it may have been produced by Sheridan, is now beyond inquiry; but if we are to judge of its difficulty by its rareness, it is the most difficult of all products. Easy writing is, according to the proverb, not always easy reading; and the conceptions that cost us the least trouble, are generally least worth the trouble. The power of turning common things into uncommon-uniting simplicity with point-is perhaps the most dexterous operation of the fancy. The difficulty is in direct proportion to the apparent ease. Nothing is more facile than to be recherché. This Mr Moore, with all his brilliancy, frequently shows by his merciless illustrations from everything strange in heaven and earth, and the waters under the earth.

The poetry of the Duenna has much of the epigrammatic neatness of Sheridan's prose, and sometimes has its tenderness and power. The following song deserves considerable praise.

'Ah, cruel maid, how hast thou changed
The temper of my mind!
My heart, like thee, from love estranged,
Becomes, like thee, unkind.

By fortune favour'd, clear in fame,
I once ambitious was;

And friends I had who fann'd the flame,
And gave my youth applause.

But now my weakness all accuse; Yet vain their taunts on me; Friends, fortune, fame itself I'd lose, To gain one smile from thee.

And only thou should'st not despise
My weakness or my woe;
If I am mad in other's eyes,
'Tis thou hast made me so.

But days like this, with doubting curst,
I will not long endure:

Am I disdained, I know the worst,
And likewise know my cure.

If false, her vows she dare renounce,
That instant ends my pain,
For ah, the heart must break at once
That cannot hate again!

Mr Moore looks upon this song as having been written in some of the moods of its author's love-making, and the conjecture is not improbable.

In our present age of publishing

everything, it may seem curious that Sheridan's plays were, we believe, in every instance kept back from the press. This might have been in some measure the result of the partial and ridiculous law, which refuses dramatic authorship the common privilege of all other, down to an almanack or a spelling-book, that of belonging to those who produce or pay for it first. As the law stands, the moment a play is published, every Theatre in the empire may seize it in defiance of the author, whether he choose that it should not be played at all, or not played for nothing. If it have been played, and of course paid for by a manager, another party is added to the wronged. This should be amended without delay, as it is at once an offensive anomaly in our law books, and a most extensive and fatal impediment to the cultivation of the most brilliant, and perhaps by no means the least national, honourable, and useful, of all authorship, that of the Drama. With a Monarch the most accomplished of his race, and with a Ministry obviously anxious to turn the public mind to the fame of Literature and the Fine Arts, no time could be more favourable for relieving Dramatic authorship from a burden which absolutely weighs it down, and must extinguish it in this country. Let the proposition be made in the House of Commons, and its reasonableness and importance must carry it through.

In 1775, Sheridan negotiated with Garrick for the Drury Lane Theatre, which appears to have been sold in June following, for £70,000. Sheridan had two fourteenths at £10,000. Linley the same for £10,000, and a Dr Ford three fourteenths for £15,000. The remainder of the property was, we believe, in a Mr Lacy. The interest of this money was £3500; and Sheridan adds, "that it must be infernal management that would not double the sum !" Sheridan was now to become one of the thousand and tens of thousand exemplifications of "the tide in the affairs of men." It was now at its flood, and Fortune lay before him. A successful 'theatre is, perhaps, the most money-making machine ever invented by man, with all his faculties on the stretch for moneymaking in all its ways. It failures, however, are tremendous; and when

ing parsons, and ladies of rank, chiefly remarkable for the delicacy of their reputations, amply account for the redundant sourness of the "City of Indolence," for the "Bath Sketches," the "Intercepted Epistles," the "Dr Warner's Ghost detected Waltzing," the "Conversations of a Woman of Quality with her Monkey," the "Popillons," the "Wroughtoniad," the "Sorrows of Dr Vegetable," the "thousand and one Burlesques on King, the late Master of the Ceremonies ;" and in the "Bath Characters," the "Bath Guide" is but the loudest and tallest of an immense family, and Anstey, but the crowned bard of a host, each decorated with its appropriate tea leaf.

Sheridan's Sketch bears the family on the frontal.

It is among the many distinctions of the Novel and the Drama, that in the former the names of persons are not required to bear any similitude to their qualities; and that in the Come. dy they are. The palpable reason is, that the Novel is a picture of general life; the Comedy of particular character. The dexterity of the author is tried in discovering a name sufficiently expressive, yet not bearing the marks of being manufactured for the purpose. Thus the "Lack wits," "Money-traps," "Plausibles," of the ancient stage, are too palpably forced into the service; and the object is never completely obtained, but when a name in common use can be adopted into the dramatis personæ. "Lockit" and "Peachem" are fortunate seizures from common life. The "Penruddocks," "Beverleys," "Bellamonts," &c. the whole stock of romantic nomenclature, are totally useless to dramatic effect. They express nothing but the inopia verborum of their author.

