crisis of its growth; and it is steeped through and through with the instincts and convictions which, mellowed by further thought and experience, were to colour the whole body of his subsequent poetry. Even in the history of the drama this play is not without significance. It is a marked instance of the tendency, which is to be traced so clearly in the best dramatic work of the last hundred years, and which, with all its dangers, is perhaps the best sign of promise for the future, the tendency to lay stress not on outward action but on "the incidents in the development of a soul." In this sense The Borderers has some analogy with Don Carlos and Iphigenie; it points the way to Luria and Colombe's Birthday. In comedy, during these thirty years, there are three names of note, and one of enduring distinction. These are Richard Cumberland (17321811), George Colman the younger (17621836), Holcroft (1745-1809), and Sheridan (17511816). The first of these may be regarded as the chief representative of sentimental comedy; while Sheridan and, in a less degree Colman, were its sworn foes. The best-known plays of Cumberland are The Brothers (1769), The West Indian (1771), The Jew, and The Wheel of Fortune. It is the two latter of these which have earned him the doubtful fame of sentimentalist; and to The Jew, in particular, the mocking homage offered in Retaliation is entirely applicable. The West Indian and The Wheel of Fortune are much better plays. The plot of the former, though certainly improbable, is ingeniously constructed; and the latter

Comedy.

contains an excellent character, Penruddock. It is, however, chiefly his connection with sentimental comedy, and the consequent antagonism of Goldsmith and Sheridan-he is credibly believed to have sat for the portrait of Sir Fretful Plagiary—which give him importance. Colman, who began with serious drama, wisely soon turned to comedy, his best plays being written between 1797 and 1805. His comic vein, if not deep, is genuine enough; so is his pathos; and, at his best, he unites the two in scenes and characters which are truly humorous. He does so in John Bull, and still more in The Poor Gentleman. The latter contains two figures which are clearly suggested by my Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim; but they are drawn with a completely original touch, and woven into a plot which moves on from beginning to end with an unflagging gaiety. Of his purely comic. characters, the best are Dr Pangloss in The Heir at Law, and Ollapod in The Poor Gentleman; the latter being conceived and executed in a manner which owes something to Smollett and faintly anticipates Dickens. The third and last of these dramatists is Holcroft, now chiefly remembered as author of The Road to Ruin (1792), which, though slightly overdone in sentiment, is indisputably dramatic, as well as excellently fitted for the stage; and it contains one character, Goldfinch, the horsey young spark, who is a truly comic creation. With Anna St Ives (1792) and other romances, Holcroft also enters into the history of the novel. And his autobiography, completed by Hazlitt, is a book of surprising interest.

Beggar, pedlar, stable-boy, shoemaker, tutor, translator, actor, playwright, novelist, politician-he led a life of extraordinary activity. Included in the illjudged prosecutions for high treason of 1794, he was discharged, in entire default of evidence; and, on this side, he is, as a man, the most interesting representative of that phase of opinion which reappears, under very different forms, in Godwin and Bage.

The dramatic activity of Sheridan was begun and ended within five years; from 1780 onwards his fitful energies were thrown into politics. His Sheridan. fame rests solely upon three plays, all written before he was thirty: The Rivals (1775), The School for Scandal (1777), and The Critic (1779). But Byron, if the application of his remark may be slightly altered, and if one may suppose him to have spoken only of his own generation, was clearly right in saying that each of these was "the best of its kind": the Rivals in that sort of comedy which borders upon farce; the School in pure comedy; and the Critic in burlesque. Like Goldsmith's plays, all three bear strong marks of reaction against the false sentiment which, in Kelly, Cumberland, and others, threatened to swamp the English stage. And, as Goldsmith's plays do not, the School for Scandal, at any rate, goes back, though hardly to the extent alleged by Lamb, to the "artificial comedy" of Congreve for its model. In the Rivals, it is true, the vapid episode of Julia and Falkland was thrust in, as a concession to the false taste of the time; but it is done with the worst

possible grace, and the whole strength of the author is thrown into the light comedy of the main plot and the sparkling characters which support it. It is nothing to say that Sir Anthony and Mrs Malaprop are a reminiscence of Humphrey Clinker. Their first suggestion may have been taken from that source; but it is bettered in the taking. And if the latter cannot be said of Bob Acres, who has been accused of descent from Sir Andrew Aguecheek, he is man enough to do credit to his parentage. The School for Scandal is, doubtless, a more ambitious effort. The element of farce is gone; the wit is yet more keenly polished; and the social satire is to the last degree elaborate. The whole machinery of the "school," indeed, seems to have been an afterthought; it may even, when it first occurred to Sheridan, have been designed as the material for a separate play; and, when all is said and done, it remains a question whether the "asps and amphisbænas" of the satire are quite the right company for the airy creations of the comedy. But, if the combination was an error, it is one for which the brightness of the situations, the skill of the portraiture, and, above all, the brilliance of the dialogue, amply atone. There is not the buoyant fun of Goldsmith, nor even of the Rivals. There is no character so overflowing with comic humour as Tony Lumpkin or Croaker or Mr Lofty. But in brilliance of style the School for Scandal throws everything since Congreve into the shade. The Critic, in its first intention, was a satire on such tragedies as Cumberland's Battle of Hastings. But, as the

G

fashions of false tragedy are perennial, it has lost but little of its freshness by lapse of time. And, as a burlesque, it is at least equal to any of its precursors, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, The Rehearsal, or Tom Thumb the Great. With all respect for the brilliant and honourable part which he played in politics, it is impossible not to regret that this should have been the last of Sheridan's literary ventures.

The Novel.

The Novel, it need hardly be said, fills a far larger space than the Drama in the history of the period. It follows two distinct lines of development, the one starting from the Castle of Otranto, the line of romance; the other, and at the moment the more important, carrying on the tradition of Richardson, but tending more and more to eliminate the romantic, and to retain only the more matter-of-fact, elements in the type fixed by Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison. The chief names connected with the former are Beckford (1759-1844), Mrs Radcliffe (1764-1823), and Godwin (1756-1836). In the latter all the honours are carried off by women: Miss Burney (1752-1840), Miss Austen (1775-1817), and Miss Edgeworth (1767-1849). Between these must be placed the novelists of sentiment, of whom the most notable is Mackenzie (1745-1831). And in a class by themselves we may set those who wrote mainly for purposes of edification: Hannah More (1745-1833), Mrs Inchbald (1753-1821), and Bage (1728-1801).

Romance had entrenched itself securely in poetry