it were sold before two o'clock on the morning of its publication, and a public breakfast was given to the author. For acting at Paris it was translated into French by Madame Riccobini, and into French by another hand for acting at the Hague, into Portugese by command of the Marquis de Pombal for acting at Lisbon; it was translated also into Italian and German. The new utterances of the heart were the strength of a few men and the cant of thouands.

But

In Sheridan's "School for Scandal," the tone of the time is reproduced. The cant of sentiment, lightly touched in the Lydia Languish of "The Rivals," is associated in the "School for Scandal " with the knave of the piece, with Joseph Surface, while his brother Charles, with follies and extravagances in abundance, is, in a surface way, true-hearted and unaffected. The contrast between the brothers has a certain resemblance to that between Tom Jones and Blifil in the greatest of all English novels. Fielding's implied ideal of life, untouched by cant, was throughout higher than Sheridan's; his morality was more robust. Sheridan was a true writer of comedy. All that is most worth record in the history of our acted drama for the present ends with him. He had a more natural sense of life than is to be found in the plays of Wycherley or Congreve, but there are no depths in his comedy. A light-hearted, pleasure-loving young man of the world, honest and generous, but in a way that would be dishonest if he were less shallow and more capable of thought; with follies and vices better for not having a cant of virtues to conceal them, and, on occasion, a frank, unaffected disposition to reform, of which something may or may not come; suggests no very high view of life to those who are charmed by the wit of the "School for Scandal."

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, (From the Portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds.)

Richard Brinsley Sheridan was grandson to a witty friend of Swift's, who lost promotion in the Church by forgetting what was expected from him in a ser on the first of August, the day of the

accession of George I., and taking at random an unpolitical sermon, which happened to have as its text "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Thomas, the third son of that Dr. Sheridan, became an actor and a lecturer on elocution, and he was the father of Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan, who was born in Dublin in September, 1751. When his father came afterwards to England, Sheridan was sent to school at Harrow, where the limited range of studies gave no room for the expansion of his powers; he was, out of school, one of the cleverest among the boys, in school a hopeless dunce. From school he went to Bath with his parents, and entered society there, where he saw much of the low life of the polite which he has painted in the "School for Scandal." At the age of twenty-one he eloped from Bath with Miss Linley, aged eighteen. She was a public singer who had for the last two years been flattered for her beauty, had got £3,000 for breach of promise from one lover, and taken laudanum over her distresses with another. That other was a married man, with whom the young husband presently fought two duels. He would not suffer his wife to sing in public. Though she was engaged at the price of a thousand pounds for twelve nights to sing at the Worcester festival, he caused the engagement to be cancelled. In 1775, on the 17th of January, Sheridan began to seek fortune as a dramatist; his age being then only a few months over twenty-three. His first play was "The Rivals," produced at Covent Garden. Its immediate success was not great, but it very soon made way with the public, and was followed in November of the same year by the opera of "The Duenna," also at Covent Garden. Garrick appreciated Sheridan. The great actor, then sixty years old, was retiring from stage management. He had a just sense of the genius of the young dramatist, in whom comedy seemed to live again, and upon Garrick's retirement Sheridan obtained, by purchase, a part of Garrick's share in the theatre, with charge of the management. As manager he proved but a bad man of business. He was not always sober, he was always in debt; he left letters by heaps unopened, and then burnt them, for although some might contain money, more asked for it. His treasurer saw on Sheridan's table a letter of his own, enclosing ten pounds, which had been sent immediately upon urgent request. The request had been made and forgotten; the letter in reply to it had not been opened. Actors caught the manner of the manager, and it might happen sometimes that three actors of leading parts had not troubled themselves to come to the theatre, and left the play to be produced with makeshifts in their places.

The new management began in February, 1777. with a new version, by Sheridan, of Vanbrugh's comedy, "The Relapse," under the new name of "A Trip to Scarborough." This failed. An attempt was then made to kill time with Shakespeare's "Tempest," with parts of Dryden's version, and songs by Sheridan's father-in-law, Thomas Linley, the composer, who had joined in buying Garrick's share of the theatre. The new manager did not seem to be suc ceeding, but he was preparing, by the best use of his

energies, to conquer fortune, and on the 8th of May, 1777, he produced his masterpiece, The School for Scandal." It had been carefully written and rewritten, and lay by him unfinished when the necessities of the theatre forced him to finish it quickly.

In 1779, Sheridan produced in "The Critic" the last of the witty caricatures of conventional tragedy which have a place in literature. In 1780, through the friendship of Charles James Fox, he became member for Stafford, and began his political career. His career as dramatist was over, although some years later he translated Kotzebue's “Pizarro."

