violent clamour against the drama, which they considered as an
entertainment not lawful to Christians, an opinion held by them in
common with the Church of Rome; and Prynne published
"Histriomastix," a huge volume in which stage-plays were censured.
The outrages and crimes of the Puritans brought afterwards their
whole system of doctrine into disrepute, and from the Restoration
the poets and players were left at quiet; for to have molested them
would have had the appearance of tendency to puritanical malignity.
This danger, however, was worn away by time, and Collier, a fierce
and implacable non-juror, knew that an attack upon the theatre would
never make him suspected for a Puritan; he therefore (1698)
published "A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the
English Stage," I believe with no other motive than religious zeal
and honest indignation. He was formed for a controvertist, with
sufficient learning, with diction vehement and pointed, though often
vulgar and incorrect, with unconquerable pertinacity, with wit in
the highest degree and sarcastic, and with all those powers exalted
and invigorated by just confidence in his cause. Thus qualified and
thus incited, he walked out to battle, and assailed at once most of
the living writers, from Dryden to Durfey. His onset was violent;
those passages, which, while they stood single, had passed with
little notice, when they were accumulated and exposed together,
excited horror. The wise and the pious caught the alarm, and the
nation wondered why it had so long suffered irreligion and
licentiousness to be openly taught at the public charge.

Nothing now remained for the poets but to resist or fly. Dryden's
conscience or his prudence, angry as he was, withheld him from the
conflict. Congreve and Vanbrugh attempted answers. Congreve, a
very young man, elated with success, and impatient of censure,