We cannot help thinking that Mr. Hazlitt's almost equally admirable essay on these writers (almost in point of style, and superior in hearty relish), leaves the far truer impression respecting them, as well as contains the best and most detailed criticism on their individual plays. We did not read either of these essays over again, till we had concluded our own remarks (for what we have here said of both is an insertion); but as we thought it would be an injustice to the reader to withhold from him what he has just seen, so we hold that it would be a still greater not to give him the benefit of the masterly criticism of Mr. Hazlitt. After we had again become acquainted with them, we found reason, generally speaking, to think nothing of our own, except inasmuch as we observed a prevailing similarity of opinion. Nor may the reader be sorry to hear a third lover of the drama speak on a subject so agreeable. What we hold ourselves to have contributed to this volume is a more pains-taking set of memoirs than, we believe, has vet appeared. Mr. Hazlitt's essay will complete, amplify, and abundantly enrich the criticism and Mr. Lamb's will carry to its height a speculation more exquisitely artificial than its subject, and advantageous, some way or other, to all parties. But Hazlitt, it is to be observed, has none of the misgivings of Lamb. He does not even think it necessary to notice them. He takes the whole tribe, as nature and society (short of the exaggerations of art) threw them forward during the progress of civilization, neither doubting their reality, nor startled at it, nor forced to reconcile himself to the robustness of its levity. At all events, the reader in these additions to our prefatory matter will hear the opinions of two out of the three great critics whom we not long ago had among us. (Ah, Coleridge! and art thou gone away into an infinitude hardly wider than thy thoughts! Ah, dear Hazlitt and Lamb, old teadrinking friends and teachers! must he that writes this-learn no more from you, in voice as well as in mute books? Is it true, as sometimes he can hardly think it is that neither of you is again coming down the street to his door, nor he to yours? and that he even can write a little better poetry than he did, and you not be alive to turn these tears in his eyes to pride instead of sorrow?) ON WYCHERLEY, CONGREVE, VANBRUGH, AND FARQUHAR. COMEDY is a "graceful ornament to the civil order; the Corinthian capital of polished society." Like the mirrors which have been added to the sides of one of our theatres, it reflects the images of grace, of gaiety, and pleasure double, and completes the perspective of human life. To read a good comedy is to keep the best company in the world, where the best things are said, and the most amusing happen. The wittiest remarks are always ready on the tongue, and the luckiest occasions are always at hand to give birth to the happiest conceptis ns. Sense makes strange havoc of nonsense. Refinement acts as a foil to affectation, and affectation to ignorance. Sentence after sentence tells. We don't know which to admire most, the observation, or the answer to it. We would give our fingers to be able to talk so ourselves, or to hear others talk so. In turning over the pages of the best comedies, we are almost transported to another world, and escape from this dull age to one that was all life, and whim, and mirth, and humour. The curtain rises, and a gayer scene presents itseif, as on the canvas of Watteau. We are admitted behind the scenes like spectators at court, on a levee or birth-day; but it is the court, the gala-day of wit and pleasure, of gallantry and Charles II.! What an air breathes from the name! what a rustling of silks and waving of plumes! what a sparkling of diamond ear-rings and shoc-buckles! What bright eyes, (ah, those were Waller's Sacharissa's as she passed!) what killing looks and graceful emotions! How the faces of the whole ring are dressed in smiles! how the repartee goes round! how wit and folly, elegance and awkward imitation of it, set one another off! Happy, thoughtless age, when kings and nobles led purely ornamental lives; when the utmost stretch of a morning's study went no farther than the choice of a sword-knot, or the adjustment of a side-curl; when the soul spoke out in all the pleasing eloquence of dress: and beaux and belles, enamoured of themselves in one another's follies, fluttered like gilded butterflies, in giddy mazes, through the walks of St. James's Park! The four principal writers of this style of comedy (which I think the best) are undoubtedly Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar. The dawn was in Etherege, as its latest close was in Sheridan.