to this, that if any person of quality, or other, shall turn away his wife, his young, affectionate, virtuous, charming wife (for all these Octavia was), to take to his bed a loose, abandoned prostitute; and shall in her arms exhaust his patrimony, destroy his health, emasculate his mind, and lose his reputation and all his friends; why all this is well and greatly done, his ruin is his commendation. And if afterwards, in despair, he either hangs or drowns himself, or goes out of the world like a rat, with a dose of arsenick or sublimate, why it is a great and envied fate, he dies nobly and heroically.

It is, Sir, with extreme reluctance that I have said all this; for I would not be thought to affront the memory of Mr. Dryden, for whose extraordinary qualities no man has a greater veneration than my self. But that all considerations ought to give place to the public good, is a truth of which you and all men, I am sure, can never doubt.

And can you believe then, after having recommended virtue and public spirit for so many years to the world, that you can give your subalterns authority to preach up adultery to a town, which stands so little in need of their doctrine? Is not the chastity of the marriage-bed one of the chief incendiaries of public spirit, and the frequency of adulteries one of the chief extinguishers of it? according to that of Horace *:

Foecunda culpae secula, nuptias

Primum inquinavere, & genus, & domos.

3 Od. vi. 17.

Hoc

Hoc fonte derivata clades

In patriam populumque fluxit *.

For when adultery is become so frequent, especially among persons of condition, upon whose sentiments all public spirit chiefly depends, that a great many husbands begin to believe, or perhaps but to suspect, that they who are called their children are not their own; I appeal to you, Sir, if that belief, or that suspicion, must not exceedingly cool their zeal for the welfare of those children, and consequently for the welfare of posterity.

As I had infinitely the advantage of "All for Love" in the moral of "Coriolanus," I had it by consequence in the whole Tragedy; for the "Coriolanus," as I have altered it, having a just moral, and by consequence at the bottom a general and allegorical action, and universal and allegorical characters, and for that very reason a Fable, is therefore a true Tragedy, if it be not a just and a regular one; but it is as just and as regular as I could make it, upon so irregular a plan as Shakspeare's; whereas "All for Love" having no moral, and consequently no general and allegorical action, nor general and allegorical characters, can for that reason have no fable, and therefore can be no Tragedy. It is indeed only a particular account of what happened formerly to Anthony and Cleopatra, and a most pernicious amusement.

* "Fruitful of crimes, this age first stain'd

Their hapless offspring, and profan'd
The nuptial bed, from whence the woes,
That various and unnumber'd rose

From this polluted fountain-head,

O'er Rome, and o'er the nations spread."

FRANCIS.

002

And

And as I had the advantage in the merit of" Coriolanus," I had it likewise in the world's opinion of - the merit and reputation of Shakspeare in Tragedy above that of Mr. Dryden. For let Mr. Dryden's genius for Tragedy be what it will, he has more than once publicly owned, that it was much inferior to Shakspeare's, and particularly in those two remarkable lines in his Prologue to "Aurenge-Zebe:"

"And when he hears his godlike Romans rage, He in a just despair would quit the Stage;" And in the verses to Sir Godfrey Kneller, "Shakspeare, thy gift, I place before my sight: With awe, I ask his blessing ere I write ;

With reverence look on his majestic face,

Proud to be less, but of his godlike race."

(

And the same Mr. Dryden has more than once declared to me, that there was something in this very Tragedy of " Coriolanus," as it was written by Shakspeare, that is truly great and truly Roman; and I more than once answered him, that it had always been my own opinion. Now I appeal to You and your Managers, if it has lost any thing under my hands.

But what is more considerable than all this, your Deputy Lieutenants for the Stage have ten times the opinion of the advantage which Shakspeare has over Mr. Dryden in Tragedy than either I or the rest of the world have. Ever since I was capable of reading Shakspeare, I have always had, and have always expressed that veneration for him which is justly his due; of which I believe no one can doubt

who

who has read the Essay which I published some years ago upon his Genius and Writings. But what they express upon all occasions is not esteem, is not admiration, but flat idolatry.

And, lastly, I had the advantage of the very opinion which those people had of their own interest in the case. They knew very well that it was but twelve years since "All for Love" had been acted. And they were likewise satisfied, that from its first run, as they call it, to the beginning of this last winter, it had never brought four audiences to-gether. At the same time there was no occasion to tell them, that the "Coriolanus" of Shakspeare had not been acted in twenty years; and that, when it was brought upon the Stage twenty years ago, it -was acted twenty nights together.

And now, Sir, I shall be obliged to you if you will acquaint me for what mighty and unknown reason the "Coriolanus," notwithstanding your words solemnly given to act it as soon as it could conveniently be brought upon the Stage this winter, notwithstanding the merit of the Play itself, I speak of Shakspeare's part of it, notwithstanding the world's and their own opinion of the superior merit of Shakspeare to Mr. Dryden in Tragedy, and their very opinion of their own interest in the case; nay, notwithstanding the exact seasonableness of the moral for the service of King George and of Great-Britain, which above all things ought to have been considered by those who call themselves the King's servants, and who act under his authority: I say, Sir, I should be extremely obliged to you if you would tell me what powerful reason could so far prevail

over

over all those I have mentioned, as to engage them to postpone the "Coriolanus," not only for "All for Love," but likewise for that lamentable tragic Farce Cæsar Borgia *," from which nobody expected any thing but themselves and a Comedy after it called "The Masquerade," from which they themselves declared they expected nothing. I am, &c. JOHN DENNIS."

438. FROM A LADY

MARCH 1, 1720.

appear,

IF I, O STEELE, presumptuous shall
And these unskilful notes offend thy ear,
Forbear to censure what I've artless writ,
No well-bred man e'er damn'd a woman's wit.
But sure there's none of all th' inspired train
Who do not of thy indolence complain.
Ingrate, or indolent; or why thus long
Should Addison require his Funeral Song?
When a lov'd Monarch quits his cares below,
The meanest subjects join the common woe :
But from the favourite who his worth best knew
A tribute of superior grief is due.

*A Tragedy, by Nat. Lee.

† A Farce, by Benjamin Griffin, performed in 1717, at Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, with some success.

On the death of Mr Addison; June 17, 1719.

BIOG. DRAM.

Shall