CHAPTER XX.

THE STAGE AND JOURNALISM.

Comedy in England - Congreve, Farquhar, &c. - Sheridan-The Modern Romantic Drama-Oratory in England: Burke-Letters of Junius-Modern Theologians: Paley and Butler-Blackstone-Adam Smith-Metaphysics: Stewart - Bentham - Periodicals: the Newspaper, the Magazine, and the Review The Quarterly, and Blackwood The Edinburgh, and the New Monthly-The Westminster-Cheap Periodical Literature.

COMEDY is essentially the expression not of Life, but of Society. It does not deal with the passions, but with the affectations and follies of our nature: it belongs, therefore, particularly to a highly civilized and artificial state of existence. Many of Shakspeare's most humorous creations are comic in the highest degree, but they are not in any sense comedies: they are something infinitely more elevated, more profound, more far-reaching; but they are not comedies. Exquisitely humorous as they are, the humor is not in them the primary element, the unmixed subject-matter of these inimitable delineations; it is united with tenderness, romantic passion, exhaustless poetic fancy; and therefore we call them Plays. Indeed, it may almost be maintained that humour is not the true element of comedy at all—that is, of comedy properly so named. Wit is the essence, the life-blood of comedy, and wit is as different from humour as from tragic passion. Wit is the negative, the destructive process - humour the positive, the reconstructive. Wit is an analytic, humour a synthetic operation. The latter indeed is so demonstrably a higher power of the mind, that it includes the former, but with the addition of something more, and something, too, infinitely higher in its source and nature. The humorist must possess wit; but he must also possess tenderness, sympathy, love. In the language of algebra we may formulise it thus: wit+sympathy: humour. And in proportion as the affections are an endowment of our nature far more elevated than the mere activity of our comparative or perceptive faculties (in the unusual delicacy and sensibility of which consists that power we call wit), in exactly the same measure is humour superior to wit. We may be proud to remember that humour is the distinguishing feature of the English national intellect, and the peculiar stamp of individuality which marks our literature. This circumstance alone would suffice to account for the undeniable superiority of our national literature over that of all other civilized countries, in every point—of depth, of grandeur, of variety, of indestructible vitality.

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This being granted, it will not be difficult to discover what are the social conditions most necessary to the production of a brilliant school of comedy in a given nation. As the stage in general must ever be the reflection of the life, the character, the colouring of the country and epoch in which it appears, comedy must be the offspring of a highly artificial, corrupt, and intellectual era. As its pabulum, its ubject-matter, is folly, its aim being

"To feed with varied fools the eternal jest,"

it may be most certainly expected to flourish at a time when civilization has not advanced so far as to obliterate those strong class-distinctions which sharply mark the professions, habits, language, and manners of mankind, and at the same time when those elements are upon the point of being mingled into one unvaried mass. We can have no pure comedy now, because the manners of all classes, like their dress, have come to be so uniform that there remains nothing of conventional, of universally intelligible, sufficiently salient for the comic dramatist to lay hold of. The "frac noir"-the true equalized power of the nineteenth century—has levelled all men, like death. The follies, vanities, and eccentricities of course exist as much as ever, but they have been thrown inward; and if we seek for oddities now, we shall find not classes but individuals, and, if faithfully represented on the stage, they resemble not types familiar to every spectator, but caricatures, often apparently extravagant. The consequence of all this is, that we have no comedy, but we have a vaudeville-an excellent thing in its way, but very different from its predecessor. In England the reign of Charles II. was the period which most completely satisfies the conditions we have just essayed to establish, just as in France the reign of Louis XIV. The firstmentioned epoch produced Congreve, Wycherley, and Farquhar; the second Molière and Regnard. In the writings of the three great English wits there is seldom any trace of humour, and therefore nothing can be more different from Shakspeare. Wit is the reigning element, and witty dialogue perhaps was never so completely exhibited as in these admirable comedies. They are not natural in an absolute, though highly so in a relative sense: they are not true to universal but to local nature; or rather we may say that the nature of their day was an unnatural nature. They were written, not for the court, nor for the people, in the true sense of the word, but for the Town; and they are inimitable for intense vivacity of sparkling dialogue, for the richest abundance of odd and extravagant character, for ingenuity of plot (generally, however, a mechanical ingenuity, arising rather from disguises, mistakes of persons, and errors of the senses, than from the play of passion, or the deceptions caused by vanity and self-love), and above all for an air of inexhaustible high spirits and gaiety. In all these works the chief defect is the

shocking tone of immorality which pervades them. The characters are notning but an unvaried crowd of sharpers, seducers, prostitutes, and butts but it is fair to remark that in reading these dramas we seem to lay aside all our stricter notions of moral duty: as Charles Lamb acutely remarks, we seem to have got into a new world, where the old-fashioned distinctions of right and wrong have no currency. In point of art, their chief defect is allied to their principal merits: it arises partly from the restless and incessant sparkle of the dialogue, which ever glitters with an unappeasable activity, like the blinding ripple of a noonday sea; and, secondly, from the want of intellectual distinction between the personages; for the fools, dupes, and coxcombs are quite as brilliant and smart in their repartees as the professed and ostensible wits of the piece. Everything is epigram and point; and though in many of these plays there are occasional touches of nature exquisitely true, delicate, and poignant, and even whole scenes which may serve as models of liveliness not inconsistent with probability, the general character of this school is certainly unsolid, and absolutely wearying from excess of sparkle and epigram. Assuredly no nation has produced anything in this artificial vein finer and more complete than the comedies of 'Love for Love,' 'The Way of the World,' 'The Man of Mode,' 'The Country Wife,' The Confederacy,' and 'The Provoked Wife.' The popularity of these works was enormous: comedies and pamphlets formed nearly the sum total of the lighter literature of that age; and though, not having their foundation in the deeper recesses of the human heart, they are now comparatively neglected, no man can have a true idea of the perfections of our noble language who has not made acquaintance with this class of writers. What Hazlitt says of Congreve is generally applicable to all the rest: "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, reminds 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." "

The first of this remarkable class was Etherege, and the last Farquhar; though Sheridan (after a long interval, during which the comic stage had obtained a quite different direction) seems to have revived it for a moment in all its brilliancy. The chronology of the principal names among them was as follows: Sir George Etherege, born in 1636, died in 1683; his best comedy 'The Man of Mode.'

