_Poets_ write worse; Will the uniting of _Drury-Lane_ and
_Lincoln's-Inn-Fields_ mend Matters? No,--for then What the Town should
get in writing, they would lose it in Acting."

* A _Dramatick Poet_ has as hard a Task on't to manage, as a _passive
obedience Divine_ that preaches before the Commons on the 30th. of
_January_.

To please the _Pit_ and _Galleries_ he must take care to lard the
Dialogue with store of luscious stuff, which the righteous call Baudy;
to please the new Reformers he must have none, otherwise gruff _Jeremy_
will Lash him in a third _View_.

* I very much Question, after all, whether _Collier_ would have been at
the Pains to lash the immoralities of the stage, if the Dramatick Poets
had not been guilty of the _abominable Sin_ of making familiar now and
then with the Backslidings of the Cassock.

* _The Griping Usurer_, whose daily labour and nightly Care and Study
is to oppress the Poor, or over-reach his Neighbour, to betray the
Trusts his Hypocrisy procured; in short to break all the Positive Laws
of Morality, crys out, Oh! Diabolical, at a poor harmless _Double
Entendre_ in a Play.

"'Tis preposterous to pretend to reform the _Stage_ before the Nation,
and particularly the Town, is _reform'd_. The Business of a Dramatick
Poet is to _copy Nature_, and represent things as they are; Let our
Peers give over _whoring_ and _drinking_; the Citizens, _Cheating_; the
Clergy, their _Quarrels, Covetousness and Ambition_; the Lawyers, their
_ambi-dextrous dealings_; and the Women _intriguing_, and the stage will