Another critic of the stage only deserves notice in this capacity from his connection with Dryden. Thomas Rymer (1639-1714) will be mentioned again as a meritorious antiquary. As a critic he is remarkable for having by his _Tragedies of the Last Age_ (1673) drawn some judicious remarks from Dryden, and for having analyzed _Othello_ as a pattern of a bad play. He has consequently been unanimously hooted by his countrymen, for it passes belief that Pope should have praised him to Spence, though Spence affirms it. It was his misfortune to be an Englishman; in France at the time his views would have been thought very correct; in fact, he criticises Shakespeare much in the style of Voltaire. He is a votary of decorum and dignity, and would no more than Voltaire have let a mouse into a tragedy. He discusses with imperturbable gravity, 'Who and who may kill one another with decency?' and decides, 'In poetry no woman is to kill a man, except her quality gives her the advantage above him. Poetical decency will not suffer death to be dealt to each other by such persons, whom the laws of duel allow not to enter the lists together.' And Rymer would have been content to have dwelt in such decencies for ever.
Jeremy Collier, a Nonjuring clergyman (1650-1726), attained fame, not as the advocate of decencies, but of decency. His _Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage_ (1698) occasioned a great sensation, and was efficacious in abating the evils against which it was directed, although it is probable that Addison's mild rebuke and better example accomplished even more. As the adversary of men of wit and genius, Collier has become obnoxious to their representatives, and has been unfairly reviled as a sour fanatic. In fact he is very moderate, admits that the stage may be a valuable medium of instruction, and only denounces its abuse. Scott and Macaulay have done him justice, and Mr. Gosse gives an excellent analysis of his work in his biography of Congreve. His wit is as unquestionable as his zeal, but his argument is not everywhere equally cogent. On the chapter of profaneness he is fantastic and straitlaced, and so tender of dignities that he will not allow even the god Apis to be disrespectfully mentioned. On that of immorality he is unanswerable, and unless the incriminated dramatists were prepared to say, 'Evil, be thou my good,' they could but own