In his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage the Reverend Jeremy Collier singled out Congreve as one of the chief offenders, and took exception to a number of passages in The Old Bachelor. To this Congreve made a rather ineffective reply, in the course of which he remarked of his first comedy: `When I wrote it, I had little thoughts of the stage; but did it, to amuse myself, in a slow recovery from a fit of sickness.' He regretted, he said, that he had allowed himself to be drawn in to the business of playwriting—`a difficult and thankless study'—and so to become involved `in a perpetual war with knaves and fools'. If Congreve thought he had disposed of Collier satisfactorily, he was mistaken; for Collier had at his command the gift of witty repartee that was so much prized in the period. `What his disease was,' Collier replied, `I am not to inquire; but it must be a very ill one to be worse than the remedy.'