64
ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.
How can I introduce to you that merry and shameless Comic Muse who won him such a reputation? Nell Gwynn's servant fought the other footmen for having called his mistress a bad name; and in like manner, and with pretty like epithets, Jeremy Collier attacked that godless, reckless Jezebel, the English comedy of his time, and called her what Nell Gwynn's man's fellow-servants called Nell Gwynn's man's mistress. The servants of the theatre, Dryden, Congreve,[1] and others, defended themselves with the same success, and for the same cause which set Nell's lackey fighting. She was a disreputable, daring, laughing, painted French baggage, that Comic Muse. She came over from the continent with Charles (who chose many more of his
- ↑ He replied to Collier, in the pamphlet called "Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations," &c. A specimen or two are subjoined:—
"The greater part of these examples which he has produced, are only demonstrations of his own impurity: they only savour of his utterance, and were sweet enough till tainted by his breath.
"Where the expression is unblameable in its own pure and genuine signification, he enters into it, himself, like the evil spirit; he possesses the innocent phrase, and makes it bellow forth his own blasphemies.
"If I do not return him civilities in calling him names, it is because I am not very well versed in his nomenclatures. . . . . . . I will only call him Mr. Collier, and that I will call him as often as I think he shall deserve it.
"The corruption of a rotten divine is the generation of a sour critic."
"Congreve," says Dr. Johnson, "a very young man, elated with success, and impatient of censure, assumed an air of confidence and security. . . . . . The dispute was protracted through two years; but at last Comedy grew more modest, and Collier lived to see the reward of his labours in the reformation of the theatre."—Life of Congreve.
