the next. The diction of the English version of the
Pentateuch is sometimes such as Addison would not have ventured to
imitate; and Addison, the standard of moral purity in his own age, used
many phrases which are now proscribed. Whether a thing shall be
designated by a plain noun substantive or by a circumlocution is mere
matter of fashion. Morality is not at all interested in the question.
But morality is deeply interested in this, that what is immoral shall
not be presented to the imagination of the young and susceptible in
constant connection with what is attractive. For every person who has
observed the operation of the law of association in his own mind and in
the minds of others knows that whatever is constantly presented to the
imagination in connection with what is attractive will itself become
attractive. There is undoubtedly a great deal of indelicate writing in
Fletcher and Massinger, and more than might be wished even in Ben Jonson
and Shakespeare, who are comparatively pure. But it is impossible to
trace in their plays any systematic attempt to associate vice with those
things which men value most and desire most, and virtue with everything
ridiculous and degrading. And such a systematic attempt we find in the
whole dramatic literature of the generation which followed the return of
Charles the Second. We will take as an instance of what we mean, a
single subject of the highest importance to the happiness of mankind,
conjugal fidelity. We can at present hardly call to mind a single
English play, written before the Civil War, in which the character of a
seducer of married women is represented in a favorable light. We
remember many plays in which such persons are baffled, exposed, covered
with derision, and insulted by triumphant husbands. Such is the fate of
Falstaff, with all his wit and knowledge of the world. Such is the fate
of Brisac in Fletcher's Elder Brother, and of Ricardo and Ubaldo in
Massinger's Picture. Sometimes, as in the Fatal Dowry and Love's
Cruelty, the outraged honor of families is repaired by a bloody revenge.
If now and then the lover is represented as an accomplished man, and
the husband as a person of weak or odious character, this only makes the
triumph of female virtue the more signal, as in Jonson's Celia and Mrs.
Fitzdottrel, and in Fletcher's Maria. In general we will venture to say
that the dramatists of the age of Elizabeth and James the First either
treat the breach of the marri