578 Echard’s Contempt of Clergy. [ Dec. 
learning was the fashion among the sworn enemies of king and bishop. 
The return of Charles II. altered the mode. The imitation of the 
“ Prick-Eared Roundheads” was out of the question: on the contrary, 
it was a sufficient condemnation to any thing that it had been used by 
them. The residence of the mimic court so long on the Continent had 
made French fashionable ; and, unquestionably, the reign of Louis XIV. 
afforded admirable models of every kind of writing, except the epic and 
the highest tragic. But, unfortunately, all imitators are a servum 
pecus ; and our writers did not improve by the adoption of the French 
style. From their plays they borrowed only the rhyme and rhodomon- 
tade, for which they did not seruple to sacrifice Shakspeare. The comedies 
of Moliére, in the hands of his English imitators or translators, lost all 
their wit ; and if they retained their humour, they retained it in company 
with buffoonery exaggerated, and obscenity added. In this latter par- 
ticular, our English wits are particularly blameable. They had no model 
for their grossness in France, where, though society was corrupt and 
depraved, it assumed the mantle of decency. But, in England, a desire 
to shew as much detestation of the sanctimoniousness of the Praise-God- 
Barebones people as possible, led at once to the open expression of the 
utmost indecencies ; and Charles had neither the taste or the decorum to 
repress it. On the contrary, indeed, we may see, by Grammont and 
other reverend authorities, that he turned his court into grossness. It 
would be impossible, we think, to equal, even in the most licentious 
writers of antiquity, the mass of abomination which Jeremy Collier raked 
together, when he turned his vigorous and unsparing hand against the 
writers for the stage. 
But as we are not now considering the morality, but the style of the 
' writers of the reigns of Charles II. and James II.—a style which lingered 
even into the reign of George II.—we may pass this part of the subject. 
A general contempt for the elder writers seized upon all the persons of 
quality in those days; and even Dryden himself was so far infected 
with the spirit of the times, that he deemed it necessary to apologize for 
Shakspeare’s Tempest, which he assured his readers contained much fine 
poetry, though not quite polished enough, until he had taken it in hand, 
for the age. “ As if,” says Schlegel, indignantly—< as if the age of 
Charles II. was superior to that of Elizabeth!” ‘Their immediate pre- 
decessors they treated as dull fops (a favourite phrase of theirs), and 
determined that their own writings should be distinguished by a free, 
airy, and jaunty manner. This was their peculiar boast—that they wrote 
with ease ; and it was not immediately found out that easy writing was 
hard reading. The French, they saw, wrote as they spoke—the admira- 
ble fitness of their language for conversation putting no great difference 
between their written and their colloquial manner ; and, accordingly, in 
England, their followers determined on doing the same. Our language 
was never, at any period, suited for this—but least of all at the very 
time when the attempt was made. The conversation of the very highest 
circles of the court itself was of the lowest description—slang, cant, sell- 
ing bargains, double entendre, smut—every vice of vulgarity, in short, 
infected it. He who excelled most in these accomplishments was the 
wittiest fellow, the most sparkish man about town. Tom D’Urfey’s 
songs were the fashion ; and Tom dedicates his “ Pills to purge Melan- 
choly”—a collection which contains (among much curious and humorous. 
matter, we admit) songs of the most gross indecency, and the most dis- 
