different, according to the different opinions of its readers.
Swift commended it for the excellence of its morality, as a piece
that "placed all kinds of vice in the strongest and most odious
light;" but others, and among them Dr. Herring, afterwards
Archbishop of Canterbury, censured it as giving encouragement, not
only to vice, but to crimes, by making a highwayman the hero and
dismissing him at last unpunished. It has been even said that after
the exhibition of the Beggar's Opera the gangs of robbers were
evidently multiplied.

Both these decisions are surely exaggerated. The play, like many
others, was plainly written only to divert, without any moral
purpose, and is therefore not likely to do good; nor can it be
conceived, without more speculation than life requires or admits, to
be productive of much evil. Highwaymen and housebreakers seldom
frequent the playhouse, or mingle in any elegant diversion; nor is
it possible for any one to imagine that he may rob with safety,
because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage. This objection,
however, or some other rather political than moral, obtained such
prevalence that when Gay produced a second part under the name of
Polly, it was prohibited by the Lord Chamberlain; and he was forced
to recompense his repulse by a subscription, which is said to have
been so liberally bestowed that what he called oppression ended in
profit. The publication was so much favoured that though the first
part gained him four hundred pounds, near thrice as much was the
profit of the second. He received yet another recompense for this
supposed hardship, in the affectionate attention of the Duke and
Duchess of Queensberry, into whose house he was taken, and with whom
he passed the remaining part of his life. The Duke, considering his
want of economy, undertook the management of his money, and gave it