In the School for Scandal," Charles and Joseph Surface are two brothers left, by the death of their father, to the guardianship of Sir Peter Teazle, but made independent by liberal allowances from their uncle, Sir Oliver, who has become rich in India. Sir Peter has a ward, Maria, whom Joseph Surface desires for her money, and Charles Surface loves for herself. Elderly Sir Peter has lately married a young beauty, the daughter of a country squire. He has brought her to London from the dulness of a country house, and she is indulging herself with all the novelties of fashion. She takes her place in the fashionable world, exercising her wit with it in the way of scandal.

Sir Pet. Lady Teazle, Lady Teazle, I'll not bear it! Lady Teas. Sir Peter, Sir Peter, you may bear it or not, as you please; but I ought to have my own way in everything, and, what's more, I will too. What! though I was educated in the country, I know very well that women of fashion in London are accountable to nobody after they are married.

Sir Pet. Very well, ma'am, very well; so a husband is to have no influence, no authority?

Lady Teaz. Authority! No, to be sure:-if you wanted authority over me, you should have adopted me, and not married me; I am sure you were old enough.

Sir Pet. Old enough!-ay, there it is. Well, well, Lady Teazle, though my life may be made unhappy by your temper, I'll not be ruined by your extravagance!

Lady Teaz. My extravagance! I'm sure I'm not more extravagant than a woman of fashion ought to be.

Sir Pet. No, no, madam, you shall throw away no more sums on such unmeaning luxury. 'Slife! to spend as much to furnish your dressing-room with flowers in winter as would suffice to turn the Pantheon into a greenhouse, and give a fite champitre at Christmas.

Lady Teaz. And am I to blame, Sir Peter, because flowers are dear in cold weather? You should find fault with the climate, and not with me. For my part, I'm sure I wish it was spring all the year round, and that roses grew under our feet!

Sir Pet. Oons! madam-if you had been born to this, I shouldn't wonder at your talking thus; but you forget what your situation was when I married you.

Lady Teaz. No, no, I don't; 'twas a very disagreeable one, or I should never have married you.

Sir Pet. Yes, yes, madam, you were then in somewhat a humbler style-the daughter of a plain country squire. Recollect, Lady Teazle, when I saw you first sitting at your tambour, in a pretty figured linen gown, with a bunch of keys at your side, your hair combed smooth over a roll, and your apartment hung round with fruits in worsted, of your own working.

Lady Tea. Oh, yes! I remember it very well, and a curious life I led. My daily occupation to inspect the dairy, superintend the poultry, make extracts from the family receipt-book, and comb my aunt Deborah's lapdog.

Sur Pet. Yes, yes, ma'am, twas so indeed.

Lady Teaz. And then you know, my evening amusements! To draw patterns for ruffles, which I had not materials to make up: to play Pope Joan with the curate; to read a sermon to my aunt; or to be stuck down to an old spinet to strum my father to sleep after a fox-chase.

Sur Pet. I am glad you have so good a memory. Yes, madam, these were the recreations I took you from; but now you must have your couch-is-a-ris-and three powdered footmen before your chair; and, in the summer, a pair of white cats to draw you to Kensington Gardens. No recollection, I suppose, when you were content to ride double, behind the butler, on a docked coach-horse.

Lady Tea No-I swear I never did that: I deny the butler and the coach-horse.

Sir Pet. This, madam, was your situation; and what have I done for you! I have made you a woman of fashion, of fortune, of rank-in short, I have made you my wife.

Lady Tear. Well, then, and there is but one thing more you can make me to add to the obligation, that is Sir Pet. My widow, I suppose?

Lady Tear. Hem! hem!

Sir Pet. I thank you, madam-but don't flatter yourself; for, though your ill conduct may disturb my peace of mind, it shall never break my heart, I promise you: however, I am equally obliged to you for the hint

Lady Tea. Then why will you endeavour to make yourself so disagreeable to me, and thwart me in every little elegant expense?

Sir Pet. 'Slife, madam, I say, had you any of these little elegant expenses when you married me ?

Lady Tea: Lud, Sir Peter! would you have me be out of the fashion?

Sir Pet. The fashion, indeed! what had you to do with the fashion before you married me?

Lady Teaz. For my part, I should think you would like to have your wife thought a woman of taste.

Sir Pet. Ay-there again-taste! Zounds! madam, you had no taste when you married me!

Lady Teaz. That's very true, indeed, Sir Peter! and, after having married you, I should never pretend to taste again. I allow. But now, Sir Peter, since we have finished our daily jangle, I presume I may go to my engagement at Lady Sneerwell's.

