Event Comment: Mainpiece Written by the late
Mr Congreve.
Benefit
Mrs Mills. Tickets to be had of Mills at his house in
Nassau St.,
Soho. To the Author of the
General Advertiser: It is with great Pleasure I find by the Publick Papers that a tragedy founded on
Voltaire's
Mahomet is now in rehearsal at
Drury Lane Theatre. The Original was by Authority forbid to be played in
France on account of the free and noble sentiments with regard to Bigotry and Enthusiasm, which shine through it; and which that Nation found as applicable to itself, as to the bloody propagators of
Mahomet's Religion. Indeed the Fable on which it is built demanded such sentiments; the design of it being to shew the dreadful effects of Bigotry and Enthusiasm, even upon minds naturally well inclined when work'd up to such a pitch, as a beautiful concurrence of amazing, yet probable Circumstances hath there carried them to: So that it was equally impossible for the poet, by cutting and mangling his play, to lop it to their standard of
Orthodox poetry, as it were for their Inquisitors, by torturing and burning a poor
Protestant, to convince him of their
Christian love and charity....They foresaw that the most obvious Reflection, that every sensible Spectator could not but make, would be, that he every day saw the same effects produced from two the most different causes,
Mahometanism and
Christianity; and the consequence must be, either that they were both
alike Imposters, or that a crafty, mercenary, and cruel Clergy had dared to add a spirit to Christianity, which Christianity never knew. It is not doubted but these every Sentiments, which in France, prevented the Representation of this piece, will, in
England speak loudly in its favor (providdd our
English poet is not unequal to his subject) especially since so audacious an attempt has been lately made by the Common Enemy of
Europe to establish at once a Civil and Spiritual Tyranny over those injur'd Nations, by the old Mohametan and
Roman Arguments of Fire and Sword. I am, &c