And to your genius must conform his line;
Not lewd by choice, but merely to submit:
Would you encourage sense, sense would be writ.
There is, in every case of this kind, much partial accusation. The court, stage, and public at large, have a mutual action and re-action on the manners of each other. If the habits of a court be licentious, the poet will hardly venture to paint them noble and innocent; but it will depend upon the extent which that licence has attained amongst his audience at large, whether he represents the courtly vices in gay, or in disgusting and odious colours. In any case, the dramatist, who degrades himself by indecency, has little personal apology; for, if he has condescended to blot his pages with filth, it avails but little where he has gathered it.
Collier's attack on the stage was attended with good consequences, which that active disputant lived to witness: indecencies were no longer either fashionable or tolerated; and, by degrees, the ladies began to fill the boxes at a new play, without either the necessity of wearing masks, or the risk of incurring censure. Later times have carried this laudable restraint still farther; till, at last, if we have lost almost all the wit of our predecessors, we at least have retained none of their licentiousness.
The following verses appear upon Dryden's death, in the "State Poems," vol. iii. founded upon his controversy with Sir Richard Blackmore and Collier, which so immediately preceded that event:
John Dryden enemies had three,
Sir Dick, old Nick, and Jeremy:
The doughty knight was forced to yield,
The other two have kept the field;