"Rolliad" they heap upon it the most extravagant and ludicrous praise, calling Cumberland "the most exalted genius of the present age," and in describing this tragedy, say, "the beauties of which, we will venture confidently to assert, will be admired and felt when those of Shakespeare, Dryden, Otway, Southerne, and Rowe, shall no longer be held in estimation." Again, "Our readers, we trust, will pardon our having been diverted from the task we have undertaken by the satisfaction of dwelling upon a few of the many beauties of this justly popular and universally admired tragedy, which, in our humble opinion, infinitely surpasses every other theatrical composition, being, in truth, an assemblage of every possible dramatic excellence; nor do we believe that any production, whether of ancient or modern date, can exhibit a more uncommon and peculiar selection of language, a greater variety of surprising incidents, a more rapid succession of extraordinary discoveries, a more curious collection of descriptions, similes, metaphors, images, storms, shipwrecks, challenges, and visions; or a more miscellaneous and striking picture of the contending passions of love, hatred, pity, madness, rage, jealousy, remorse, and anger, than this unparalleled performance presents to the admiration of the enraptured spectator. Mr. Cumberland has been represented, perhaps unjustly, as particularly jealous of the fame of his contemporaries, but we are persuaded he will not be offended when, in the rank of modern writers, we place him second only to the inimitable author of the 'Rolliad."" Such at any rate was the feeling which took possession of Sheridan's mind, that he gladly sought the opportunity of holding him up to public ridicule; whenever

the occasion offered, his name was dragged forth. It was also alleged that every piece presented at Drury Lane by Cumberland met with a decided refusal; and the newspapers seemed willing to support the disappointed author. Criticisms, ill-natured, were hurled against the "School for Scandal," and comparisons were drawn between the moral tendency of the plays that issued from the prolific pen of Cumberland and those which Sheridan had furnished to the world. This only continued to aggravate the quarrel, and led to further jealousies, which soon exhibited themselves in the production of Cumberland upon the stage as Sir Fretful Plagiary.

It would be hypercriticism to descant upon the beauties and defects of a play that has undergone, from its very first appearance up to the present moment, investigation the most severe; that has been the theme of every dramatic censor who has examined into its construction, or pointed to it as a fair subject of comparison with the works of those who have either preceded or succeeded its author. The too constant sparkle of the dialogue, the want of connection of the scandalous college with the plot of the play, the imitation of Fielding's Blifil and Tom Jones, the investment of such a libertine as Charles with qualities that make us forget his vices, and a vast number of incongruities have been very wisely and very learnedly pointed out, and have been descanted upon with very commendable severity; but, after all, we are so charmed with the ingenuity, with the endless richness of the dialogue, that we are never tired with reading it, or with seeing it on the stage. We admire Sir Peter Teazle in spite of his uxoriousness, his oldbachelor ideas; in the hand of any other dramatist he

would have been ridiculous, but he is invested with a certain dignity, a tenderness of feeling, and a sense of honour, that although we must laugh at him when his unenviable position is discovered, we are glad to find that he is likely to become a happy husband, after all his mortifications. We are just on the point of thinking that Lady Teazle must become the victim of her taste for extravagance and shining in scandalous society, whilst we feel she deserves a better fate, when we gladly find that she is rescued from her false position. Even Joseph Surface is delightful to us; the duplicity of his conduct, the sentimental hypocrisy of his heart are so thoroughly laid open to us, that we are convinced that he cannot be ultimately successful; we are not so anxious for even-handed justice being done to him, as we are to the dramatic villain of a novel, and we are perfectly satisfied with the punishment he meets in the exposure of his schemes. Charles's irregularities do not shock or disgust us; they are punished by the reproaches which he has to encounter from every one. We are happy in the conclusion that everything that annoyed the different parties is amicably arranged; it is this that reconciles us to the fifth act, for at the end of the fourth act the denouement has taken place, the fall of the screen in a common play would have been the be-all and end-all, and, as occurs in the "Merchant of Venice," the act after the condemnation of the principal character, however beautiful is the poetry, the interest would altogether have ceased. Yet after this exciting scene we are pleased that there is another act to wind up the story, and to tell us how everybody has got out of the scrape. Of the original acting we have heard much. That Garrick was delighted with it, we may conclude

not only from Murphy's observations in his Life of the great actor, but from a letter from him which has been preserved, in which he makes some remarks upon the length of time the characters on the stage stood after the falling of the screen; he observes "that they should be astonished, a little petrified, yet it may be carried to too great a length." The conventional points which have been handed down to us are not many in number, but such as they are they show that the manner of acting was carefully studied, and therefore are strictly preserved. The acting of the late Matthews in Sir Peter Teazle is said to have been in strict conformity with the early stage directions; the pointing to the screen with the thumb, the leer and the movements of the elbows were precisely the same as practised by King, and as they usually convulsed the audience with laughter, we have a right to suppose that man, in different generations, expresses his feelings much in the same way. It has, however, been said that Sheridan was himself never satisfied; he requested permission to read the part over to Matthews, with whose delineation he expressed himself by no means pleased.

The personation of Lady Teazle has been supposed to be one of extreme delicacy, and although we seldom find an actress of a certain grade who does not think herself fully equal to the task, yet the fastidious lover of good acting is very apt to require a lady of personal attractions, of good judgment, and of elegant manners, and he repudiates the flippant attempts which have occasionally been made to introduce her as a being made up of levity, imprudence, and assumption. There is to be found in Blackwood's Magazine for the year 1826, a remarkably well-written essay, "On

Cant in Criticism," elicited by some letters which appeared from Miss Kelly to the stage manager of Drury Lane Theatre, in consequence of an ill-natured censure in which one of the newspapers indulged upon the occasion of Miss Kelly's performance of Lady Teazle. Of the high intellectual powers of Miss Kelly no doubt can exist, of her capability of sustaining some of the most difficult characters in a particular department of the drama no one who has ever seen her inimitable personations could express any hesitation, but that she does not possess the necessary qualifications for Lady Teazle the letters we have mentioned are an indisputable proof, and bear out the remark that we are compelled to make, that the many remarkable traits which are to be clearly painted to the audience are beyond the power of many an otherwise gifted actress. That Miss Kelly's reading of the character should lead her to give an air of rusticity to Lady Teazle, to assert that there is not a single line in the whole play which describes her either as a beautiful or an elegant woman, but, on the contrary, as having been six months before a girl of limited education and of the most homely habits, are singularly opposed to the author's ideas, and to those which have been entertained by all who have been considered judges of pure and genuine comedy. The invariable reading of the part has assigned to Lady Teazle the graces and the manners of a woman of fashion, of one who, with the quick perception of the female character, has been enabled rapidly to assume all the refinement and all the manners of the haut ton. The first complaint urged against her by Sir Peter Teazle is that, though wholly bred in the country, "she plays her part in all the extravagant foppery of