--It is hard to say which of these four is best, or in what each of them excels, they had so many and such great excellences. Congreve is the most distinct from the others, and the most easily defined, both from what he possessed, and from what he wanted. He had by far the most wit and elegance, with less of other things, of humour, character, incident, &c. His style is inimitable, nay perfect. It is the highest model of comic dialogue. Every sentence is replete with sense and satire, conveyed in the most polished and pointed terms. Every page presents a shower of brilliant conceits, is a tissue of epigrams in prose, is a new triumph of wit, a new conquest over dulness. The fire of artful raillery is nowhere else so well kept up. This style, which he was almost the first to introduce, and which he carried to the utmost pitch of classical refinement, reminda one exactly of Collins's description of wit as opposed to humour, "Whose jewels in his crisped hair Are placed each other's light to share." Sheridan will not oear a comparison with him in the regular antithetical construction of his sentences, and in the mechanical artifices of his style, though so much later, and though style in general has been so much studied, and in the mechanical part so much improved since then. It bears every mark of being what he himself in the dedication of one of his plays tells us that it was, a spirited copy taken off and carefully revised from the most select society of his time, exhibiting all the sprightliness, ease, and animation of familiar conversation, with the correctness and delicacy of the most finished composition. His works are a singular treat to those who have cultivated a taste for the niceties of English style: there is a peculiar flavour in the very words, which is to be found in hardly any other writer. To the mere reader his writings would be an irreparable loss to the stage they are already become a dead letter, with the exception of one of them,— "Love for Love." This play is as full of character, incident, and stage effect, as almost any of those of his contemporaries, and fuller of wit than any of his own, except perhaps "The Way of the World." It still acts, and is still acted well. The effect of it is prodigious on the well-informed spectator. In particular, Munden's Foresight, if it is not just the thing, is a wonderfully rich and powerful piece of comic acting. His look is planet-struck; his dress and appearance like one of the signs of the zodiac taken down. Nothing can be more bewildered; and it only wants a little more helplessness, a little more of the doting querulous garrulity of age, to be all that one conceives of the superannuated star-gazing original. The gay, un, oncerned opening of this play, and the romantic generosity of the conclusion, where Valentine, when about to resign his mistress, declares-“I never valued fortune, but as it was subservient to my pleasure; and my only pleasure was to please this lady,"—are alike admirable. The peremptory bluntness and exaggerated description of Sir Sampson Legend are in a vein truly oriental, with a Shakspearian cast of language, and form a striking contrast to the quaint credulity and senseless superstitions of Foresight. The remonstrance of his son to him, "to divest him, along with his inheritance, of his reason, thoughts, passions, inclinations, affections, appetites senses, and the huge train of attendants which he brought into the world with him," with his valet's accompanying comments, is one of the most eloquent and spirited specimens of wit, pathos, and morality, that is to be found. The short scene with Trapland, the money-broker, is of the first water. What a picture is here drawn of Tattle! "More misfortunes, sir!" says Jeremy. Valentine: "What, another dun?" Jeremy: "No, sir: but Mr. Tuttle is come to wait upon you." What an introduction to give of an honest gentleman in the shape of a misfortune! The scenes between him, Miss Prue, and Ben, are of a highlycoloured description. Mrs Frail and Mrs. Foresight are "sisters every way; and the bodkin which Mrs. Foresight brings as a proof of her sister's levity of conduct, and which is so convincingly turned against her as a demonstration of her own-" Nay, if you come to that, where did you find that bodkin?"—is one of the trophies of the moral justice of the comic drama. "The Old Bachelor" and "Double Dealer inferior to "Love for Love," but one is never tired of reading them. The fault of the last is, that Lady Touchwood approaches, in the turbulent impetuosity of her character and measured tone of her declamation, too near to the tragedy-queen; and that Maskwell's plots puzzle the brain by their intricacy, as they stagger our belief by their gratuitous villany. Sir Paul and Lady Pliant, and my Lord and Lady Froth, are also scarcely credible in the extravagant insipidity and romantic vein of their follies, in which they are notably seconded by the lively Mr. Brisk and "dying Ned Careless." arc "The Way of the World" was the author's last and most carefully