hypocrisy, usury, oppression, cheating, and the other darling vices of the master reformers, who owe them a grudge, not to be appeas’d without considerable offerings; for money in these cases wipes off all defects. There are other matters of smaller importance, I shall refer to my next, as who kisses who in our dominions; that hypocrisy has infected the stage too, where whores with great bellies would thrust themselves off for virgins, and bully the audience out of their sight and understanding; where maids can talk bawdy for wit, and footmen pass on quality for gentlemen; fools sit as judges on wit, and the ignorant on men of learning; where the motto is _Vivitur Ingenio_, the dull rogues have the management and the profits; where farce is a darling, and good sense and good writing not understood: and this brings to my mind a thing I lately heard from a false smatterer in poetry behind the scenes, and which if you see _Ben. Johnson_, I desire you to communicate to him. A new author, says one, that has wrote a taking play, is writing _a treatise of Comedy, in which he mauls the learned rogues, the writers, to some purpose_; he shews what a coxcomb _Aristotle_ was, and what a company of senseless pedants the _Scaligers_, _Rapins_, _Vossi_, _&c._ are; proves that no good play can be regular, and that all rules are as ridiculous as useless. He tells us, _Aristotle_ knew nothing of poetry, (for he knew nothing of his fragments so extoll’d by _Scaliger_) and that common sense and nature was not the same in _Athens_ as in _Drury-lane_; that uniformity and coherence was _green-sleeves_ and _pudding-pies_, and that irregularity and nonsense were the chief perfections of the _drama_. That the _Silent Woman_, by consequence was before the _Trip to the Jubilee_, and the _Ambitious Step-Mother_, better than the _Orphan_; that _hiccius doctius_ was _Arabick_, and that _Bonnyclabber_ is the _black broth_ of the _Lacedæmonians_; and thus he runs on with paradoxes as new as unintelligible; but this noble treatise being yet in embryo, you may expect a farther account of it in the next, from, _Sir, Your obliged humble Servant_, WILL. PIERRE. ANTIOCHUS _to_ LEWIS XIV. _By Mr._ HENRY BAKER. _Dear Brother_, You will be surpriz’d, I know, to receive this letter from a stranger; and of all the damn’d, perhaps, I am the only man from whom you least of all expect any news; because I have always passed for so impious and cruel a prince, and my name has given people such horrid ideas of me, that they think me insensible of pity, as having never practised any in my life-time.