In this happy performance of Mr. Gay, all the characters are just, and none of them carried beyond nature, or hardly beyond practice.  It discovers the whole system of that commonwealth, or that imperium in imperio of iniquity, established among us, by which neither our lives, nor our properties are secure, either in the highways, or in public assemblies, or even in our own houses.  It shews the miserable lives, and the constant fate of those abandoned wretches; for how little they sell their lives and souls; betrayed by their whores, their comrades, and the receivers and purchasers of these thefts and robberies.  This comedy contains likewise a satire, which, although it doth by no means affect the present age, yet might have been useful in the former, and may possibly be so in ages to come.  I mean where the author takes occasion of comparing those common robbers to robbers of the public;[11] and their several stratagems of betraying, undermining, and hanging each other,[12] to the several arts of politicians in times of corruption.

This comedy likewise exposeth with great justice, that unnatural taste for Italian music among us,[13] which is wholly unsuitable to our northern climate, and the genius of the people, whereby we are over-run with Italian effeminacy, and Italian nonsense.  An old gentleman said to me, that many years ago, when the practice of an unnatural vice grew so frequent in London, that many were prosecuted for it, he was sure it would be a forerunner[14] of Italian operas, and singers; and then we should want nothing but stabbing or poisoning, to make us perfect Italians.

Upon the whole, I deliver my judgment, that nothing but servile attachment to a party, affectation of singularity, lamentable dullness, mistaken zeal, or studied hypocrisy, can have the least reasonable objection against this excellent moral performance of the celebrated Mr. Gay.

[Footnote 1:  See title in note above, p. 313. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 2:  “He will go among the people, and will draw a crowd together.” [T.S.]]

[Footnote 3:  Gay’s “The Beggar’s Opera” was produced by Rich at the Theatre Royal in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, January 29th, 1727/8, and published in book form in 1728.  It was shortly afterwards performed in Dublin, Bath, and other places. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 4:  Writing to Pope, May 10th, 1728, Swift says:  “Mr. Gay’s Opera has been acted here twenty times, and my lord lieutenant tells me it is very well performed; he has seen it often, and approves it much....  ‘The Beggar’s Opera’ has done its task, discedat uti conviva satur” (Scott’s edition, xvii. 188-9). [T.S.]]

[Footnote 5:  In his essay “Of Poetry,” Sir William Temple, writing of dramatic poetry, says:  “Yet I am deceived, if our English has not in some kind excelled both the modern and the ancient, which has been by force of a vein natural perhaps to our country, and which with us is called humour, a word peculiar to our language too, and hard to be expressed in any other;” etc.—­“Works,” vol. i., p. 247 (1720). [T.S.]]