Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/223

No. 3. a thousand sermons of so stupid, so injudicious, and so prostitute a divine.

In this happy performance of Mr. Gay's all the characters are just, and none of them carried beyond nature, or hardly beyond practice. It discovers the whole system of that commonwealth, or that imperium in imperio of iniquity, established among us, by which neither our lives nor our properties are secure, either in the highways, or in publick assemblies, or even in our own houses. It shows the miserable lives, and the constant fate, of those abandoned wretches: for how little they sell their lives and souls; betrayed by their whores, their comrades, and the receivers and purchasers of those thefts and robberies. This comedy contains likewise a satire, which, without inquiring whether it affects the present age, may possibly be useful in times to come; I mean, where the author takes the occasion of comparing the commion robbers of the publick, and their several stratagems of betraying, undermining, and hanging each other, to the several arts of politicians in times of corruption.

This comedy likewise exposes, with great justice, that unnatural taste for Itallan musick among us, which is wholly unsuitable to our northern climate, and the genius of the people, whereby we are overrun with Italian effeminacy, and Italian nonsense. An old gentleman said to me, that many years ago, when the practice of an unnatural vice grew frequent in London, and many were prosecuted for it, he was sure it would be the forerunner of Italian operas and singers; and then we should want nothing but stabbing, or poisoning, to make us perfect Italians. Rh