intellectually, of {172} much higher value. In 1698 Jeremy Collier, a
non-juring Jacobite clergyman, published his _Short View of the
Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage_, which did much toward
reforming the practice of the dramatists. The formal characteristics,
without the immorality, of the Restoration comedy, re-appeared briefly
in Goldsmith's _She Stoops to Conquer_, 1772, and Sheridan's _Rival_,
_School for Scandal_, and _Critic_, 1775-9, our last strictly
"classical" comedies. None of this school of English comedians
approached their model, Moliere. He excelled his imitators not only in
his French urbanity--the polished wit and delicate grace of his
style--but in the dexterous unfolding of his plot, and in the wisdom
and truth of his criticism of life, and his insight into character. It
is a symptom of the false taste of the age that Shakspere's plays were
rewritten for the Restoration stage. Davenant made new versions of
_Macbeth_ and _Julius Caasar_, substituting rime for blank verse. In
conjunction with Dryden, he altered the _Tempest_, complicating the
intrigue by the introduction of a male counterpart to Miranda--a youth
who had never seen a woman. Shadwell "improved" _Timon of Athens_, and
Nahum Tate furnished a new fifth act to _King Lear_, which turned the
play into a comedy! In the prologue to his doctored version of
_Troilus and Cressida_, Dryden made the ghost of Shakspere speak of
himself as

"Untaught, unpracticed in a barbarous age."

{172} Thomas Rymer, whom Pope pronounced a good critic, was very severe
upon Shakspere in his _Remarks on the Tragedies of the Last Age_; and
in his _Short View of Tragedy_, 1693, he said, "In the neighing of a
horse or in the growling of a mastiff, there is more humanity than,
many times, in the tragical flights of Shakspere." "To Deptford by
water," writes Pepys, in his diary for August 20, 1666, "reading
Othello, Moor of Venice; which I ever heretofore esteemed a mighty good
play; but, having so lately read the _Adventures of Five Hours_, it
seems a mean thing."

In undramatic poetry the new school, both in England and in France,
took its point of departure in a reform against the extravagances of
the Marinists, or conceited poets, specially represented in England by
Donne and Cowley. The new poets, both in their theory and practice,
insisted upon correctness, clearness, polish, moderation, and good
sense. Boileau's _L' Art Poetique_,