finished performance. It is an essence almost too fine; and the sense of pleasure evaporates in an aspiration after something that seems too exquisite ever to have been realised. After inhaling the spirit of Congreve's wit, and tasting "love's thrice reputed nectar" in his works, the head grows giddy in turning from the highest point of rapture to the ordinary business of life; and we can with difficulty recall the truant Fancy to those objects which we are fain to take up with here, for better, for worse. What can be more enchanting than Millamant and her morning thoughts, her doux sommeils? What more provoking than her reproach to her lover, who proposes to rise early, "Ah! idle creatur!" The meeting of these two lovers after the abrupt dismissal of Sir Wilful is the height of careless and voluptuous elegance, as if they moved in air, and drank a finer spirit of humanity. "Millamant. Like Phoebus sung the no less amorous boy. Mirabell. Like Daphne she, as lovely and as coy." Millamant is the perfect model of the accomplished fine lady. "Come, then, the colours and the ground prepare, Dip in the rainbow, trick her off in air; Choose a firm cloud, before it falls, and in it Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of a minute." She is the ideal heroine of the comedy of high life, who arrives at the height of indifference to everything from the height of satisfaction; to whom pleasure is as familiar as the air she draws; elegance worn as a part of her dress; wit the habitual language which she hears and speaks; love, a matter of course; and who has nothing to hope or to fear, her own caprice being the only law to herself, and rule to those about her. Her words seem composed of amorous sighs—her looks are glanced at prostrate admirers or envious rivals. "If there's delight in love, 'tis when I see That heart that others bleed for, bleed for me." She refines on her pleasures to satiety; and is almost stifled in the incense that is offered to her person, her wit, her beauty, and her fortune. Secure of triumph, her slaves tremble at her frown; her charms are so irresistible, that her conquests give her neither surprise nor concern. "Beauty, the lover's gift?" she exclaims, in answer to Mirabell-" Dear me, what is a lover that it can give? Why one makes lovers as fast as one pleases, and they live as long as one pleases, and they die as soon as one pleases; and then if one pleases, one makes more." We are not sorry to see her tamed down at last, from her pride of love and beauty, into a wife. She is good-natured and generous, with all her temptations to the contrary; and her behaviour to Mirabell reconciles us to her treatment of Witwoud and Petulant, and of her country admirer, Sir Wilful. Congreve has described all this in his character of Millamant, but he has done no more; and if he had, he would have done wrong. He has given us the finest idea of an artificial character of this kind; but it is still the reflection of an artificial character. The springs of nature, passion, or imagination are but feebly touched. The impressions appealed to, and with masterly address, are habitual, external, and conventional advantages: the ideas of birth, of fortune, of connexions, of dress, accomplishment, fashion, the opinion of the world, of crowds of admirers, continually come into play, flatter our vanity, bribe our interest, soothe our indolence, fall in with our prejudices;-it is these that support the goddess of our idolatry, with which she is everything, and without which she would be nothing. The mere fine lady of comedy, compared with the heroine of romance or poetry, when stripped of her adventitious ornaments and advantages, is too much like the doll stripped of its finery. In thinking of Millamant, we think almost as much of her dress as of her person it is not so with respect to Rosalind or Perdita. The poet has painted them differently; in colours which "nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on," with health, with innocence, with gaiety, "wild wit, invention ever new; with pure red and white, like the wilding's blossoms; with warbled wood-notes, like the feathered choir's; with thoughts fluttering on the wings of imagination, and hearts panting and breathless with eager delight. The interest we feel is in themselves; the admiration they excite is for themselves. They do not depend upon the drapery of circumstances. It is nature that "blazons herself" in them. Imogen is the same in a lonely cave as in a court; nay more, for she there seems something heavenly-a spirit or a vision ; and, as it were, shames her destiny, brighter for the foil of circumstances. Millamant is nothing but a fine lady; and all her airs and affectation would be blown away with the first breath of misfortune. Enviable in drawing-rooms, adorable at her toilette, fashion, like a witch, has thrown its speil around her; but if that spell were broken, her power of fascination would be gone. For that reason I think the character better adapted for the stage: it is more artificial, more theatrical, more meretricious. I would rather have seen Mrs. Abington's Millamant, than any Rosalind that ever appeared on the stage. Some how, this sort of acquired elegance is more a thing of costume, of air and manner; and in comedy, or on the comic stage, the light and familiar, the trifling, superficial, and agreeable, bears, perhaps, rightful sway over that which touches the affections, or exhausts the fancy.