false wit, false honour, and false modesty, with a strange heap of improbable, unnatural incidents, mixed up with true history, and fastened upon some of the great names of antiquity."[3] Yet upon the model of such works were framed the court manners of the reign of Louis, and, in imitation of them, the French tragedy, in which every king was by prescriptive right a hero, every female a goddess, every tyrant a fire-breathing chimera, and every soldier an irresistible Amadis; in which, when perfected, we find lofty sentiments, splendid imagery, eloquent expression, sound morality, everything but the language of human passion and human character.  In the hands of Corneille, and still more in those of Racine, much of the absurdity of the original model was cleared away, and much that was valuable substituted in its stead; but the plan being fundamentally wrong, the high talents of these authors unfortunately only tended to reconcile their countrymen to a style of writing which must otherwise have fallen into contempt.  Such as it was, it rose into high favour at the court of Louis XIV., and was by Charles introduced upon the English stage.  “The favour which heroic plays have lately found upon our theatres,” says our author himself, “have been wholly derived to them from the countenance and approbation they have received at court."[4]

The French comedy, although Moliere was in the zenith of his reputation, appears not to have possessed equal charms for the English monarch.  The same restraint of decorum, which prevented the expression of natural passion in tragedy, prohibited all indelicate licence in comedy.  Charles, probably, was secretly pleased with a system, which cramped the effusions of the tragic muse, and forbade, as indecorous, those bursts of rapturous enthusiasm, which might sometimes contain matter unpleasing to a royal ear.[5] But the merry monarch saw no good reason why the muse of comedy should be compelled to “dwell in decencies for ever,” and did not feel at all degraded when enjoying a gross pleasantry, or profane witticism, in company with the mixed mass of a popular audience.  The stage, therefore, resumed more than its original licence under his auspices.  Most of our early plays, being written in a coarse age, and designed for the amusement of a promiscuous and vulgar audience, were dishonoured by scenes of coarse and naked indelicacy.  The positive enactments of James, and the grave manners of his son, in some degree repressed this disgraceful scurrility; and, in the common course of events, the English stage would have been gradually delivered from this reproach by the increasing influence of decency and taste.[6] But Charles II., during his exile, had lived upon a footing of equality with his banished nobles, and partaken freely and promiscuously in the pleasure and frolics by which they had endeavoured to sweeten adversity.  To such a court the amusements of the drama would have appeared insipid, unless seasoned