logues could save plays from being damned, who absolutely wrote something nearly as good as the Beggar's Opera, and never was known to be at a loss even for a pun in all his life. We have now spoken out, freely and without restraint, and be it, without much consideration; for on a subject so notorious, what need of consideration? Mr Moore has, we think, pitched his tone with sound judgment and right feeling, when speaking of Sheridan's general character. We have heard him blamed, most absurdly, for unsparing severity, but no charge can be more unfounded. He has not hidden the truth under too deep veil, neither has he blazoned it forth. Everybody sees what his own opinions and sentiments are, and while he has deceived no one, he has, as a biographer, endeavoured to present the subject of his memoir in as favourable a light as possible. A more timid and temporizing biographer would have left on our minds a more painful impression; a less sympathizing biographer would have left sterner thoughts. Men will judge for themselves ultimately of the merits and demerits of Sheridan as a man; but they will not demand the utmost justice from the writer of the Memoirs of such a man as Sheridan. It was his duty not to blind the world, if, indeed, that had been possible; it was his duty, too, to have a kind leaning towards so highly-gifted a man, and in decidedly showing that, he has done credit both to his own head and his own heart. He has, on the whole, executed a difficult task better-at least as well as any one we could name; and the reception of these volumes, with all their imperfections, proves, that the work is honourable both to himself and the unfortunate subject. Of Sheridan, as a dramatist, there can be but one opinion. He stands at the head of all comedy since Shakspeare. Tried on the three questions, of plot, character, and dialogue, he is superior to all of France, Spain, and England. Molière has more humour, a stronger conception of comic contrast, and a more decided expression of human absurdity; but he is as coarse in his materials, as rude in their management. The variety and invention of Calderon will probably never be equalled; but his endless intricacy of adventure supersedes character, VOL. XIX. and is fatal to interest in the catastrophe. Jonson in character, Cibber in plot, and Congreve in dialogue, have exhibited great powers. But their merits are now too remote for admiration on the stage. Their coarseness is excessive; their views of life were taken either from books or from an exclusive class of society; with much admirable art, they give but little evidence of having looked into the nature of even their own day; and their comedies have thus disappeared from the stage. It is the combination of singular dexterity of dramatic language, happy insight into the peculiarities of the better rank of society, and simplicity and strength of plot, that make Sheridan to this hour the resource of the British theatre. Sheridan's first comedy, "The Rivals," was brought out at CoventGarden on the 17th of January 1775. As he was born in September, 1751, he was then little more than twentythree years old. There were theatrical delays, too, in the production of this play. Sheridan, in a preface of thanks to Harris the manager, mentions his original work as having been twice the length, which was "kindly cut down by Mr Harris's judgment to its present size," a kindness which, however absolutely essential, was perhaps remembered in Puff's agonies, the “ prompter's double cuts."All this must have taken time, and in our conjecture he may be concluded to have written the play at one-andtwenty. Early instances of skill in comedy have not been unfrequent; but Sheridan's style has a characteristic knowledge of the world, an easy finesse, and a sly severity, that at once distinguish him from his predecessors, and seem to imply maturity of mixing with mankind. Yet all this may have been without a miracle. We are to recollect, in the first place, Sheridan's genealogy. He was the son of a theatrical manager, and of a popular authoress and dramatist. He imbibed the drama on both sides. All his early habitudes were connected with the drama. family library was a repertorium of plays; he probably never heard his father speak of anything with respect but a stock-piece, nor the family cir Q The cle, in their most confidential moods, Converse upon anything with more enthusiasm than the prospects of "the season." Surrounded on all hands with theatric talk, theatric friends, and theatric interests, Sheridan's first dream of glory or food must have visited him in the shape of stage triumph. Here was the inspiration. In the second place, Sheridan's earliest residence was with his family in Bath. In the salient time of life, when man takes his direction for every future year of it, when the sight of a militia parade incites him into the future conqueror of India or the Peninsula, or the sight of the four-and-twenty" prebendaries," each snug in his stall, "With the Dean, the Bishop, and Vicars choral," involves his soul in visions of Lawn, or the procession of the Judges to the County-hall, inflames him with rivalry of the Hales and Blackstones, and the love of black-letter and buzz-wigs, to the end of his days; or last and most visionary, when the sight of woman in her graces makes him mad, guilty of stanzas to the moon, nay, rashly resolute enough for matrimony. -In that day of vivid impressions, Sheridan lived-in Bath! We know no spot on earth which more deserves a panegyrist. What is our modern boast of charity, with its Bedlams and Bethesdas, the largest of them incapable of holding more than a very few thousand patients ?