-There is a callousness in the worst characters in the "Way of the World," in Fuinall, and his wife and Mrs. Marwood, not very pleasant; and a grossness in the absurd ones, such as Lady Wishfort and Sir Wilful, which is not a little amusing. Witwoud wishes to disclaim, as far as he can, his relationship to this last character, and says, "he is but his half-brother;" to which Mirabell makes answer" Then, perhaps, he's but half a fool." Peg is an admirable caricature of rustic awkwardness and simplicity, which is carried to excess without any offence, from a sense of contrast to the refinement of the chief characters in the play. The description of Lady Wishfort's face is a perfect piece of painting. The force of style in this author at times amounts to poetry. Waitwell, who personates Sir Rowland, and Foible, his accomplice in the matrimonial scheme upon her mistress, hang as a dead weight upon the plot. They are mere tools in the hands of Mirabell, and want life and interest. Congreve's characters can all of them speak well, they are mere machines when they come to act. Our author's superiority deserted him almost entirely with his wit. His serious and tragic poetry is frigid and jejune to an unaccountable degree. His forte was the description of actual manners, whether elegant or absurd; and when he could not deride the one or embellish the other, his attempts at romantic passion or imaginary enthusiasm are forced, abortive, and ridiculous, or common-place. The description of the ruins of a temple in the beginning of the "Mourning Bride," was a great stretch of his poetic genius. It has, however, been over-rated, particularly by Dr. Johnson, who could have done nearly as well himself for a single passage in the same style of moralising and sentimental description. To justify this general censure, and to show how the lightest and most graceful wit degenerates into the heaviest and most bombastic poetry, I will give one description out of his tragedy, which will be enough. It is the speech which Gonsalez addresses to Almeria: "Be every day of your long life like this. The sun, bright conquest, and your brighter eyes Is entering now, in martial pomp, the palace. Five hundred mules precede his solemn march, Which groan beneath the weight of Moorish wealth Chariots of war, adorn'd with glittering gems, That bound, and foam, and champ the golden bit, As they disdain'd the victory they grace. Sweat by his chariot-wheels, and lick and grind, With gnashing teeth, the dust his triumphs raise. The swarming populace spread every wall, And cling, as if with claws they did enforce Their hold, through clifted stones stretching and staring As if they were all eyes, and every limb Would feed its faculty of admiration, While you alone retire, and shun this sight; This sight, which is indeed not seen (though twice The multitude should gaze) in absence of your eyes." This passage seems, in part, an imitation of Bolingbroke's entry into London. The style is as different from Shakspeare, as it is from that of Witwoud and Petulant. It is plain that the imagination of the author could not raise itself above the burlesque. His Mask of Semele, Judgment of Paris, and other occasiona! poeins, are even worse. I would not advise any one to read them, or if I did, they would not. He is a Wycherley was before Congreve; and his "Country Wife" will last longer than anything of Congreve's, as a popular acting play. It is only a pity that it is not entirely his own; but it is enough so to do him never-ceasing honour, for the best things are his own. His humour is, in general, broader, his characters more natural, and his incidents more striking, than Congreve's. It may be said of Congreve that the workmanship overlays the materials: in Wycherley, the casting of the parts and the fable are alone sufficient to ensure success. We forget Congreve's characters, and only remember what they say: we remember Wycherley's characters, and the incidents they meet with, just as if they were real, and forget what they say, comparatively speaking. Miss Peggy (or Mrs. Margery Pinchwife) is a character that will last for ever, I should hope; and even when the original is no more, if that should ever be, while self-will, curiosity, art, and ignorance are to be found in the same person, it will