With all that's base and impious can dispense."

Honour to those who aim high and execute boldly!

"If Shakespeare's spirit, with transporting fire,
The animated scene throughout inspire;
If in the piercing wit of Vanbrugh drest,
Each sees his darling folly made a jest;
If Garth's and Dryden's genius, through each line,
In artful praise and well-turn'd satire shine,--
To us ascribe the immortal sacred flame."

In this dead period of the stage Catharine Trotter found a warm friend
and doubtless an efficient patron in a Lady Piers, of whom we should be
glad to know more. Sir George Piers, the husband of this lady, was an
officer of rank under the Duke of Marlborough, later to become useful to
Catharine Trotter. Meanwhile the latter returned to the Theatre Royal in
Drury Lane, where, in 1701, under the patronage of Lord Halifax--Pope's
"Bufo"--she produced her third tragedy, _The Unhappy Penitent_. The
dedication of this play to Halifax is a long and interesting essay on
the poetry of the age. The author passes Dryden, Otway, Congreve, and
Lee under examination, and finds technical blemishes in them all:--

"The inimitable Shakespeare seems alone secure on every side from
an attack. I speak not here of faults against the rules of poetry,
but against the natural Genius. He had all the images of nature
present to him, studied her thoroughly, and boldly copied all her
various features, for though he has chiefly exerted himself on the
more masculine passions, 'tis as the choice of his judgment, not
the restraint of his genius, and he has given us as a proof he