the former in his comedies. The comic characters are, without
mixture, loathsome and despicable. The men of Etherege and
Vanbrugh are bad enough. Those of Smollett are perhaps worse.
But they do not approach to the Celadons, the Wildbloods, the
Woodalls, and the Rhodophils of Dryden. The vices of these last
are set off by a certain fierce hard impudence, to which we know
nothing comparable. Their love is the appetite of beasts; their
friendship the confederacy of knaves. The ladies seem to have
been expressly created to form helps meet for such gentlemen. In
deceiving and insulting their old fathers they do not perhaps
exceed the license which, by immemorial prescription, has been
allowed to heroines. But they also cheat at cards, rob strong
boxes, put up their favours to auction, betray their friends,
abuse their rivals in the style of Billingsgate, and invite their
lovers in the language of the Piazza. These, it must be
remembered, are not the valets and waiting-women, the Mascarilles
and Nerines, but the recognised heroes and heroines who appear as
the representatives of good society, and who, at the end of the
fifth act, marry and live very happily ever after. The
sensuality, baseness, and malice of their natures is unredeemed
by any quality of a different description,--by any touch of
kindness,--or even by any honest burst of hearty hatred and
revenge. We are in a world where there is no humanity, no
veracity, no sense of shame,--a world for which any good-natured
man would gladly take in exchange the society of Milton's devils.
But as soon as we enter the regions of Tragedy, we find a great
change. There is no lack of fine sentiment there. Metastasio is
surpassed in his own department. Scuderi is out-scuderied. We
are introduced to people whose proceedings we can trace to no
motive,--of whose feelings we can form no more idea than of a