be just as good and as intelligible as ever in the description, because it is built on first principles, and brought out in the fullest and broadest manner. Agnes, in Molière's play, has a great deal of the same unconscious impulse and heedless naïveté, but hers is sentimentalised and varnished over (in the French fashion) with long-winded apologies and analytical distinctions. It wants the same simple force and home truth. It is not so direct and downright. Miss Peggy is not even a novice in casuistry: she blurts out her meaning before she knows what she is saying, and she speaks her mind by her actions oftener than by her words. The outline of the plot is the same; but the point-blank hits and master-strokes, the sudden thoughts and delightful expedients, such as her changing the letters, the meeting her husband plump in the Park as she is running away from him as fast as her heels can carry her, her being turned out of doors by her jealous booby of a husband, and sent by him to her lover disguised as Alicia, her sister-in-law-occur first in the modern play. There are scarcely any incidents or situations on the stage, which tell like these for pantomimic effect, which give such tingling to the blood, or so completely take away the breath with expectation and surprise. Miss Prue, in "Love for Love," is a lively reflection of Miss Peggy, but without the bottom and weight of metal. Hoyden is a match for her in constitution and complete effect, as Corinna, in the " Confederacy," is in mischief, but without the wit. Mrs. Jordan used to play all these characters; and as she played them, it was hard to know which was best. Pinchwife or Moody, (as he is at present called) is, like others of Wycherley's moral characters, too rustic, abrupt, and cynical. more disagreeable, but less tedious character than the husband of Agnes, and both seem, by all accounts, to have been rightly served. The character of Sparkish is quite new, and admirably hit off. He is an exquisite and suffocating coxcomb; a pretender to wit and letters, without common understanding, or the use of his senses. The class of character is thoroughly exposed and understood; but he persists in his absurd conduct so far, that it becomes extravagant and disgusting, if not incredible, from mere weakness and foppery. Yet there is something in him that we are inclined to tolerate at first, as his professing that "with him a wit is the first title to respect;" and we regard his unwillingness to be pushed out of the room, and coming back, in spite of their teeth, to keep the company of wits and raillers, as a favourable omen. But he utterly disgraces his pretensions before he has done. With all his faults and absurdities, he is, however, a much less offensive character than Tattle.-Horner is a stretch of probability in the first concoction of that ambiguous character (for he does not appear at present on the stage as Wycherley made him); but notwithstanding the indecency and indirectness of the means he employs to carry his plans into effect, he deserves every sort of consideration and forgiveness, both for the display of his own ingenuity, and the deep insight he discovers into human nature-such as it was in the time of Wycherley. The author has commented on this character, and the double meaning of the name in his "Plain Dealer," borrowing the remarks, and almost the very words of Molière, who has brought forward and defended his own work against the objections of the precise part of his audience, in his Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes. There is no great harm in these occasional plagiarisms, except that they make one uncomfortable at other times, and distrustful of the originality of the whole.The Plain Dealer" is Wycherley's next best work; and is a most severe and poignant moral satire. There is a heaviness about it, indeed, an extravagance, an overdoing both in the style, the plot, and characters; but the truth of feeling and the force of interest prevail over every objection. The character of Manly, the Plain Dealer, is violent, repulsive, and uncouth, which is a fault, though one that seems to have been intended for the sake of contrast; for the portrait of consummate, artful hypocrisy in Olivia, is, perhaps, rendered more striking by it. The indignation excited against this odious and pernicious quality by the masterly exposure to which it is here subjected, is "a discipline of humanity." No one can read this play attentively without being the better for it as long as he lives. It penetrates to the core; it shows the immorality and hateful effects of duplicity, by showing it fixing its harpy fangs in the heart of an honest and worthy man. It is worth ten volumes of sermons. The scenes between Manly after his return, Olivia, Plausible, and Novel, are instructive examples of unblushing impudence, of shallow pretensions to principle, |