can do even on the stage, is trifling compared with that stile of writing which began in the pest-house of French literature, and has of late been imported by the Littles of the age, which consists in a perpetual tampering with the morals without offending the decencies. And yet the admirers of these publications, nay, the authors themselves, have the assurance to complain of Shakespear, (for I will not refer to one yet far deeper blasphemy)—Shakespear, whose most objectionable passages are but grossnesses against lust, and these written in a gross age; while three fourths of their whole works are delicacies for its support and sustenance. Lastly, that I may leave the reader in better humour with the name at the head of this article, I shall quote one scene from Etherege's Love in a Tub, which for exquisite, genuine, original humour, is worth all the rest of his plays, though two or three of his witty contemporaries were thrown in among
