muscles from the beginning to the end.

"_M._ But don't you think it may be too grave?

"_S._ O never fear; and as for hissing, mon, they might as well
hiss the common prayer-book; for there is the viciousness of vice and
the virtuousness of virtue in every third line.

"_M._ I confess there is a great deal of moral in it; but, Sir, I
should imagine if you tried your hand at tragedy--

"_S._ No, mon, there you are out, and I'll relate to you what put
me first on writing a comedy. You must know I had composed a very fine
tragedy about the valiant Bruce. I showed it my Laird of Mackintosh, and
he was a very candid mon, and he said my genius did not lie in tragedy:
I took the hint, and, as soon as I got home, began my comedy."

We have here some of the very thoughts and words that afterwards
contributed to the fortune of Puff; and it is amusing to observe how
long this subject was played with by the current of Sheridan's fancy,
till at last, like "a stone of lustre from the brook," it came forth
with all that smoothness and polish which it wears in his inimitable
farce, The Critic. Thus it is, too, and but little to the glory of what
are called our years of discretion, that the life of the _man_ is
chiefly employed in giving effect to the wishes and plans of the
_boy_.

Another of their projects was a Periodical Miscellany, the idea of which
originated with Sheridan, and whose first embryo movements we trace in a
letter to him from Mr. Lewis Kerr, who undertook, with much good nature,