Mr.
_Dryden_ has, up and down in his Prefatory Discourses and Dedications,
freely aeknowledg'd the Looseness of our Dramatick Entertainments,
which sometimes he charges upon the Countenance given to it by the
dissolute Court of King _Charles_ the Second, and sometimes upon the
vitiated Taste of the People. In his Dedication of _Juvenal_, made
_English_, to the late famous Earl of _Dorset_, he thus bespeaks him;
"As a Counsellor bred up in the Knowledge of the Municipal and
Statute Laws may honestly inform a just Prince how far his Prerogative
extends, so I may be allow'd to tell your Lordship, who by an
indisputed Title are the King of Poets, what an Extent of Power you
have, and how lawfully you may exercise it over the petulant Scriblers
of the Age. As Lord Chamberlain, you are absolute by your Office, in
all that belongs to the Decency and good Manners of the Stage; You can
banish thence Scurrility and Profaneness, and restrain the licentious
Insolence of the Poets and their Actors, in all things that shock the
publick Quiet or the Reputation of private Persons, under the Notion
of _Humour_." Hence it evidently appears, that Mr _Dryden_ look'd on
the Decency of the Stage to be violated in his Time, by licentious and
insolent Poets; and I wish I could say, that there is less Reason
of Complaint in ours; In a Copy of Verses, publish'd in one of the
Volumes of the Miscellany Poems, the same celebrated Author inveighs
against the Lewdness and Pollutions of the Stage in the strongest
Expressions that can be conceiv'd; and in his latter days, when
his Judgment was more Mature, he condemns all his loose and profane
Writings to the Flames, which, he says, they justly deserve: Which
is not only a free and ingenious Confession of his Fault, but a
considerable Mark of Repentance, and worthy to be imitated by his
Successors, who have broken in upon the Rules of Vertue and Modesty in
the like manner.
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