reformation as this theory implies, the office of the preacher, as well as of the player, would be gone; and if the common peccadillos of lying, swearing, intriguing, fighting, drinking, gaming, and other such obnoxious dramatic common-places, were once fairly got rid of in reality, neither the comic poet would be able to laugh at them on the stage, nor our good-natured author to consign them over to damnation elsewhere. The work is, however, written with ability, and did much mischief: it produced those _do-me-good_, lack-a-daisical, whining, make-believe comedies in the next age, (such as Steele’s Conscious Lovers, and others,) which are enough to set one to sleep, and where the author tries in vain to be merry and wise in the same breath; in which the utmost stretch of licentiousness goes no farther than the gallant’s being suspected of keeping a mistress, and the highest proof of courage is given in his refusing to accept a challenge. In looking into the old editions of the comedies of the last age, I find the names of the best actors of those times, of whom scarcely any record is left but in Colley Cibber’s Life, and the monument to Mrs. Oldfield, in Westminster Abbey; which Voltaire reckons among the proofs of the liberality, wisdom, and politeness of the English nation:— ‘Let no rude hand deface it, And its forlorn _hic jacet_.’ Authors after their deaths live in their works; players only in their epitaphs and the breath of common tradition. They ‘die and leave the world no copy.’ Their uncertain popularity is as short-lived as it is dazzling: and in a few years nothing is known of them but that _they were_. LECTURE V ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS ‘THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND IS MAN’