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.

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 Water.  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 Devil, 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 Shakespear.  The Incantations in Mackbeth 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 it self, 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 Shakespear’s to form them; for which Reason Mr. Dryden would not allow even Beaumont and Fletcher capable of imitating him.

    But Shakespear’s Magick cou’d not copy’d be,
    Within that Circle none durst walk but He. [3]

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 overlook’d, if I had not observed that those Jests can raise the loudest Mirth, 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 injur’d 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.