Lady Sneerwell, with a fancy of her own for Charles Surface, uses the powers of scandal to secure his separation from Sir Peter's ward, Maria, and therein aids Joseph. Sir Peter believes Joseph to be a model for the young men of the age. He is a man of sentiment, and acts up to the sentiments he professes." Uncle Oliver, returned from India, makes his presence known only to an old servant, Rowley, and to his old friend, Sir Peter, while it is agreed between them that he puts the metal of the two youths to a test. In the character of a moneylender, Mr. Premium, he is witness to the reckless extravagance of Charies, who is ready to sell all the family portraits, but is restrained by personal affec tion from allowing Uncle Oliver's to go with t

rest.

Enter CHARLES SURFACE, SIR OLIVER SURFACE, MOSES, and CARELESS.

Chas. Surf. Walk in, gentlemen, pray walk in ;-here are, the family of the Surfaces, up to the Conquest. Sir Oliv. And, in my opinion, a goodly collection. Chas. Surf. Ay, ay, these are done in the true spirit of portrait-painting; no volontière grace or expression. Not like the works of your modern Raphaels, who give you the strongest resemblance, yet contrive to make your portrait independent of you; so that you may sink the original and not hurt the picture. No, no; the merit of these is the inveterate likeness-all stiff and awkward as the originals, and like nothing in human nature besides.

Sir Oliv. Ah! we shall never see such figures of men again.

Chas. Surf. I hope not. Well, you see, Master Premium, what a domestic character I am; here I sit of an evening surrounded by my family. But come, get to your pulpit, Mr. Auctioneer; here's an old gouty chair of my grandfather's will answer the purpose.

Care. Ay, ay, this will do. But, Charles, I haven't a hammer; and what's an auctioneer without his hammer?

Chas. Surf. Egad, that's true. What parchment have we here? Oh, our genealogy in full. [Taking pedigree down.] Here, Careless, you shall have no common bit of mahogany, here's the family tree for you, you rogue! This shall be your hammer, and now you may knock down my ancestors with their own pedigree.

Sir Oliv. [Aside.] What an unnatural rogue!—an ex post facto parricide!

Care. Yes, yes, here's a list of your own generation indeed;-faith, Charles, this is the most convenient thing you could have found for the business, for 'twill not only serve as a hammer, but a catalogue into the bargain. Come, begin -A-going, a-going, a-going!

Chas. Surf. Bravo, Careless! Well, here's my great-uncle, Sir Richard Raveline, a marvellous good general in his day, I assure you. He served in all the Duke of Marlborough's wars, and got that cut over his eye at the battle of Malplaquet. What say you, Mr. Premium? look at him-there's a hero! not cut out of his feathers, as your modern clipped captains are, but enveloped in wig and regimentals, as a general should be. What do you bid?

Sir Oliv. [Aside to MOSES.] Bid him speak. Mos. Mr. Premium would have you speak. Chas. Surf. Why, then, he shall have him for ten pounds, and I'm sure that's not dear for a staff-officer.

Sir Oliv. [Aside.] Heaven deliver me! his famous uncle Richard for ten pounds!-[Aloud.] Very well, sir, I take him

at that.

Chas. Surf. Careless, knock down my uncle Richard.--. Here, now, is a maiden sister of his, my great-aunt Deborah, done by Kneller, in his best manner, and esteemed a very formidable likeness. There she is, you see, a shepherdess feeding her flock. You shall have her for five pounds tenthe sheep are worth the money.

Sir Oliv. [Aside.] Ah! poor Deborah! a woman who set such a value on herself!-[Aloud.] Five pounds ten-she's mine.

Chas. Surf. Knock down my aunt Deborah! Here, now, are two that were a sort of cousins of theirs.

But plague on 't! we shall be all day retailing in this manner; do let us deal wholesale: what say you, little Premium? Give me three hundred pounds for the rest of the family in the lump.

Care. Ay, ay, that will be the best way.

Sir Oliv. Well, well, anything to accommodate you; they are mine. But there is one portrait which you have always passed over.

Care. What, that ill-looking little fellow over the settee? Sir Oliv. Yes, sir, I mean that; though I don't think him so ill-looking a little fellow, by any means.

Chas. Surf. What, that? Oh; that's my uncle Oliver! 't was done before he went to India.

Care. Your uncle Oliver! Gad, then you'll never be friends, Charles. That, now, to me, is as stern a looking rogue as ever I saw; an unforgiving eye, and a damned disinheriting countenance! an inveterate knave, depend on't. Don't you think so, little Premium?

Sir Oliv. Upon my soul, sir, I do not; I think it is as honest a looking face as any in the room, dead or alive. But

I suppose uncle Oliver goes with the rest of the lumber? Chas. Surf. No, hang it! I'll not part with poor Noll. The old fellow has been very good to me, and, egad, I'll keep his picture while I've a room to put it in.

Sir Oliv. [Aside.] The rogue's my nephew after all![Aloud.] But, sir, I have somehow taken a fancy to that picture.

