Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/172

 now what the same men have said to it. They tell me, I have wrote to the wrong and injury of religion, and furnished out more handles for unbelievers. “Oh! now the secret is out; and you may have your pardon, I find, upon easier terms. It is only to write no more.”—Good gentlemen! and shall I not oblige them? They would gladly obstruct my way to those things which every man, who endeavours well in his profession, must needs think he has some claim to, when he sees them given to those who never did endeavour; at the same time that they would deter me from taking those advantages which letters enable me to procure for myself. If then I am to write no more (though as much out of my profession as they may please to represent this work, I suspect their modesty would not insist on a scrutiny of our several applications of this prophane profit and their purer gains) if, I say, I am to write no more, let me at least give the publick, who have a better pretence to demand it of me, some reason for my presenting them with these amusements; which, if I am not much mistaken, may be excused by the best and fairest examples; and, what is more, may be justified on the surer reason of things.

The great saint, a name consecrated to immortality by his virtue and eloquence, is known to have been so fond of Aristophanes, as to wake with him at his studies, and to sleep with him under his pillow: and I never heard that this was objected either to his piety or his preaching, not even in those times of pure zeal and primitive religion. Yet, in respect of Shakespeare’s great sense, Aristophanes’s best wit is but buffoonery; and, in comparison of Aristophanes’s freedoms, Shakespeare writes with the purity of a vestal. But they will say, St. Chrysostom contracted a fondness for the comick poet for the sake of his Greek. To this, indeed, I have nothing to reply. Far be it from me to infinuate so unscholarlike a thing, as if we had the same use for good English, that a Greek had for his Attick elegance. Critick Kuster, in a taste and language peculiar to grammarians of a certain order, hath decreed, that the history and chronology of Greek words is the most SOLID entertainment of a man of letters.

I fly then to a higher example, much nearer home, and fill more in point, the famous university of. This illustrious body, which hath long so justly held, and with such equity dispensed, the chief honours of the learned world, thought good letters so much interested in correct