid confused recollections of the national literature and deformed imitations of foreign literature, expecting nothing from the stage but the pleasure of the senses or the gratification of curiosity. In reality, the drama, like every work of art, only gives life and truth to a profound ideal of man and of existence; there is a hidden philosophy under its circumvolutions and violences, and the public ought to be capable of comprehending it, as the poet is of conceiving it. The audience must have reflected or felt with energy or refinement, in order to take in energetic or refined thoughts; Hamlet and Iphigénie will never move a vulgar roisterer or a lover of money. The character who weeps on the stage only rehearses our own tears; our interest is but sympathy; and the drama is like an external conscience, which shows us what we are, what we love, what we have felt. What could the drama teach to gamesters like St. Albans, drunkards like Rochester, prostitutes like Castlemaine, old boys like Charles II? What spectators were those coarse epicureans, incapable even of an assumed decency, lovers of brutal pleasures, barbarians in their sports, obscene in words, void of honor, humanity, politeness, who made the court a house of ill-fame! The splendid decorations, change of scenes, the patter of long verse and forced sentiments, the observance of a few rules imported from Paris--such was the natural food of their vanity and folly, and such the theatre of the English Restoration. I take one of Dryden's tragedies, very celebrated in time past, "Tyrannic Love, or the Royal Martyr";--a fine title, and fit to make a stir. The royal martyr is St. Catharine, a princess of royal blood as it appears, who is brought before the tyrant Maximin. She confesses her faith, and a pagan philosopher, Apollonius, is set loose against her, to refute her. Maximin says: "War is my province!--Priest, why stand you mute? You gain by heaven, and, therefore, should dispute." Thus encouraged, the priest argues; but St. Catharine replies in the following words: "... Reason with your fond religion fights, For many gods are many infinites; This to the first philosophers was known, Who, under various names, ador'd but one."[389] Apollonius scratches his ear a little, and then answers that there are great truths and good moral rules in paganism. The pious logician immediately replies: "Then let the whole dispute concluded be Betwixt these rules, and Christianity."[390] Being nonplussed, Apollonius is converted on the spot, insults the prince, who, finding St. Catharine very beautiful, becomes suddenly enamored, and makes jokes: "Absent, I may her martyrdom decree, But one look more will make that martyr me."[391]