-What are our houses of refuge and hospitals, compared to the sweeping benevolence of Beau Nash, when he devoted a whole city to the purpose; when he erected in the swamps of Somerset a caravansera five miles round for the halt in mind and body, for the incurably idle, the desperately card-playing, and the inveterately splenetic; a great and unrivalled receptacle for the turgid with idleness, opulence, and bile, and the tribes that prey upon them by the laws of nature and the diploma of the college in WarwickLane? The language of this assemblage of gossips and hypochondriacs, of the poor living by their wits, and the rich panting through a round of pills, whist, and mutual sneer, was echoing in Sheridan's ear from morning till night. Here he found his dialogue. In the third place, he was deep read in the whole catalogue of forgotten farces; and as he had no scruples about them, or anything else that he could turn to profit, he plundered without a pang. His characters he generally stole; his plots always. To all this, we must add, that the state of his family finances, a state which, as all the world knows, has been copied with filial fidelity, supplied of itself an unequalled access to his knowledge of the world. From the first drawing of a "bill, not to be paid," to the final clearance by the legislatorial abstersion, the whole is a course of education. The pleasant subterfuge, the ready invention, the direct encounter, and the dexterous retreat, are all incomparable sharpeners of the wit that lieth in a man; and perhaps the merest rustic would find the six weeks of his prison institute place him on a rank with the intellects of even an attorney who had never onjoyed the same advantage. In matters of this order, Sheridan was au fait. His first knowledge of money was obviously in its issue from a Jew's pocket, and he never wanted a guinea while there was a Jew to lend it. Accordingly, we find that his habitual thoughts are borrowed from the same source as his treasure; his choicest witticisms turn upon the bill trade, on indorsements, protests, post-obits, securities, flying kites, men of straw, and the whole mystery of Hebrew dealings. His plays always have a prominent Jew, or a Christian a Jew in everything but beard and Shibboleth. Yet the generosity of his nature gives good words, all that he had to give; and he deals not unjustly with the character of the ancient nation; his Moses and his Isaac are both pleasant fellows, and though a little roguish, a sacrifice to truth of character, yet altogether not much of a different description from the shaven part of mankind. It is well known that this clever play, with all the advantages of the manager's especial confidence of success, of the whole force of his excellent company, and of all the fame of all the Sheridans, yet failed; was, in fact, all but d-d, and was withdrawn. Mr Moore attributes this disaster to the bad acting of Lee in Sir Lucius. But potent as a single unlucky actor may be in the over throw of an author's castle in the air, the fault was at least divisible with the writer. Sir Lucius was too coarse a transcript of even the Irish adventurer. Mrs Malaprop, also, brought down critical vengeance. The conception wanted novelty and nature. Dog berry had long before blundered more pleasantly and more to the purpose. The lady's contortions of language were pronounced improbable, which, in the drama, is equivalent to impossible. Julia and Falkland, too, were felt to be incumbrances, both borrowed from the Bath boarding-schools, and neither uttering a sentence beyond the calibre of fifteen. The play had in addition the inexpiable crime of being almost four hours long. But no man could profit by correction more rapidly than Sheridan. His play was revised; the obnoxious portions were extracted; the inordinate extent was curtailed; it was restored to the stage, where it will live as long as the language. When Marmontel, on his arrival in Paris, applied to Voltaire for a royal road to fame, the Aristarchus bade him write a play. Marmontel wrote a tragedy, and on the shoulders of "Dionysius," meagre as it was, was exalted into sudden splendour, was feted and fed, invited to the select conversaziones of the most select, and was in a moment hand and glove with all the bluest blues of the city of the Graces. Sheridan's theatric success raised him into notice, for we then lived in an idle time. We were copying France with all our tardy souls; and in return for the export trade of English boots, postilions, and broad-cloth, were bringing back, as is our custom, the mere tinsel, and unsubstantial fabric of the land of tinsel. We even imported French manners, principles, and practices. A French woman of letters, now and then even visited our unromantic shores, to wonder at the bad pronunciation and unteachable morals of our women; and even a royal Duke had ventured, for the express purpose of hazarding his purse and person, among the spurred and booted generation of Newmarket. But willing as we were to adopt the dissipations of the most pestilent capital since Gomorrah, we had our reverses as to other points of similitude, and Sheridan, talked of as his play was, had to -And on my life, Miss That Murphy had a very