"Some of these poets, to excuse their guilt, allege for themselves, that the degeneracy of the age makes their lewd way of writing necessary. They pretend, the auditors will not be pleased, unless they are thus entertained from the stage; and to please, they say, is the chief business of the poet. But this is by no means a just apology. It is not true, as was said before, that the poet's chief business is to please: his chief business is to instruct, to make mankind wiser and better; and, in order to this, his care should be to please and entertain the audience, with all the wit and art he is master of. Aristotle and Horace, and all their critics and commentators, all men of wit and sense, agree, that this is the end of poetry. But they say, it is their profession to write for the stage; and that poets must starve, if they will not, in this way, humour the audience; the theatre will be as unfrequented as the churches, and the poet and the parson equally neglected. Let the poet, then, abandon his profession, and take up some honest, lawful, calling; where, joining industry to his great wit, he may soon get above the complaints of poverty, so common among these ingenious men, and lie under no necessity of prostituting his wit, to any such vile purposes as are here censured. This will be a course of life more profitable and honourable to himself, and more useful to others. And there are, among these writers, _some, who think they might have risen to the highest dignities, in other professions, had they employed their wit in those ways_. It is a mighty dishonour and reproach to any man that is capable of being useful to the world, in any _liberal and virtuous_ profession, _to lavish out his life and wit, in propagating vice and corruption of manners_, and in battering, from the stage, the strongest entrenchments, and best works, of religion and virtue. Whoever makes this his choice, when the other was in his power, may he go off the stage unpitied, _complaining of neglect and poverty, the just punishments of his irreligion and folly_."] [Footnote 135: This play is bad enough, yet the assertion seems a strong one. There can be little pleasure, however, in weighing filth against filth, so the point may be left undecided.] [Footnote 136: There is an account of this desperate action, in the Memoirs of Captain Carleton. The Confederate Army were upon their march when the Prince of Condé suddenly attacked their rear, which he totally routed, and then led his forces between the second line of the Confederates, and their line of baggage, to compel them to a general action. But the plunder of the baggage occasioned so much delay, that the van of the Prince of Orange's army had time to rejoin the centre; and, though the French maintained the action with great vigour, they were, in the end, compelled to leave the Confederates in possession of the field of battle. This battle was fought 11th August, 1674.] PALAMON AND ARCITE; OR, THE KNIGHT'S TALE.