the 'Alchemist,' said to have been first acted in 1610 'by the king's
majesty's servants.' Look, then, at this well-known play, and take
Jonson at his word. Allow that Ananias and Tribulation Wholesome
are, as they very probably are, fair portraits of a class among the
sectaries of the day: but bear in mind, too, that if this be
allowed, the other characters shall be held as fair portraits also.
Otherwise, all must he held to be caricature; and then the onslaught
on the Puritans vanishes into nothing, or worse. Now in either case,
Ananias and Tribulation are the best men in the play. They palter
with their consciences, no doubt: but they have consciences, which
no one else in the play has, except poor Surly; and he, be it
remembered, comes to shame, is made a laughing-stock, and 'cheats
himself,' as he complains at last, 'by that same foolish vice of
honesty': while in all the rest what have we but every form of human
baseness? Lovell, the master, if he is to be considered a negative
character as doing no wrong, has, at all events, no more recorded of
him than the noble act of marrying by deceit a young widow for the
sake of her money, the philosopher's stone, by the bye, and highest
object of most of the seventeenth century dramatists. If most of the
rascals meet with due disgrace, none of them is punished; and the
greatest rascal of all, who, when escape is impossible, turns
traitor, and after deserving the cart and pillory a dozen times for
his last and most utter baseness, is rewarded by full pardon, and the
honour of addressing the audience at the play's end in the most smug
and self-satisfied tone, and of 'putting himself on you that are my
country,' not doubting, it seems, that there were among them a fair
majority who would think him a very smart fellow, worthy of all
imitation.

Now is this play a moral or an immoral one? Of its coarseness we say