pretty wife." Sheridan was the husband of the prettiest woman of her time. Linley's celebrity was certainly reflected on her husband with rather more vividness than the frosty morals of our day would desire. Sheridan's elopement with her from the very fangs of Matthews-for, on the whole, the Captain was a very rascally and ill-used gentleman,-attracted the attentions of the women of the noblesse Miss Linley's share in the adventure was not calculated to give a very formidable idea of her severity to future worshippers, and the result was a course of attentions to both, that turned marriage into a long and miserable train of jealousies, anxieties, and recriminations, ending in penitence, almost too late for pardon, and regret, when the grave had closed. In speaking with scorn of the habitual tardiness of the higher orders of England-the privileged class of rank, opulence, and power-to notice men of literary ability,-Heaven forbid that we should speak of it with the slightest regret! The most direct and inevitable resolution to lay waste and eradicate all that is worth the name of literature, would be to chain it at the feet of Patricianism. The day that "makes man a slave, takes half his worth away." The sentiment is as old as Homer, and will be true while there is a man weak enough to degrade his genius into dependency upon man. On the opera of the Duenna, Sheridan had expended a considerable time; and his letters to Linley exhibit his well-known anxiety in the preparation of his dramas, careless as he was in every other thing upon earth. It was perhaps the most successful opera upon record. It was played seventy-five nights during its first season, the only intermission being a few days at Christmas, and the Fridays in every week, on which, Leoni, as a Jew, could not perform. The run of the "Beggar's Opera" was but sixty-three nights. Yet frequency of representation is not the highest standard. Among the performances of even our own day, we have seen a German opera, with no plot, or only the heavy and bewildering plot of a German romance, and with no other dialogue than could be supplied by translators, making its way from month to month, and from year to year, played fifty and sixty nights at each of the principal theatres, after having been played without intermission during the summer, in London, and still played, and still popular. In the triumph of the Freischutz, all dramatic merit is out of the question. The story lingers intolerably, the characters are of the most common-place material of melo-drame, the incidents are unconnected, feeble, and improbable. One scene, the Incantation, is striking only as a compilation of all the extravagancies of stage ghost-seeing. The foundation of this signal popularity is the music; and even of this music, a large portion is singularly heavy and repulsive. But as a whole, the composition of the Freischutz is a great work. It has singular novelty, richness, and appropriateness. Some of the melodies seem to be more the impulse of poetic inspiration than the art of the musician; and the cadences and recitations preparatory to the more remarkable incidents, give some of the first specimens of musical thought that Germany has ever boasted. "The Duenna" had the advantage, rare in the writings of its indolent author, of being brought out at just the time it ought. It is a curious circumstance, that one of the best months of the year for bringing out a new play is November, while the very next month is the very worst; that the lucky moment does not arrive again until February; and that nothing worthy of life can hope for it after May. But, as in all cases, the longer the time for performance, the longer for triumph; the best time must be the earliest, and "The Duenna" appearing in November, had thus a whole year of fame and finance to run. "The Beggar's Opera" was brought out in the season of 1727-8; but its popularity was of an altogether higher class. It became at once the single subject of theatres, conversation, books, engravings, and popularity in all its shapes, for an extraordinary length of time. It was played in the provincial theatres with almost its London frequency, to the thirtieth and fortieth night; at Bath and Bristol, fifty; it swept everything of rivalry from the stage in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; it was performed even in Minorca ; its songs were the only music of the fashionable world; its poetry was carried about on fans; its scenes and music met the eye on screens, and all the grotesque and ornamental furniture of that stately day, of the toilet and the drawing-room. If, inferior to St Cecilia's miracle, it drew no angel down; it nearly overthrew a minister, and it raised an actress to the ducal coronet. England was then as whimsically prone to discover all excellencies in any object of its fickle wonder, as it is still. This actress, whom chance flung into the part of Polly, was suddenly exalted into the possession of every talent under heaven. She was fabricated into even a wit; and books were published, containing the bon mots and repartees of Miss Fenton ! Her picture eclipsed all the noble portraitures of the day; her "Life" was invented and published; her face and person became the standard of grace; her dress superseded French millinery, and last, and most improbable of all glories, her songs drew back the noble worshippers from the Italian Opera. The secret of "The Beggar's Opera" is its