"our Dibdins, O'Keefes, &c. are permitted to affright Common Sense from her propriety."[1] He despondently inquires:
Tho' Comedy's sinking, like stars from their spheres,
Can we see her declension and govern our tears?[2]
And he proceeds to do his bit toward correcting popular taste by pointing out the defects of successful dramatists. Passages from his criticisms of two, a man and a woman, illustrate his abusive mode of attack. The first is an estimate of the worth of O'Keefe:
Like the Anthropophagi, in each varied season,
He fattens, he feeds, on the bowels of Reason;
In terrible ruin she bleeds 'neath his knife,
A prey to his works, and abridg'd of her life;
By effect, as they call it, by whim, and by pun,
Are our senses debauch'd, and, the drama undone;
Like the wondrous asbestos his toils we admire,
Whose labours surmount e'en the critical fire:
As the furnace the fossil-fraught drapery whitens,
So public contempt his capacity brightens:
But Harris' pence keep his follies in tune,
And Colman protects the unletter'd buffoon.[3]
And here are parts, not the worst lines, from his sketch of the author of the Simple Story:
To mangle poor Decency's breathless remains;
To rob gentle Reason of all her domains;
To give the last blow to expiring Propriety;
To feed a base town with still baser variety—
See delicate Inchbald assume the foul quill;
And satirize Wisdom, by pleasing her will!
Tho' unskill'd in the true fabrication of tenses,
She tickles our weakness, and talks to the senses;
For Venus is tittering, and Priapus smiles,
As the Queen of Voluptuousness Nature beguiles . . .
Contemptuously treating the feminine duties,
Her breast lacks the cambric to cover its beauties . . .
With the pages of Sappho her cranium she dresses,
