The satire in this piece against the Puritans is of a more refined character than in any other play of the period; and the contrast between the rash and ardent cavalier and the cautious Puritan is very fairly drawn. “Suppose I see not many vices,” says the Roundhead, Testimony, “morality is not the thing. The heathens had morality; and, forsooth, would you have your footman or your coachman to be no better than Seneca?” This is really complimentary to the Cromwellians; and there is but a good-natured dash of satire in the answer of Testimony, when asked what time of day it may be, that--“Truly, I do believe it is about four. I can not say it positively, for I would not tell a lie for the whole world.” I find little worthy of notice in other dramatic pieces having knights for their heroes. Southeran produced one entitled, “Sir Anthony Love” at the Theatre Royal in 1691, for the purpose of showing off Mrs. Mountfort as an errant lady in male attire. In the eighteenth century, the knights gave name to a few historical pieces not worth recording. The only exceptions are scarcely worthy of more notice. Dodsley’s “Sir John Cockle at Court” made our ancestors, of George the Second’s time, laugh at the sequel of the “King and the Miller of Mansfield;” and “Sir Roger de Coverley” was made the hero of a pantomime at Covent Garden in 1746. By this time, however, the fashion was extinct of satirizing living politicians under knightly names. To detail the few exceptions to the rule would only fatigue the perhaps already wearied reader. To what a low condition knight and squire could fall may be seen in the Sir Joseph Wittol and Captain Bluffe, in Congreve’s comedy, the “Old Batchelor.” The only redeeming point about this disreputable pair is, that, cowards and bullies as they are, they have both read a little. The Captain has dipped into history, and he remarks that “Hannibal was a pretty fellow in his day, it must be granted; but, alas, sir! were he alive now, he would be nothing; nothing on the earth.” Sir Joseph, the knight, _in comitatu Bucks_, has also indulged in a little reading, but that of a lighter sort than the Captain’s. When the gallant Captain affects not to be frightened at the aspect of Sharper, and exclaims, “I am prepared for him now, and he shall find he might have safer roused a sleeping lion,” the knight remarks, “Egad, if he should hear the lion roar, he’d cudgel him into an ass, and his primitive braying. Don’t you remember the story in Æsop’s Fables, Bully? Egad, there are good morals to be picked out of Æsop’s Fables, let me tell you that; and ‘Reynard the Fox’ too;” to which the deboshed Captain can only reply, “D--n your morals!” as though he despised fiction when compared with history.