Wycherley, the author of 'The Plain Dealer,' a comedy somewhat resembling The Misanthrope' and 'The Country Wife,' which may be advantageously compared with 'L'Ecole des Femmes,' born in 1640, died in 1715. Congreve, the greatest of them all, celebrated not only as a comic dramatist, but as the author of "The Mourning Bride,' a tragedy in the dry classical French taste, but a work of great merit, 1670-1729: his finest comedies are 'Love for Love,' The Old Bachelor,' and 'The Double Dealer.' Sir John Vanbrugh (1672-1726) comes next, a great architect as well as a dramatic artist, for he designed Blenheim. His plays are of a somewhat coarser texture than those of Congreve, but superior in a certain rich and genial glow his master-pieces are 'The Relapse,' 'The Provoked Wife,'The Confederacy,' and he left unfinished the admirable fragment afterwards completed by Cibber under the title of 'The Provoked Husband.' The last of these authors was Farquhar, born in 1678, and who died at the early age of 29. His best-known comedies are 'The Constant Couple,' 'The Beaux' Stratagem,' and "The Recruiting Officer,' all of which, though sufficiently immoral, exhibit less of that cool heartless depravity which marks the productions of this class.

By one of those revolutions of taste regular as the seasons, or as the oscillations of the tide in the physical world—which takes place in literature generally and in every department of literature in particular, comedy in England acquired, after the brilliant period of which we have been speaking, a direction towards sentimentalism. The writings of Sterne very much contributed to this tendency, and Colman, Cumberland, and most of the modern writers for the stage, endeavoured to unite the pathetic and the broadly humorous. This class was begun by Steele; and these comedies have lost the peculiar charm of gaiety, refined satire, and wit, without acquiring anything in exchange the moral and sentimental parts are mawkish, tedious, and affected, and the laughable ones degenerate into gross farce and caricature. But the true old comedy, the admirable English comedy of Congreve and Wycherley, received a bright and momentary resuscitation in the person of Sheridan. This wonderful Irishman - as perfect an embodiment of the intellect of his country as his biographer Moore was one of the political and literary comets of his day. Without fixity of purpose, without learning, without any of that political influence (the most important of all in a constitutional country like England) which arises from personal and moral respectability, he obtained as a parliamentary orator a brilliant though useless reputation in that age of giants when the eloquence of Chatham was yet ringing in the national ear, giving animation to the struggles of Pitt and Fox. As a dramatic author, Sheridan produced three works which will ever be considered master-pieces in their different styles-the two comedies entitled 'The School for

Scandal' and 'The Rivals,' and the inimitable dramatic caricature of 'The Critic.' The first of these is a regular comedy of intrigue, the persons all of the upper ranks of life: the dialogue is one incessant sparkle of the finest and most polished repartee; and though the moral of the piece-the unmasking of a coldhearted hypocrite and pretender to virtue, and the forgiveness of his brother, a gay goodnatured rake-is not established but at the expense of some dangerous sophistries, and the confounding of virtue with hypocrisy, and the excusing of vice by the plea of generosity, this comedy is one of the triumphs of the English scene. Many of the situations are so exquisitely comic, though a large portion of the piece is passed in talk which does not advance the action, the habit of scandal and talebearing is so admirably ridiculed, and the tone of the whole is so brilliant and refined, that it is equally delightful when read or when acted. It contains much profound satire on the corruptions of society, as brilliantly expressed, though less animated by bitterness, as in the 'Figaro' of Beaumarchais, to which work it bears some little resemblance; but in point of exquisite finish of form, in consummate elegance of manner, it is equal to Congreve himself the highest possible praise. The other comedy we have mentioned

The Rivals'-depicts adventures of a broader cast, and characters less exclusively taken from polished society. The School for Scandal' seldom excites more than a smile, while 'The Rivals' keeps the spectators in a broad laugh. Nothing can be happier than the light but masterly sketches of character in this exquisite piece: the self-willed, blustering Sir Anthony; the generous Irish fortunehunter; the sentimental novel-reading Lydia, who can see no happiness but in disguises, persecuted attachments, and elopements; the inimitable Mrs. Malaprop, with her exquisitely good bad English; and the never-to-be-forgotten Bob Acres. The Critic' is one of that numerous class of pieces which contains a double action-the scenes between the author, his friends and critics, and the rehearsal of the tragedy. It is impossible to say which is the best or most witty part of this comedy, the dialogue between Dangle, an empty-headed theatrical busybody; Sneer, the very concentrated essence of critical bitterness; Puff, the bold impudent literary quack; and Sir Fretful Plagiary (a portrait of Cumberland), all alive with sore irritable sensibility; or the admirable extravagance of the "tragedy in the Shakspearian manner."

The subsequent history of the English stage is very soon related, and not very exhilarating. In comedy the German sentimental spirit to which we have alluded gradually gained ground: common types of patriotism, generosity, vulgar burlesque, and yet more vulgar elegance, have been reproduced usque ad nauseam. have been sickened with never-failing tirades about the moral dignity of the British merchant, the noble virtue of the British farmer, and

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