"The _Illusions_ of _Poetry_ are fatal to none but the _Poets_ themselves: _Sidonius_ having lately miscarried upon the Stage, gathers fresh Courage and is now big with the Hopes of a Play, writ by an ancient celebrated Author, new-vampt and furbisht up after the laudable Custom of our modern Witlings. He reckons how much he shall get by his third day, nay, by his sixth; how much by the Printing, how much by the Dedication, and by a modest Computation concludes the whole sum, will amount to two hundred Pounds, which are to be distributed among his trusty Duns. But mark the fallacy of _Vanity_ and _Self-conceit_: The Play is acted, and casts the Audience into such a Lethargy, that They are fain to damn it with _Yawning_, being in a manner deprived of the Use of their _hissing_ Faculty. Well says, _Sidonius_, (after having recover'd from a profound Consternation) _Now must the important Person stand upon his own Leggs_. Right, _Sidonius_, but when do you come on again, that _Covent-Garden_ Doctors may prescribe your Play instead of Opium? "The Town is not one jot more diverted by the Division of the Play-houses: the _Players_ perform better 'tis true? but then the _Poets_ write worse; Will the uniting of _Drury-Lane_ and _Lincoln's-Inn-Fields_ mend Matters? No,--for then What the Town should get in writing, they would lose it in Acting." * A _Dramatick Poet_ has as hard a Task on't to manage, as a _passive obedience Divine_ that preaches before the Commons on the 30th. of _January_. To please the _Pit_ and _Galleries_ he must take care to lard the Dialogue with store of luscious stuff, which the righteous call Baudy; to please the new Reformers he must have none, otherwise gruff _Jeremy_ will Lash him in a third _View_. * I very much Question, after all, whether _Collier_ would have been at the Pains to lash the immoralities of the stage, if the Dramatick Poets had not been guilty of the _abominable Sin_ of making familiar now and then with the Backslidings of the Cassock. * _The Griping Usurer_, whose daily labour and nightly Care and Study is to oppress the Poor, or over-reach his Neighbour, to betray the Trusts his Hypocrisy procured; in short to break all the Positive Laws of Morality, crys out, Oh! Diabolical, at a poor harmless _Double Entendre_ in a Play. "'Tis preposterous to pretend to reform the _Stage_ before the Nation, and particularly the Town, is _reform'd_. The Business of a Dramatick Poet is to _copy Nature_, and represent things as they are; Let our Peers give over _whoring_ and _drinking_; the Citizens, _Cheating_; the Clergy, their _Quarrels, Covetousness and Ambition_; the Lawyers, their _ambi-dextrous dealings_; and the Women _intriguing_, and the stage will reform of Course.