He teaches those vices he would correct and writes more like a pimp than a p——. Since the business must be undertaken, why was not the thought blanched, the expression made remote, and the ill features cast into shadows? So far from this, which is his own instruction in his own words, is Mr. CoIlier's way of proceeding, that he has blackened the thoughts with his own smut; the expression that was remote, he has brought nearer; and lest by being brought near its native innocence might be more invisible, he has frequently varied it, he has new-moIded it, and stamped his own image on it; so that it at length is become current deformity and fit to be paid into the devil's exchequer.

I will therefore take the liberty to exorcise this evil spirit and whip him out of my plays wherever I can meet with him. Mr. Collier has reversed the story which he relates from Tertullian; and after his visitation of the playhouse, returns, having left the devil behind him.

If I do not return his civilities in calling him names, it is because I am not very well versed in his nomenclatures; therefore, for his foot pads, which he calls us in his preface, and for his buffoons and slaves in the Saturnalia, which he frequently bestows on us in the rest of his book, I will only call him Mr. Collier, and that I will call him as often as I think he shall deserve it.

Before I proceed, for method's sake, I must premise some few things to the reader, which if he thinks in his conscience are too much to be granted me, I desire he would proceed no further in his perusal of these animadversions, but return to Mr. Collier's Short View, etc.


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