!

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE

TO THE

CUTTER OF COLEMAN-STREET [a].

COMEDY, called the Guardian, and

A made by me when I was very young,

was acted formerly at Cambridge, and several times after privately during the troubles, as I am told, with good approbation, as it has been lately too at Dublin. There being many things in it which I difliked, and finding myself, for some days idle, and alone in the country, I fell upon the changing of it almost wholly, as now it is, and as it was played fince at his Royal Highness's theatre under this new name. It met at the first representation, with no favourable

[a] This comedy has a great deal of merit. The dialogue is eafy enough, and many of the scenes pleafant. And, though the conduct of the drama be not that which the best critics have prescribed, I fhould, perhaps, have inferted the Cutter of ColemanStreet in the prefent collection, if, agreeably to the plan and purpofe of this publication, I could have found room for fo long a work. However, the Preface could, by no means, be omitted, as it ferves to let us into the writer's character, and is written, throughout, in his own spirit.

reception;

reception; and I think there was fomething of faction against it, by the early appearance of fome men's difapprobation before they had seen enough of it to build their dislike upon their judgment. Afterwards it got some ground, and found friends as well as adverfaries. In which condition I should willingly let it die, if the main imputation under which it fuffered had been shot only against my wit or art in these matters, and not directed against the tenderest parts of human reputation, good-nature, goodmanners, and piety itself. The first clamour which some malicious perfons raised, and made a great noise with, was, that it was a piece intended for abuse and fatire against the king's party. Good God! against the king's party? After having ferved it twenty years, during all the time of their misfortunes and afflictions ; I must be a very rash and imprudent perfon, if I chose out that of their reftitution to begin a quarrel with them. I must be too much a madman to be trufted with fuch an edged tool as comedy. But first, why should either the whole party (as it was once distinguished by that name, which I hope is abolished now by universal loyalty), or any man of virtue or honour in it, believe themselves injured, or at all concerned, by the representation of the faults

and

and follies of a few who, in the general divifion of the nation, had crowded in among them? In all mixed numbers (which is the cafe of parties) nay, in the moft entire and continued bodies, there are often fome degenerated and corrupted parts, which may be caft away from that, and even cut off from this unity, without any infection of scandal to the remaining body. The church of Rome, with all her arrogance, and her wide pretences of certainty in all truths, and exemption from all errors, does not clap on this enchanted armour of infallibility upon all her particular fubjects, nor is offended at the reproof of her greatest doctors. We are not, I hope, become fuch Puritans ourselves, as to affume the name of the congregation of the fpotlefs. It is hard for any party to be fo ill as that no good, impoffible to be fo good as that no ill, fhould be found among them. "And it has been the perpetual privilege of fatire and comedy, to pluck their vices and follies, though not their perfons, out of the fanctuary of any title. A cowardly ranting foldier, an ignorant charlatanical doctor, a foolish cheating lawyer, a filly pedantical fcholar, have always been, and ftill are, the principal fubjects of all comedies, without any fcandal given to thofe honourable profeffions, or

f

even

even taken by their fevereft profeffors. And, if any good phyfician or divine fhould be offended with me here for inveighing against a quack, or for finding Deacon Soaker too often in the butteries, my refpect and reverence to their callings would make me troubled at their difpleasure, but I could not abstain from taking them for very choleric and quarrelfome perfons. What does this, therefore, amount to, if it were true which is objected? But it is far from being fo; for the reprefentation of two sharks about the town (fellows merry and ingenious enough, and therefore admitted into better companies than they deferve, yet withal two very scoundrels, which is no unfrequent character at London), the reprefentation, I fay, of thefe as pretended officers of the royal army, was made for no other purpose, but to fhew the world, that the vices and extravagances imputed vulgarly to the cavaliers, were really committed by aliens, who only ufurped that name, and endeavoured to cover the reproach of their indigency, or infamy of their actions, with fo honourable a title. So that the bufinefs was not here to corre&t or cut off any natural branches, though never fo corrupted or luxuriant, but to feparate and caft away that vermin, which, by ficking fo close to them, had done great and confiderable