Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/264

254 The dean then tells us, that our author in this piece has, by a turn of humour entirely new, placed vices of all kinds in the ſtrongeſt, and moſt odious light, and thereby done eminent ſervice both to religion and morality. ‘This appears from the unparalleled ſucceſs he has met with; all ranks, parties, and denominations of men, either crowding to ſee his Opera, or reading it with delight in their cloſets; even miniſters of ſtate, whom he is thought moſt to have offended, appearing frequently at the Theatre, from a conſciouſneſs of their own innocence, and to convince the world how unjuſt a parallel, malice, envy and diſaffection to the government have made.In this happy performance of Mr. Gay, 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 highways, or in public aſſemblies, or even in our own houſes; it ſhews the miſerable lives and conſtant fate of thoſe abandoned wretches; for how ſmall a price they ſell their ſouls, betrayed by their companions, receivers, and purchaſers of thoſe thefts and robberies. This comedy contains likewiſe a ſatire, which though it doth by no means affect the preſent age, yet might have been uſeful in the former, and may poſſibly be ſo in ages to come, I mean where the author takes occaſion of comparing thoſe common robbers of the public, and their ſeveral ſtratagems of betraying, undermining, and hanging each other, to the ſeveral arts of politicians in the time of corruption. This comedy likewiſe expoſes, with great juſtice, that unnatural taſte for Italian muſic among us, which is wholly unſuitable to our Northern climate, and the genius