But another difficulty occurs, peculiar to the Drama. The qualities of members of the same family are, for the sake of dramatic contrast, made to consist of totally distinct elements. Yet they must in general bear the same name, and the artifice of the author is tasked to find a name comprehensive enough for all their varieties. Macklin, in the "Man of the World," after inventing the crude appellative of "Sir Pertinax M'Sycophant" for his bitter, louring, and worldly hero, is forced to apply the title to his wife, and

exhibits a M'Sycophant, generous and unworldly. His son, described as a model of manliness, feeling, and independence, escapes from this badge only by the awkward contrivance of a name taken from a relative. Of this difficulty, our Comedies, old and new, give numberless examples.

The "School for Scandal" exhibits striking instances of success in this point. It has, in the two brothers and Uncle Oliver, three personages distinct in all points but one-their all disguising their true characters. It gives the three the name of "Surface;" a name not too remote from common use, and yet expressive of the three. The merit lies in discovering perhaps the only name that could have answered the object. Sir Peter and Lady Teazle are as opposite as youth and age, love of scandal and fear of it, intrigue and jealousy, contempt and fondness. But their names must be of course the same; and Teazle, a name not remote from common life, happily expresses the characters of both.

In "The Rivals," Sheridan had not reached this tact; yet "Absolute” was perhaps as good a name as could be suggested for a father and son equally self-willed. Acres is natural and suitable; Sir Lucius O'Trigger is, however, a nominal caricature.

The merits of the play are now beyond criticism. It stands at the head of all our "Comedies of Manners." Its wit, the more admirable, not from its remoteness, but from its obviousness, its strong distinctness of character, and its plain progress of story, leave it without a rival.

Mr Moore thinks that Wycherley was the model of the dialogue; and considers Sheridan's displeasure at any allusion of the kind a proof. Yet a man of Sheridan's elegance of dialect might have been, not unnaturally, offended at the imputation of having drunk from that stream of grossness and vulgarity, the Fleet-ditch of Wycherley. If he had any other model than the tone of that high life into which he was so early introduced, or his own instinctive tact, he probably found it in Congreve; undoubtedly the most elegant conversational dramatist before Sheridan, and requiring only to be cleared from the customary indecencies of his age to be his closest competitor.

The proverbial faults of the "School for Scandal," are its presumed encouragement to seduction, as in the instance of Lady Teazle's arguments against old husbands, and to prodiga lity, in the triumph of Charles's wit and character. Yet, till we have a proof that either man or woman has ever been led by those poetic paths into ruin, we may fairly question the culpability of the drama. In fact, plays mislead no one. They may sometimes stimulate latent generosity or manliness, by a noble sentiment or an impressive character, and the applause which regularly follows both (and loudest and most unfailing from the very humblest class of the audience), shows that the stage may be made a teacher to those who will reluctantly learn of more formal discipline. The satire on hypocrisy, the meanest of all the vices, and, in general society, perhaps the most dangerous, much more than turns the beam.

The faults of the plot are, its tardiness in the first two acts; the superfluity of the two scenes of the "scandalous coterie," a splendid superfluity, and the fifth act. The interest is wrought up to its point by the discovery of Lady Teazle behind the screen, and all that follows is mere explanation, not worth the developement, or incident of no importance to the play. The curtain should fall on the discovery.

Charles's love for Maria, a love which never gives rise to a meeting nor a word, is one of the blots of the play, and it becomes still more ridiculous from the present custom of giving the lady's part to a mere girl, who talks of men and matrimony in a bib and tucker.

Sheridan's last "legitimate work," "The Critic," was brought out in 1779, evidently formed on the plan of "The Rehearsal," and even with some plagiarisms from the dialogue of that clever and obsolete performance. Fielding's "Pasquin," too, was a contributor; and "The Critic" is to be looked on chiefly as the most ingenious of pasticcios. A sketch of this farce seems to have been the earliest of all his dramatic efforts, as its completion was his last. The first half of this celebrated farce yields to nothing of its author, if it does not exceed all his works in strength of language and dexterity of sarcasm. Puff's descripVOL. XIX

tion of his modes of life, his elucidation of the popular art of puffing, and the excoriation of Sir Fretful, are all masterly. The second part is not merely inferior, but unequivocally tiresome. Sheridan was a remarkably good-natured man, and there are few wits on record who bore their faculties more meekly. Cumberland, too, was a man of gentle manners, a graceful and accomplished person, and though a popular dramatist, totally out of the line of rivalry. Yet every man has his point of susceptibility. Sheridan's was his drama, and some of those "good-natured friends" that are never wanting to public character, had conveyed stories of Cumberland's sneering at "The School for Scandal."

