Sir B. In short, her face resembles a table d'hôte at Spa, where no two guests are of a nation. Crab. Or a congress at the close of a general war, where every member seems to have a different interest, and the nose and chin are the only parties likely to join issue.'1 Or again: 'Crab. Sad news upon his arrival, to hear how your brother has gone on! Joseph Surface. I hope no busy people have already prejudiced his uncle against him-he may reform, Sir Benjamin. True, he may; for my part, I never thought him so utterly void of principle as people say, and though he has lost all his friends, I am told nobody is better spoken of amongst the Jews. Crab. Foregad, if the Old Jewry was a ward, Charles would be an alderman, for he pays as many annuities as the Irish Tontine; and when he is sick, they have prayers for his recovery in all the Synagogues. Sir B. Yet no man lives in greater splendor.-They tell me, when he entertains his friends, he can sit down to dinner with a dozen of his own securities, have a score of tradesmen waiting in the anti-chamber, and an officer behind every guest's chair.'" And again: 'Sir B. Mr. Surface, I did not mean to hurt you, but depend on't, your brother is utterly undone. Crab. Oh! undone as ever man was—can't raise a guinea. Sir B. Everything is sold, I am told, that was moveable. Crab. Not a moveable left, except some old bottles and some pictures, and they seem to be framed in the wainscot, egad. Sir B. I am sorry to hear also some bad stories of him. Crab. Oh! he has done many mean things, that's certain. Sir B. But, however, he's your brother. Crab. Ay! as he is your brother-we'll tell you more another opportunity.'" In this manner has he pointed, multiplied, thrust to the quick, the measured epigrams of Molière. And yet is it possible to grow weary of such a well-sustained discharge of malice and witticisms? Observe also the change which the hypocrite undergoes under his treatment. Doubtless all the grandeur disappears from the part. Joseph Surface does not uphold, like Tartufe, the interest of the comedy; he does not possess, like his ancestor, the nature of a cabman, the boldness of a man of action, the manners of a beadle, the neck and shoulders of a monk. He is merely selfish and cautious; if he is engaged in an intrigue, it is rather against his will; he is only half-hearted in the matter, like a correct young man, well dressed, with a fair income, timorous and fastidious by nature, discreet in manners, and without violent passions; all about him is soft and polished, he takes his tone from the times, he makes no display of religion, though he does of morality; he is a man of measured speech, of lofty sentiments, a disIbid. i. 1 The School for Scandal, ii. 2. Ibid. There is ciple of Johnson or of Rousseau, a dealer in set phrases. nothing on which to construct a drama in this commonplace person; and the fine situations which Sheridan takes from Molière lose half their force through depending on such pitiful support. But how this insufficiency is covered by the quickness, abundance, naturalness of the Incidents how skill makes up for everything! how it seems capable of upplying everything, even genius! how the spectator laughs to see Joseph caught in his sanctuary like a fox in his hole; obliged to hide the wife, then to conceal the husband; forced to run from one to the other; busy in hiding the one behind his screen, and the other in his closet; reduced in casting himself into his own snares, in justifying those whom he wished to ruin, the husband in the eyes of the wife, the nephew in the eyes of the uncle; to ruin the only man whom he wished to justify, namely, the precious and immaculate Joseph Surface; to turn out in the end ridiculous, odious, baffled, confounded, in spite of his adroitness, even by reason of his adroitness, step by step, without quarter or remedy; to sneak off, poor fox, with his tail between his legs, his skin spoiled, amid hootings and laughter! And how, at the same time, side by side with this, the naggings of Sir Peter and his wife, the suppers, songs, the picture sale at the spendthrift's house, weave a comedy in a comedy, and renew the interest by renewing the attention! We cease to think of the meagreness of the characters, as we cease to think of the variation from truth; we are willingly carried away by the vivacity of the action, dazzled by the brilliancy of the dialogue; we are charmed, applaud; admit that, after all, next to great inventive faculty, animation and wit are the most agreeable gifts in the world: we appreciate them in their season, and find that they also have their place in the literary banquet; and that if they are not worth as much as the substantial joints, the natural and generous wines of the first course, at least they furnish the dessert. The dessert over, we must leave the table. After Sheridan, we leave it forthwith. Henceforth comedy languishes, fails; there is nothing left but farce, such as Townley's High Life Below Stairs, the burlesques of George Colman, a tutor, an old maid, countrymen and their dialect; caricature succeeds painting; Punch raises a laugh when the days of Reynolds and Gainsborough are over. There is nowhere in Europe, at the present time, a more barren stage; good company abandons it to the people. The form of society, and the spirit which had called it into being, have disappeared. Vivacity, and the subject of original conceptions, had peopled the stage of the Renaissance in England, a surfeit which, unable to display itself in systematic argu ment, or to express itself in philosophical ideas, found its natural outlet only in mimic action and talking characters. The wants of polished Society had nourished the English comedy of the seventeenth century,— a society which, accustomed to the representations of the court and the displays of the world, sought on the stage the copy of its intercourse and its drawing-rooms. check of mimic invention, the genuine drama and the genuine comedy disappeared; they passed from the stage into books. The reason of it 18, that people no longer live in public, like the embroidered dukes of Louis XIV. and Charles II., but in their family, or at the study table; the novel replaces the theatre at the same time as citizen life replace the life of the court. With the decadence of the court and the |