Although some part of the character of a nation is pretty uniform and constant, yet its manners and customs in many points are extremely variable. These variations are the peculiar modes and fashions of the age; and hence the age, as well as the nation, acquires a distinguishing character. Fashion, in general, usurps a dominion only over the smaller and less important part of manners; such as dress, public diversions, and other matters of taste. The improprieties of fashion are therefore of the absurd and ludicrous kind, and consequently fit subjects of comic ridicule. There is no source of Comedy more fertile and pleasing than this; and none in which the end of reformation is likely to be so well answered. An extravagant fashion is exhibited upon the stage with such advantage of ridicule, that it can scarcely stand long against it; and I make no doubt that Moliere’s _Marquis de Mascarille_, and Cibber’s _Lord Foppington_, had a considerable share in reforming the prevailing foppery of the times. Fashion has also too much interfered in some more serious matters, as the sentiments and studies of the age. Here too Comedy has made its attacks; and the _Alchemist_, the _Virtuoso_, the _Antiquary_, the _Belle Esprit_, have in their turns undergone the ridicule of the stage, when their respective pursuits, by being fashionable, were carried to a fanciful extravagance. It is well known that Moliere, in his comedies of the _Femmes Sçavantes_, and the _Precieuses Ridicules_, was as successful against the pedantry and pretensions to wit which infected the French nation, and particularly the ladies, at that period, as Cervantes in his attack upon knight-errantry. There is another point of national or fashionable folly in which Comedy might be very useful; yet the attempt has been found dangerous; and perhaps the subject is too delicate for the stage, considering the abuses to which it is liable. I mean popular superstition, and priestcraft. Moliere, who with impunity had attacked every other species of folly, was almost ruined by exposing a hypocrite and a devotee; and the licentious ridicule of Dryden, and others of that age, was generally aimed, not only against superstition, but religion. The _Spanish Friar_, however, is an instance in which, with exquisite humour, the ridicule can hardly be blamed as improper; and it certainly did more hurt to Roman Catholic superstition than he could ever remedy by his scholastic _Hind and Panther_. How far the _Minor_ comes under the same description, would, probably, be a subject of dispute.