One of the old theatrical recollections is, that Sheridan, in his anxiety to collect opinions on the first night, asked what Mr Cumberland had said of the play.

"Not a syllable," was the answer. "But did he seem amused?"

"Why, faith, he might have been hung up beside Uncle Oliver's picture. He had the d-d disinheriting countenance. Like the ladies and gentlemen on the walls, he never moved a muscle."

"Devilish ungrateful that," said Sheridan, "for I sat out his tragedy last week, and laughed from beginning to end of it."

From this feeling something might be expected to come, and the expectation was prodigally fulfilled in Sir Fretful. Cumberland complained bitterly of the attack, and declared, that on the first night of the School for Scandal he was not in Drury-Lane, but in Bath. But the shaft was already flown; and Cumberland's notorious admiration of his own labours and equally notorious sneer at every one else's, ranged the laughers against him for life.

Fragments of other projected plays are given by Mr Moore. What they might have been rendered by Sheridan's extraordinary talent for turning his rudest material into value, must now be mere matter of conjecture. "The Foresters" seems too extravagant for anything but melo-drame. His sketch of "Affectation" shows the keenness with which he collected his hints from every rank of society; yet the subject seems too feeble for the stern requisition of the stage. Affec

R

tation is a common quality, but it is a sickly one; it produces but little effect in actual life, and that effect is scarcely capable of transfer to the drama, where character is almost incident. The subject of "The School for Scandal" was, on the contrary, palpably pregnant with dramatic power; scandal, the most pertinacious, cutting, universal, and characteristic of all the evils of civilized society.

Sheridan wrote some of those com

positions which are called for by the chances of the Theatre. "A Monody on Garrick's Death," in 1779, a feeble and tedious production, prologues, epilogues, &c. From the specimens given by Mr Moore, he would have been popular in the latter style, if his general dislike for exertion had not so soon led him to abandon everything that belonged to a career for which he was more eminently marked out by nature than any man of his century.

THE number of the Quarterly Review which is just published, contains an article on the contagiousness of the plague, which professes to be a review of Dr Macmichael's "Brief Sketch of the Progress of Opinion upon the Subject of Contagion," but which says nothing about him or his book. This is not fair, particularly as the reviewer, in that part of his article in which he destroys the authority of the anticontagionists, by showing their ignorance of facts, derives his most powerful argument from Dr Macmichael. The Westminster Peview had said, if the plague had been contagious, it would have been so manifest that it never could have been doubted, for no one ever doubted that the small-pox was contagious. To this assertion Dr Macmichael's pamphlet is an unanswerable refutation. He shows, that as late as the great English Hippocrates, Sydenham, physicians were not aware that the small-pox was contagious, but attributed it to other causes, particularly unhealthy states of the air, and that the notion of contagion, so far from being obvious and manifest even in those diseases in which it is now the most certain, as small-pox, measles, and scarlet fever, was arrived at very slowly and gradually. When Dr M'Lean was examined on the subject of contagion by a committee of the House of Commons, he was asked how he explained the fact, that people who shut themselves up in a house, while the plague was raging about, escaped the disease? His answer was, that their safety depended on the air in which the house is situated, on its elevation from the ground-on shutting the windows at the most dangerous periods of the day, so as not to

allow a draught of air from the town. On this Dr Macmichael's remark is very striking,

"Now it may be worth while to inquire, what is the exact situation of those Frank inhabitants of Constantinople, who, during the height of the plague in that city, shut themselves up and adopt the precautions of a voluntary quarantine; and I will select the residence of the British embassy, which is usually called the English palace, as an example. It is situated in Pera, and stands in the centre of a large garden, which is surrounded by high walls. It immediately adjoins a Turkish cemetery, where multitudes are buried daily during the season of pestilence. All the windows of the apartments usually inhabited look to the south and south-west; they are almost always kept open, and the freest ventilation constantly maintained. The inmates of the palace take exercise in the garden, which is of several acres extent, at all hours, and expose themselves without the slightest reserve, to every change of temperature; in short, the only precaution they adopt is to remain within their walls, and avoid the possibility of touching any one infected with the plague. If it were possible that the disease should be excited by the air, what could save the English residents from its attacks? They are as much exposed to the influence of the atmosphere, particularly to the pestilential blasts from the south, as if they were walking the streets of Constantinople, and yet they uniformly escape. But it may be observed, that the wind here blows generally from the east or west, that is up or down the channel of the Bosphorus, and when it sets in from