You see, Sir, I have given my Thoughts freely: I wish they may receive your Approbation; because I wou'd never think but to please you. I dare not now think of excusing any thing I have writ, for I was resolv'd to tie my self to no Method, but to think as much as I cou'd for the advantage of the Stage, which I must believe very lawful, for any thing I have yet met to the contrary. Nor can I be perswaded, that our Plays have had so ill effect as some wou'd imagine. The best of our Plays have nothing in them that is so scandalous; and for the worst, I wou'd not allow them the Credit, nor the Authors the Vanity to think they could influence any one Man. The evil Conversation of some of them wou'd frighten a Man from being vicious; so that they are serviceable against their Wills, and do the World a Kindness through mistake. I dare not stay any longer with you, tho' I have a great Inclination to beg you'd excuse the roughness of my Stile: But you know I have been busie in Virgil; and that they say, at Will's, is enough to spoil it: But if I had begg'd a more important thing, and ask'd you to forgive the length of my Letter, I might assure my self you wou'd oblige,
Your Humble Servant.
F I N I S.
The Occasional Paper: Number IX.
Containing Some Considerations About the Danger of Going to Plays.
In a Letter to a Friend.
LONDON,
Printed for M. Wotton, at the Three Daggers in Fleet Street. 1698.
SIR,
Being well assured that you sincerely desire to live as becomes a Christian, though you are not in Holy Orders; and that your complying with some things in use among those with whom you converse, is rather from a care to avoid being over-nice to the prejudice of Religion, than any want of a due Concern for the Interest of it: I cannot refuse the letting you see all at once, my thoughts of that, which having been at several times discoursed on between us, was never yet brought to a perfect Conclusion.