'Tis a pleasure to me however to know that I have for many years, as
well as now, the honour of the Conversation of several eminent men of
the Church; and I dare say, upon occasion, I could easily gain their
good words to prove my good behaviour. I do declare I never abus'd the
sacred order in my life, but have always had, and still have, all the
veneration for 'em that's possible; nor have any of my printed Writings
contradicted this, unless when spoken in the person of Atheists,
Libertines, and Ignorants, where 'tis natural in Comedy; nay, in my Book
of Poems you will find a _Satyr against Atheists_, and in another Book,
call'd _Colin's walk thro' London and Westminster_, a Moral through the
whole, and design'd in the honour of the Church of _England_, to shew
the stubbornness of _Romanists_, Grumblers, and other dissenting Sects;
but this my partial Antagonist never read, nor heard of; nay, tho by his
Book we may suppose he has read a thousand, yet amongst twenty of my
Comedies Acted and Printed, he never heard of the _Royalist_, the
_Boarding School_, the _Marriage Hater Match'd_, the _Richmond Heiress_,
the _Virtuous Wife_, and others, all whose whole Plots and designs I
dare affirm, tend to that principal instance, which he proposes, and
which we allow, _viz._ the depression of Vice and encouragement of
Virtue. Not he, he has not had leisure since his last _holding forth in
the late Reign_, to do me this Justice, 'tis enough for him that he has
encounter'd _Don Quixot_. [Footnote: Collier, p.] And truly, I must own,
was a most proper Combatant for him; for if he had not been mad with the
Wind-mill that was in his pate, or had ever perus'd that _Giant_ of an
Author, upon whom I am the _Pigmy_, as he wittily observes, he would
have found the Bockheaded Chaplain had been greazing his old Gassock
there long before I new rigg'd him: But that's all one, I, poor I, must
be denounc'd as Criminal; I brought him upon the Stage, I wash'd his
Face, put on a new Crape Vest, and a clean Band, which, oh, fatal