ly. The new spirit might seem to be
passing on with more literary vitality into the old forms. And yet the
consequence, or certainly the sequel to Collier's attack, was the decay
of the stage in every sense, from which there was no recovery till the
time of Goldsmith and Sheridan.

This is the phenomenon which we have to consider;--let us listen for a
moment to the 'distinguished critics' who have denounced or defended the
comedy of the time. Macaulay gives as a test of the morality of the
Restoration stage that on it, for the first time, marriage becomes the
topic of ridicule. We are supposed to sympathise with the adulterer, not
with the deceived husband--a fault, he says, which stains no play
written before the Civil War. Addison had already suggested this test in
the _Spectator_, and proceeds to lament that 'the multitudes are shut
out from this noble "diversion" by the immorality of the lessons
inculcated.' Lamb, indulging in ingenious paradox, admires Congreve for
'excluding from his scenes (with one exception) any pretensions to
goodness or good feeling whatever.' Congreve, he says, spreads a
'privation of moral light' over his characters, and therefore we can
admire them without compunction. We are in an artificial world where we
can drop our moral prejudices for the time being. Hazlitt more daringly
takes a different position and asserts that one of Wycherly's coarsest
plays is 'worth ten sermons'--which perhaps does not imply with him any
high estimate of moral efficacy. There is, however, this much of truth,
I take it, in Hazlitt's contention. Lamb's theory of the non-morality of
the dramatic world will not stand examination. The comedy was in one
sense thoroughly 'realistic'; and I am inclined to say, that in that lay
its chief merit. There is some value in any truthful representation,
even of vice and brutality. There would certainly be no difficulty in
finding flesh and blood originals for the rakes and the fine ladies in
the memoirs of Grammont or the diaries of Pepys. The moral atmosphere is
precisely that of the dissolute court of Charles II., and the 'privation
of moral light' required is a delicate way of expressing its
characteristic feeling. In the worst performances we have not got to any
unreal region, but are breathing for the time the atmosphere of the
lowest resorts, where reference to pure or generous sentiment would
undoubtedly have been received with a guffaw, and coarse cynicism be
regarded