ture. Every one
should on these occasions show his attention, understanding and virtue.
I would undertake to find out all the persons of sense and breeding by
the effect of a single sentence, and to distinguish a gentleman as much
by his laugh, as his bow. When we see the footman and his lord diverted
by the same jest, it very much turns to the diminution of the one, or
the honour of the other. But though a man's quality may appear in his
understanding and taste, the regard to virtue ought to be the same in
all ranks and conditions of men, however they make a profession of it
under the name of honour, religion, or morality. When therefore we see
anything divert an audience, either in tragedy or comedy, that strikes
at the duties of civil life, or exposes what the best men in all ages
have looked upon as sacred and inviolable, it is the certain sign of a
profligate race of men, who are fallen from the virtue of their
forefathers, and will be contemptible in the eyes of their posterity.
For this reason I took great delight in seeing the generous and
disinterested passion of the lovers in this comedy (which stood so many
trials, and was proved by such a variety of diverting incidents)
received with an universal approbation. This brings to my mind a passage
in Cicero,[31] which I could never read without being in love with the
virtue of a Roman audience. He there describes the shouts and applause
which the people gave to the persons who acted the parts of Pylades and
Orestes, in the noblest occasion that a poet could invent to show
friendship in perfection. One of them had forfeited his life by an
action which he had committed; and as they stood in judgment before the
tyrant, each of them strove who should be the criminal, that he might
save the life of his friend. Amidst the vehemence of each asserting
himself to be the offender, the Roman audience gave a thunder of
applause, and by that means, as the author hints, approved in others
what they would have done themselves on the like occasion. Methinks, a
people of so much virtue were deservedly placed at the head of mankind:
But alas! pleasures of this nature are not frequently to be met with on
the English stage.

The Athenians, at a time when they were the most polite, as well as the
most powerful, government in the world, made the care of the stage one
of the chief parts of the administration: and I must confess, I am
astonished at the spirit of virtue which appeared in