becomes incapable of digesting any other. The want at the end of the seventeenth century produced the supply. A drama arose which was polished, dainty, finished in detail, but from the stage of which virtue was excluded like a poor relation, who, clad in fustian, and shod with hob-nail boots, is not supposed to be fit company for profligate gentlemen in gold-embroidered coats and lace ruffles.
Shakespeare was too strong food for the digestive capacities of an age whose poets preferred falsehood to truth. Pepys speaks of Henry VIII. as a simple thing made up "of a great many patches." The Tempest, he thinks, "has no great art, but yet good above ordinary plays." Othello was to him "a mean thing," compared to the last new comedy. He is good enough, however, to allow that he liked or disliked Macbeth, according to the humour of the hour, but there was a "divertissement" in it, which struck him as being a droll thing in tragedy.
The fiery energy of Pitt was needed to galvanise the paralysed enthusiasm, the fanatical earnestness of John Wesley was needed to arouse the deadened moral sense of England. Religion and patriotism come first as important factors in the education of a people, but they are closely followed by poetry and the drama. If Pitt and Wesley did much to elevate the political and religious tone, as much was done to elevate the literary and dramatic by Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, David Garrick, and Sarah Siddons.
Our readers may be inclined to think we exaggerate the importance of the stage, by thus classing poets and players together; but if we wish to appreciate the influence wielded by players a hundred years ago, we have but to examine the careers of these last two great
