markable for exhibiting The Rivals and The School for Scandal. Critics prefer the latter; while the general audience reap, perhaps, more pleasure from the former; the pleasantry being of a more general cast, the incidents more complicated and varied, and the whole plot more interesting. In both these plays, the gentlemanlike ease of Farquhar is united with the wit of Congreve. Indeed, the wit of Sheridan, though equally brilliant with that of his celebrated predecessor, flows so easily, and is so happily elicited by the tone of the dialogue, that in admiring its sparkles, we never once observe the stroke of the flint which produces them. Wit and pleasantry seemed to be the natural atmosphere of this extraordinary man, whose history was at once so brilliant and so melancholy. Goldsmith was, perhaps, in relation to Sheridan, what Vanburgh was to Congreve. His comedies turn on an extravagance of intrigue and disguise, and so far belong to the Spanish school. But the ease of his humorous dialogue, and the droll, yet true conception of the characters, made sufficient amends for an occasional stretch in point of probability. If all who draw on the spectators for indulgence, were equally prepared to compensate by a corresponding degree of pleasure, they would have little occasion to complain. The elder Colman's Jealous Wife, and some of his smaller pieces, are worthy, and it is no ordinary compliment, of being placed beside these master-pieces. We dare not rank Cumberland so high, although two or three of his numerous efforts retain possession of the stage. The Wheel of Fortune was certainly one of the best acting plays of

its time; but it was perhaps chiefly on account of the admirable representative which the principal character found in Mr John Kemble.1

The plays of Foote, the modern Aristophanes, who ventured, by his powers of mimicking the mind as well as the external habits, to bring living persons on the stage, belong to this period, and make a remarkable part of its dramatic history. But we need not dwell upon it. Foote was an unprincipled satirist; and while he affected to be the terror of vice and folly, was only anxious to extort forbearance-money from the timid, or to fill his theatre at the indiscriminate expense of friends and enemies, virtuous or vicious, who presented foibles capable of being turned into ridicule. It is a just punishment of this course of writing, that Foote's plays, though abounding in comic and humorous dialogue, have died with the parties whom he ridiculed. When they lost the zest of personality, their popularity, in spite of much intrinsic merit, fell into utter decay.

Meantime dramatic composition of the higher class seemed declining. Garrick, in our fathers' time, Mrs Siddons in ours, could neither of them extract from their literary admirers any spark of congenial fire. No part written for either of these astonishing performers has survived the transient popularity which their talents could give to almost any thing. The truth seems to be, that the French model had been wrought upon till it was altogether worn out; and a new impulse from some other quarter-a fresh turning up of the soil, and awakening

1 [See note, ante, vol. iii., Memoir of Cumberland, p. 214.]

of its latent energies by a new mode of culture, was become absolutely necessary to the renovation of our dramatic literature. England was destined to receive this impulse from Germany, where literature was in the first luxuriant glow of vegetation, with all its crop of flowers and weeds rushing up together. There was good and evil in the importation derived from this superabundant source. But the evil was of a nature so contrary to that which had long palsied our dramatic literature, that, like the hot poison mingling with the cold, it may in the issue bring us nearer to a state of health.

The affectation of Frederick II. of Prussia, and of other German princes, for a time suppressed the native literature, and borrowed their men of letters from France, as well as their hair-dressers,-their Dramas as well as their dressed dishes.1 The con

1 [" The pitiful condition of the theatre in Germany at the end of the seventeenth and during the first third part of the eighteenth century, wherever there was any other stage than that of puppet-shows and mountebanks, exactly corresponded to that of the other departments of our literature. We have a standard for this wretchedness, when we consider that Gottsched could pass for the restorer of our literature; Gottsched, whose writings resemble a watery beverage, such as was then usually recommended to patients in a state of convalescence, from an idea that they could bear nothing stronger, by which means their stomach became still more enfeebled.Gottsched, among his other labours, composed a great deal for the theatre; connected with a certain Madam Neuber, who was at the head of a company of players in Leipzic, he discarded Punch (Hanswurst), and they buried him solemnly with great triumph. I am willing to believe that the parts of Punch, of which we may even yet form a judgment from puppet-shows, were not always ingeniously filled up extemporarily, and that many flat things might occasionally be uttered by him; but still Punch had undoubtedly more sense

tinental courts, therefore, had no share in forming the national Drama. To the highest circle in every nation, that of France will be most acceptable, not only on account of its strict propriety and conformity to les convenances, but also as securing them against the risk of hearing bold and offensive truths uttered in the presence of the sovereign and the subject. But the bold, frank, cordial, and rough character of the German people at large, did not relish the style of the French tragedies translated for their stage; and this cannot be wondered at, when the wide difference between the nations is considered.

The national character of the Germans is diametrically opposite to that of the French. The latter are light almost to frivolity, quick in seeing points of ridicule, slowly awakened to those of feeling. The Germans are of an abstracted, grave, and somewhat heavy temper; less alive to the ridiculous, more easily moved by an appeal to the passions. That which moves a Frenchman to laughter, affects a German with sorrow or indignation; and in that which touches the German as a source of the sublime or pathetic, the quick-witted Frenchman sees only subject of laughter. In their theatres the Frenchman comes to judge, to exercise his critical faculties, and to apply the rules which he has learned, fundamentally or by rote, to

in his little finger, than Gottsched in his whole body. Punch, as an allegorical personage, is immortal; and however strong the belief of his burial may be, yet he pops unexpectedly upon us, in some grave office-bearer or other, almost every day." SCHLEGEL.]

the performance of the night. A German, on the contrary, expects to receive that violent excitation which is most pleasing to his imaginative and somewhat phlegmatic character. While the Frenchman. judges of the form and shape of the play, the observance of the unities, and the dénouement of the plot, the German demands the powerful contrast of character and passion,-the sublime in tragedy and the grotesque in comedy. The former may be called the formalist of dramatic criticism, keeping his eye chiefly on its exterior shape and regular form; the latter is the fanatic, who, disregarding forms, requires a deep and powerful tone of passion and of sentiment, and is often content to surrender his feelings to inadequate motives.

From the different temper of the nations, the merits and faults of their national theatres became diametrically opposed to each other. The French author is obliged to confine himself, as we have already observed, within the circle long since described by Aristotle. He must attend to all the decorum of the scene, and conform to every regulation, whether rational or arbitrary, which has been entailed on the stage since the days of Corneille. He must never so far yield to feeling, as to lose sight of grace and dignity. He must never venture so far in quest of the sublime, as to run the risk of moving the risible faculties of an audience, so much alive to the ludicrous, that they will often find or make it in what is to others the source of the grand or the terrible. The Germans, on the contrary, have never subjected their poets