associating images of unlawful pleasure
with all that is endearing and ennobling. None of them was aware that a
certain decorum is essential even to voluptuousness, that drapery may
be more alluring than exposure, and that the imagination may be far more
powerfully moved by delicate hints which impel it to exert itself, than
by gross descriptions which it takes in passively.

The spirit of the Antipuritan reaction pervades almost the whole polite
literature of the reign of Charles the Second. But the very quintessence
of that spirit will be found in the comic drama. The playhouses, shut
by the meddling fanatic in the day of his power, were again crowded. To
their old attractions new and more powerful attractions had been added.
Scenery, dresses, and decorations, such as would now be thought mean or
absurd, but such as would have been esteemed incredibly magnificent by
those who, early in the seventeenth century, sate on the filthy benches
of the Hope, or under the thatched roof of the Rose, dazzled the eyes
of the multitude. The fascination of sex was called in to aid the
fascination of art: and the young spectator saw, with emotions unknown
to the contemporaries of Shakspeare and Johnson, tender and sprightly
heroines personated by lovely women. From the day on which the theatres
were reopened they became seminaries of vice; and the evil propagated
itself. The profligacy of the representations soon drove away sober
people. The frivolous and dissolute who remained required every year
stronger and stronger stimulants. Thus the artists corrupted the
spectators, and the spectators the artists, till the turpitude of the
drama became such as must astonish all who are not aware that extreme
relaxation is the natural effect of extreme restraint, and that an age
of hypocrisy is, in the regular course of things, followed by all age of
impudence.

Nothing is more characteristic of the times than the care with which
the poets contrived to put all their loosest verses into the mouths of
women. The compositions in which the greatest license was taken were the
epilogues. They were almost always recited by favourite actresses; and
nothing charmed the depraved audience so much as to hear lines grossly
indecent repeated by a beautiful girl, who was supposed to have not yet
lost her innocence [174].

Our theatre was indebted in that age for many plots and characters
to Spain, to France, and to the old English masters: but whatever our