upon Julia being perhaps weakened in its effect, by our recollection of
the same device in the Nut-brown Maid and Peregrine Pickle.

The character of Sir Anthony Absolute is, perhaps, the best sustained
and most natural of any, and the scenes between him and Captain Absolute
are richly, genuinely dramatic. His surprise at the apathy with which
his son receives the glowing picture which he draws of the charms of his
destined bride, and the effect of the question, "And which is to be
mine, Sir,--the niece or the aunt?" are in the truest style of humor.
Mrs. Malaprop's mistakes, in what she herself calls "orthodoxy," have
been often objected to as improbable from a woman in her rank of life;
but, though some of them, it must be owned, are extravagant and
farcical, they are almost all amusing,--and the luckiness of her simile,
"as headstrong as an _allegory_ on the banks of the Nile," will be
acknowledged as long as there are writers to be run away with, by the
wilfulness of this truly "headstrong" species of composition.

Of the faults of Sheridan both in his witty and serious styles--the
occasional effort of the one, and the too frequent false finery of the
other--some examples may be cited from the dialogue of this play. Among
the former kind is the following elaborate conceit:--

"_Falk._ Has Lydia changed her mind? I should have thought her duty
and inclination would now have pointed to the same object.

"_Abs._ Ay, just as the eyes of a person who squints: when her
love-eye was fixed on me, t'other--her eye of duty--was finely obliqued:
but when duty bade her point that the same way, off turned t'other on a
swivel, and secured its retreat with a frown."