following letter, it seems, has been of the audience at one of these entertainments, and has accordingly complained to me upon it; but I think he has been to the utmost degree severe against what is exceptionable in the play he mentions, without dwelling so much as he might have done on the author's most excellent talent of humour. The pleasant pictures he has drawn of life, should have been more kindly mentioned, at the same time that he banishes his witches, who are too dull devils to be attacked with so much warmth. MR. SPECTATOR, • UPON a report that Moll White had followed you to town, and was to act a part in the Lancashire Witches, I went last week to see that play. It was my fortune to sit next to a country justice of the peace, a neighbour (as he said) of Sir Roger's, who pretended to shew her to us in one of the dances. There was witchcraft enough in the entertainment almost to incline me to believe him; Ben Jonson 2 was almost lamed; young Bullock narrowly saved his neck; the audience was astonished, and an old acquaintance of mine, a person of worth, whom I would have bowed to in the pit, at two yards distance did not know me. 2 If you were what the country people reported you, a white witch, I could have wished you had been there to have exorcised that rabble of broomsticks, with which we were haunted for above three hours. I could have allowed them to set Clod in the tree, to have scared the Sportsmen, plagued the Justice, and employed honest Teague with his holy wa 2 Two comic actors of that time. ter3. This was the proper use of them in comedy, if the author had stopped here; but I cannot conceive what relation the sacrifice of the black lamb, and the ceremonies of their worship to the devil3, have to the business of mirth and humour. The gentleman who writ this play, and has drawn some characters in it very justly, appears to have been misled in his witchcraft by an unwary following the inimitable Shakspeare. The incantations in Macbeth have a solemnity admirably adapted to the occasion of that tragedy, and fill the mind with a suitable horror; besides, that the witches are a part of the story itself, as we find it very particularly related in Hector Boetius, from whom he seems to have taken it. This therefore is a proper machine where the business is dark, horrid, and bloody; but is extremely foreign from the affair of comedy. Subjects of this kind, which are in themselves disagreeable, can at no time become entertaining, but by passing through an imagination like Shakspeare's to form them; for which reason Mr. Dryden would not allow even Beaumont and Fletcher capable of imitating him. But Shakspeare's magic cou'd not copied be: I should not, however, have troubled you with these remarks, if there were not something else in this comedy, which wants to be exorcised more than the witches: I mean the freedom of some passages, which I should have overlooked, if I had not observed that those jests can raise the loudest mirth, 3 Incidents in the aforesaid play. though they are painful to right sense, and an outrage upon modesty. We must attribute such liberties to the taste of that age: but indeed by such representations a poet sacrifices the best part of his audience to the worst; and, as one would think, neglects the boxes, to write to the orange-wenches. I must not conclude till I have taken notice of the moral with which this comedy ends. The two young ladies having given a notable example of outwitting those who had a right in the disposal of them, and marrying without consent of parents, one of the injured parties, who is easily reconciled, winds up all with this remark, -Design whate'er we will, There is a fate which over-rules us still.' 'We are to suppose that the gallants are men of merit, but if they had been rakes the excuse might have served as well. Hans Carvel's wife was of the same principle, but has expressed it with a delicacy which shews she is not serious in her excuse, but in a sort of humorous philosophy turns off the thought of her guilt, and says, • That if weak women go astray, Their stars are more in fault than they.' 'This, no doubt, is a full reparation, and dismisses the audience with very edifying impressions. These things fall under a province you have partly pursued already, and therefore demands your animadversion, for the regulating so noble an enter 4 Prior's Poem. tainment as that of the stage. It were to be wished, that all who write for it hereafter would raise their genius, by the ambition of pleasing people of the best understanding; and leave others who shew nothing of the human species but risibility, to seek their diversion at the bear-garden, or some other privileged place, where reason and good-manners have no right to disturb them. August 8, 1711. STEELE. 'I am, &c.' -But this letter by HUGHES, T. N° 142. MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 1711. Irrupta tenet copula HOR. Od. xiii. 1. 1. v. 18. -They equal move In an unbroken yoke of faithful love. GLANVIL. THE following letters being genuine, and the images of a worthy passion, I am willing to give the old lady's admonition to myself, and the representation of her own happiness, a place in my writings. · MR. SPECTATOR, August 9, 1711. I AM now in the sixty-seventh year of my age, and read you with approbation; but methinks you do not strike at the root of the greatest evil in life, which is the false notion of gallantry in love. It is, and has long been, upon a very ill foot; but I who have been a wife forty years, and was bred in a way that has made me ever since very happy, see through the folly of it. In a word, Sir, when I was a young woman, all who avoided the vices of the age were very carefully educated, and all fantastical objects were turned out of our sight. The tapestry-hangings, with the great and venerable simplicity of the scripture stories, had better effects than now the loves of Venus and Adonis, or Bacchus and Ariadne, in your fine present prints. The gentleman I am married to, made love to me in rapture, but it was the rapture of a christian and a man of honour, not a romantic hero or a whining coxcomb. This put our life upon a right basis. To give you an idea of our regard one to another, I enclose to you several of his letters, writ forty years ago, when my lover; and one writ the other day, after so many years cohabitation. "MADAM, August 7, 1671. "IF my vigilance, and ten thousand wishes for your welfare and repose, could have any force, you last night slept in security, and had every good angel in your attendance. To have my thoughts ever fixed on you, to live in constant fear of every accident to which human life is liable, and to send up my hourly prayers to avert them from you; I say, madam, thus to think, and thus to suffer, is what I do for Her who is in pain at my approach, and calls all my tender sorrow impertinence. You are now before my eyes, my eyes that are ready to flow with tender. ness, but cannot give relief to my gushing heart, that dictates what I am now saying, and yearns to tell you all its achings. How art thou, oh my soul, stolen from thyself! how is all thy attention broken! my books are blank paper, and my friends intruders. |