Upon the whole the dramatic taste during the greater part of Charles's reign was false and artificial, particularly in tragedy. Etherege produced one good comedy, the precursor of Wycherly and Congreve; but Dryden, the reigning favourite, was not as great in dramatic as he was in other writing; his heroic plays, and Lee's "Alexander," were admired, not so much for the beauties mixed with their absurdity, as for the improbable air they gave to a serious passion; and the favourite plays of deceased authors were those of the most equivocal writers of the time of James, not the pure and profound nature of Shakspeare and his fellows. Otway flourished, but was not thought so great as he is now; and even in Otway there is a hot bullying smack of the tavern, very different from the voluptuousness in Shakspeare. Towards the close of this reign comedy came to its height with Wycherly, who, almost as profligate in point of dialogue as any of his contemporaries, nevertheless hit the right vein of satire. Wycherly lived at the other end of Russell Street, in Bow Street, where we shall see him shortly. We are now come to the time of Congreve, Mrs. Bracegirdle, and others; Betterton remaining. Of these individually we have spoken before; and therefore shall only observe that by the more serious examples of James II. and King William, the manners of the day were reforming, and those of the stage with them. We now find ourselves among audiences more composed, and witness plays less coarse, though with an abundance of double meaning and exuberantly witty. Coquetry and fashion are now the reigning stage goddesses, as mere wantonness was that of the age preceding. Farquhar and Vanbrugh succeeded, together with Cibber, Wilkes, Booth, and latterly Steele and Mrs. Oldfield. Vanbrugh does not belong to Drury Lane, but Farquhar does, with the rest; and a lively place he made of it. He is _Captain_ Farquhar, has a plume in his hat, and prodigious animal spirits, with invention at will, and great good nature. Captains abounded among the wits and adventurers of those days down to Captains Macheath and Gibbet. Vanbrugh was a captain; Steele at one time was Captain Steele; and Mrs. Oldfield's father, though the son of a vinter, became Captain Oldfield, and genteelly ran out an estate. This is still the age of genuine comedy, and the stage is worthy of it. The tragedy was proportionably bad. Booth, indeed, was a good tragic actor, but he suited the age in being declamatory. He was the hero of Addison's Cato, once the favourite tragedy of the critics, now of nobody. Rowe was another artificial writer of tragedy, but not without a vein of feeling. It seems to have been thought in those times, as we may see by these authors, and by the tragedies of Banks and Lillo, that to be natural, an author was to be prosaical; while, if he had any pretensions to be poetical, it was his business to-- "---- wake the soul by tender strokes of _art_."