In his _Apology_ Steele afterwards wrote of the _Lying Lover_:--"Mr. Collier had, about the time wherein this was published, written against the immorality of the stage. I was (as far as I durst for fear of witty men, upon whom he had been too severe) a great admirer of his work, and took it into my head to write a comedy in the severity he required. In this play I make the spark or hero kill a man in his drink, and finding himself in prison the next morning, I give him the contrition which he ought to have on that occasion.... I can't tell, sir, what they would have me do to prove me a Churchman; but I think I have appeared one even in so trifling a thing as a comedy; and considering me as a comic poet, I have been a martyr and confessor for the Church; for this play was damned for its piety." In the Dedication of the play to the Duke of Ormond, he says, "The design of it is to banish out of conversation all entertainment which does not proceed from simplicity of mind, good nature, friendship, and honour;" and in the Preface he again refers to the manner in which the English stage had offended against the laws of morals and religion; "I thought, therefore, it would be an honest ambition to attempt a comedy which might be no improper entertainment in a Christian commonwealth." He admits that the anguish and sorrow in the prison scene "are, perhaps, an injury to the rules of comedy; but I am sure they are a justice to those of morality." It was to be hoped that wit would now recover from its apostacy, for the Queen had "taken the stage under her consideration." The play was based upon Corneille's _Le Menteur_, but the latter and more serious portion is entirely Steele's. Alarcon, from whom Corneille borrowed, made his liar marry a girl he did not care for instead of the one he loved; Corneille made the liar's love change, so that his marriage met his wishes; while Steele represents Bookwit's inveterate love of romancing, generally in self-glorification, as leading to a duel with Penelope's lover, and to his own imprisonment in Newgate. This trouble teaches him the necessary lesson, and the hope is held out to him, at the end, of the hand of Penelope's friend, Victoria. "There is no gallantry in love but truth," are his last words.