splenetic almost to
misanthropy, and an austerity of principle urged to unsocial ferocity.
In his fury he renounced the idea of reforming the stage; he was for
abolishing it entirely. He attacked the poets with "unconquerable
pertinacity, with wit in the highest degree keen and sarcastic, and with
all those powers exalted and invigorated by just confidence in his
cause."[3] Thus arose a controversy which lasted ten years, during which
time authors found it necessary to become more discreet. "Comedy (says
Dr. Johnson) grew more modest; and Collier lived to see the reformation
of the stage." Colley Cibber, who was one of those whose plays Collier
attacked, candidly says, "It must be granted that his calling our
dramatic writers to this account had a very wholesome effect upon those
who writ after his time. Indecencies were no longer wit; and by degrees
the fair sex came again to fill the boxes on the first day of a new
comedy, without fear or censure."

[Footnote 3: Dr. Johnson.]

Such a licentious stage as is here described well deserved the severest
attacks: but what is there to justify severity now? at this day not only
the success of every new play so much depends upon its purity, but so
scrupulously correct in that particular is the public taste, and so
abstinent from every the slightest indelicacy are the authors of plays
and even farces, that not a word is uttered upon the stage from which
the most timid _real_ modesty would shrink. In conformity to this happy
state of the general taste and morals, all the old plays that retain
possession of the stage, have been cleared of their pollution, and all
the offensive passages in them have been expunged; some have been
entirely thrown out as incapable of amendment, and in truth, purity of
sentiment, and delicacy of expression, have become so prevalent, that it
is very much to be doubted whether if it were proposed to act one of
Wycherly's, Dryden's, or Otway's offensive plays in its original state,
a set of players could be found who would prostitute themselves so far
as to perform it.

From the offences of mankind arise despotic restrictions and penal laws
of every kind. From the licentiousness of the stage in England, arose
the licensing law which still continues to hold a heavy hand over all
the dramatic productions that are acted; and which has too often been
perverted to corrupt purposes.

But if the abuses of the stage in the times alluded to, serve to show
i