admirable adaptation to the peculiar turn of the English mind; its sound sense, its shrewd satire on general human nature, its vigorous seizure of national character, and, finally, its hits at men in office. Walpole's ability as a minister has received the praise of Burke, who looks upon his solidity and vigour as essen tial to the settlement of the nation after the Hanoverian succession. But his disregard of the moralities of office, his open hire of the press, and the general free-living habits of the statesman, who declared, that he introduced but " one topic" after dinner, because on that one alone all men of all parties were agreed, had left him open to a large share of public dislike, unconnected with even the fiery resentment of the exiled faction. Gay, too, had his wrongs; for the poet had been treated with dishonest scorn by the court party; a treatment deserved by every poet who annexes himself to the skirts of any patron; and Walpole's careless and unrevenging head was the safest, if not the loftiest, at which his vengeance could be flung. It is recorded that great expectation of the satire of the opera was excited, and that in the song, "When you censure the age, Be cautious and sage, Lest the courtiers offended should be. If you mention vice or bribe, 'Tis so pat to all the tribe, That each cries, That was levell'd at me,' "— the whole audience turned round to Walpole's box, where the minister had the courage to be present, and the good nature to acknowledge the allusion but by a smile. One of the singularities of this striking performance, is its utter contrast to all the other works of Gay. It is one of thirteen dramas of its author, of which no man now hears, and which never attained any celebrity. It was not his first and last, as we have sometimes seen in the out-break of genius, nor his last and best, as sometimes in the maturity of stage knowledge. It was his seventh. He was born in 1688; he died in 1732; his opera was played in the season 1727-8, in his fortieth year; and with his opera his genius expired. But this is more improbable than that this work should have been largely indebted to another parentage. Gay's habitual style was graceful feebleness. His " Polly," the opera written immediately in the full inspiration of success, is perhaps the tamest production in the language. His "Trivia" is less common-place; but its chief merit with posterity will doubtless be its having been capable of transfer almost wholly to the "Human Life" of Mr Rogers. The solution may be approached by our supposing that Swift, who originally suggested, "what a pretty thing a Newgate pastoral would make," was the chief maker of the opera. Spence, at least a half-informed personage, and the humblest harbinger of Boswell, tells us, that as it went on, it was read at intervals to Swift, Pope, and probably their customary fellow-conspirator in wit and bitterness, Arbuthnot and that they suggested ideas, but "the writing was all Mr Gay's," who finally retired to Edinburgh, probably as to the spot where he might find the most elevated attic on the face of the earth, if not inhale the most appropriate air for sarcastic inspiration. We have now done with "The Beggar's Opera ;" its indecencies are inex. cusable in our age, but they are much purified, and were virtue to the theatrical tone of its original day; its encouragement of highway robbery has vanished with the years when gentlemen took the road after the play, and cleared the purses of the HounslowHeath and Bagshot travellers until morning. Its tavern life was the customary recreation of our moral ancestors in the age of chivalry and the constitution, "sixty years ago." But its songs and its wit will live while England is England. It is pleasant enough to think that this opera was lately repelled in America with the most furious indignation. Incledon's Macheath, the most genuine exhibition of the character that the world had ever seen, or will ever see-the truest compound of the easy audacity, unruffled resolution, and joyous indulgence of the king of highwaymen, was driven off the stage in a hurricane of "national delicacy." Yet America might have exhibited that virtue of toleration on her stage, which she so magnanimously exhibits in receiving the refuse of our population. The land of refuge for all European sinners, might have opened its generous bosom to some of our sins; and the adventures of the highwayman should have found mercy in the eyes of Jonathan. The plot of "The Duenna" is plundered from Wycherley's "Country Wife," and is the feeblest of Sheridan's adoptions. Mr Moore thinks otherwise, pronouncing it to be "constructed and managed with considerable adroitness, having just material enough to be wound out into three acts," without too much intricacy or too much extension. This is inexact. The only intrigue of the piece, is the artifice of the Duenna to entrap the Jew into a match; and the whole interest closes with her success. The remaining portion, the escapes of the cloistered "fair ones, and the mistakes of the lovers, are absolute excrescences, endurable only for the sake of the past pleasantry. But the dialogue throughout is dramatic; and the scenes between the Jew and Don Jerome, while under their mutual misconception, are among the happiest conceptions of the stage. Mr Moore describes the easy and obvious wit of those passages, as of the kind that is "produced without effort." This, too, seems to us inexact. How |