Chas. Surf. I'm sorry for't, for you certainly will not have it. Oons, haven't you got enough of them?

Sir Oliv. [Aside.] I forgive him everything! [Aloud.) But, sir, when I take a whim in my head, I don't value money. I'll give you as much for that as for all the rest. Chas. Surf. Don't tease me, master broker; I tell you I'll not part with it, and there's an end of it.

Sir Oliv. [Aside.] How like his father the dog is!

In the character of a poor relation, Mr. Stanley (to whom Charles sends at once a hundred pounds of the money paid for his ancestors), Sir Oliver sees the hardness under the smooth words of Joseph, and hears his own character for liberality traduced to furnish his nephew with an excuse for giving nothing. While Sir Peter believes in Joseph, Joseph is seeking Maria for her money, and urging a treacherous suit also upon Sir Peter's wife. Humourous forms of the fashionable love of scandal are delightfully contrasted and grouped in Sir Benjamin Backbite, Crabtree, Lady Sneerwell, Mrs. Candour, and others, each of whom is well interwoven with the plot. The unmasking of the knave in the Fourth Act unites the chief characters in one of the most dramatic passages in our prose comedy; and although the chief interest is then over, the Fifth Act brings the several lines of the story to their common end so pleasantly that not a word of it appears to be superfluous. It was, in fact, added very hastily to work of which every preceding detail had been subject to frequent revision. The play was announced for representation before copies of their parts were in the prompter's hands for distribution to the actors. On the last leaf of the one rough draft of the last act, in the original MS., Sheridan wrote, "Finished at last, thank God under which, the prompter added, "Amen: W. Hopkins."

CHAPTER X.

SINCE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789. AFTER the French Revolution, the strong tide of sentiment rolled on. Authority was everywher

questioned. Bonds and ordinances of society were reconsidered. The thoughts of men

Turned inward, to examine of what stuff
Time's fetters are composed; and life was put
To inquisition long and profitless.

By pain of heart-now checked-and now impelled-
The intellectual power, through words and things
Went sounding on, a dim and perilous way.1

Such speculations had one of their sickliest forms in the German dramas of the close of the eighteenth century, and translations of these abounded. Goethe's "Stella"-where a problem of the heart is settled

web of unwholesome sentiment into a problem like that of "Stella" or Captain Macheath's "How happy could I be with either, were t'other dear charmer away." In this case, however, the solution is not as in "Stella," but thus:

Malvina. [Turning to ADELAIDE with reserve and affection.] I have prayed for you and myself-let us be sisters.

Adelaide. Sisters! [Seems for a moment buried in reflection.] Sisters!-Good girl! you awake in me a consoling thought. Yes. Sisters let us be, if this man will be our brother. As we cannot share him, neither of us must possess him. We, as sisters, will dwell in one hut-he, as our brother, in another. He will assist us in educating our children.

by the consent of two wives to share Count Ferdinand between them--was translated in 1798, and ridiculed by Canning and his friends of "The Antijacobin" in "The Rovers; or, The Double Arrangement," Schiller's "Robbers" being included in the satire." Plays of Kotzebue and Iffland were in request. In Kotzebue's "La Perouse," acted at Drury Lane in 1799, the married hero is wrecked on a lonely paradise in the South Seas. There abandoning all hope of return to civilisation, he gives his heart and hand to Malvina, a lady of the "child of nature" type then popular as a sentimental contrast to the false conventions of what some called over-civilised society. He and she and a little son Charles have the island to themselves. After eight years there comes a ship, and there lands from it Madame La Perouse, with a little son Henry, and Clairville, Madame's brother. The dramatist then weaves his

1 Wordsworth's "Excursion," Book III.

2 See the volume of this Library containing "Shorter English Poems," pazes 431, 432.

During the day we will form one happy family, and the evening shall part us. The mothers shall remain with their children-the father in his hut.-Do you consent to this, Malvina and you, Perouse?

Malvina. Willingly, if I may but see him.

Perouse. With all my heart, if you be thereby satisfied.

Clairville. Brother, I wish you joy. The treaty is concluded. Take each other's hands, and ratify it by a warm embrace.

Adelaide. [Goes towards PEROUSE with outstretched arms.] A sister's embrace.

Clairville. As you please, I don't dispute about expressions. Malvina. My friend! My brother!

Perouse. [Holding them both in his arms.] My sisters! Charles. [Creeping to MALVINA.] My mother is happy. Henry. [Hanging on ADELAIDE.] My mother smiles again. Clairville. The paradise of innocence! [The curtain falls.

A very foggy paradise. The Drury Lane in which this play was acted was a handsome theatre. The house, for the opening of which Samuel Johnson