stage itself survived him but a short time. The nation was convulsed
to its centre by contending factions, and a set of austere and gloomy
fanatics, enemies to every elegant amusement and every social
relaxation, rose upon the ruins of the State. Exasperated by the
ridicule with which they had long been covered by the stage, they
persecuted the actors with unrelenting severity, and consigned them,
together with the writers, to hopeless obscurity and wretchedness.
Taylor died in the extreme of poverty, Shirley opened a little school
at Brentford, and Downe, the boast of the stage, kept an ale-house at
Brentford. Others, and those the far greater number, joined the
royal standard, and exerted themselves with more gallantry than good
fortune in the service of their old and indulgent master.'

'We have not yet, perhaps, fully estimated, and certainly not yet
fully recovered, what was lost in that unfortunate struggle. The
arts were rapidly advancing to perfection under the fostering wing of
a monarch who united in himself taste to feel, spirit to undertake,
and munificence to reward. Architecture, painting, and poetry were
by turns the objects of his paternal care. Shakspeare was his
"closet companion," Jonson his poet, and in conjunction with Inigo
Jones, his favoured architect, produced those magnificent
entertainments,' etc.

* * *

He then goes on to account for the supposed sudden fall of dramatic
art at the Restoration, by the somewhat far-fetched theory that -


'Such was the horror created in the general mind by the perverse and