disciplines, inflame grown men to all great virtues, keep old
men in their best and supreme state, or, as they decline to
childhood, recover them to their first strength; that comes
forth the interpreter and arbiter of nature, a teacher of
things divine no less than human, a master in manners; and can
alone, or with a few, effect the business of mankind: this, I
take him, is no subject for pride and ignorance to exercise
their railing rhetoric upon. But it will here be hastily
answered, that the writers of these days are other things;
that not only their manners, but their natures, are inverted,
and nothing remaining with them of the dignity of poet, but
the abused name, which every scribe usurps; that now,
especially in dramatic, or, as they term it, stage-poetry,
nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemy, all license of
offence to God and man is practised. I dare not deny a great
part of this, and am sorry I dare not, because in some men's
abortive features (and would they had never boasted the light)
it is over-true; but that all are embarked in this bold
adventure for hell, is a most uncharitable thought, and,
uttered, a more malicious slander. For my particular, I can,
and from a most clear conscience, affirm, that I have ever
trembled to think toward the least profaneness; have loathed
the use of such foul and unwashed bawdry, as is now made the
food of the scene: and, howsoever I cannot escape from some,
the imputation of sharpness, but that they will say, I have
taken a pride, or lust, to be bitter, and not my youngest
infant but hath come into the world with all his teeth; I
would ask of these supercilious politics, what nation, society,
or general order or state, I have provoked? What public person?
Whether I have not in all these preserved their dignity, as