DRAMATIC WRITERS.

The dramatic literature of the earlier part of the reign of George III. is very voluminous, but consists principally of comedies and farces of modern life, all in prose. Home, indeed, the author of Douglas, which came out in 1757, followed that first successful effort by about half a dozen other attempts in the same style, the last of which, entitled Alfred, was produced in 1778; but they were all failures. Horace Walpole's great tragedy, the Mysterious Mother, although privately printed in 1768, was never acted, and was not even published till many years after. The principal writers whose productions occupied the stage were Goldsmith, Garrick, and Foote, who all died in the earlier part of the reign of George III.; and Macklin, Murphy, Cumberland, Colman, Mrs. Cowley, and Sheridan, who mostly survived till after the commencement of the present century. Goldsmith's two capital comedies of the Good-Natured Man, and She Stoops to Conquer, were brought out, the former in 1768, the latter in 1773. To Garrick, a miracle of an actor, but no more than a smartish man of talent off the boards, we owe, besides many alterations and adaptations of the works of Shakespeare and other preceding dramatic writers, the lively farces of The Lying Valet and Miss in her Teens, both, however, produced before 1760; and he is also commonly stated to have been in part the author of the excellent comedy of The Clandestine Marriage, brought out in 1766, which was principally written by Colman.* The still favourite farce of High Life Below Stairs, first acted in 1759, which used also to be attributed to Garrick, is now understood to have been written by the Rev. James Townley, assisted by Dr. Hoadly, the author of The Suspicious Husband. Foote produced twenty-two comic pieces, mostly farcical and satirical, between 1752 and 1778; of which The Minor (1760), The Liar (1761), and The Mayor of Garratt (1763), still keep the stage. He was by nature a mimic, and a somewhat coarse one, rather

* In a copy of Baker's Biographia Dramatica, edit. of 1782, we find the following MS. note appended to the notice of this play, at p. 57 of vol. ii. :— Garrick composed two acts, which he sent Mr. Colman, desiring him to put them together, or do what he would with them. I did put them together, said Mr. Colman; for I put them in the fire, and wrote the play myself. I had this anecdote from Mr. Colman's mouth. J. W."

than a wit.* Macklin, also an actor as well as Garrick and Foote, is the author of the very clever and effective comedy of The Man of the World, which was brought out in Ireland, his native country, in 1764, under the name of The Free-Born Scotchman, although the daring delineation of the principal character, the renowned Sir Pertinax Macsycophant, debarred it for many years from the English stage. Macklin, who did not die till 1797, is remarkable for having lived till the age of a hundred and seven, and for, what is still more unexampled, having continued his appearances on the stage almost till he was a hundred. Colman, an accomplished scholar, and well known for his translations of the Plays of Terence and Horace's Art of Poetry, and for various other literary performances, commenced dramatist in 1760, by the production of a clever and successful little piece, which he entitled Polly Honeycombe, a Dramatic Novel; and between twenty and thirty more comedies, farces, and alterations of older plays proceeded from his pen before 1780, among which his comedy of The Jealous Wife, produced in 1761, ranks as the best along with that of The Clandestine Marriage, already mentioned. Colman lived till 1794. Murphy, also an elegant scholar, and the translator of Tacitus and Sallust, is the author, among other dramatic productions of less note, of the farce of The Upholsterer (1758), of the comedies of The Way to Keep Him (1760), All in the Wrong (1761), Know your Own Mind (1777), and of the tragedy of The Grecian Daughter (1772). Murphy died in 1805, in his eighty-fifth year. Cumberland, a voluminous poet, or versifier, novelist, pamphleteer, essayist, critic, &c. &c., as well as a dramatist, began to write for the stage so early as 1761, and, amid much of what he did that is forgotten, will continue to be remembered for his striking comedies of The West Indian, The Fashionable Lover, The Jew, and The Wheel of Fortune. This somewhat overweening and superficial but still ingenious and not unamiable man died in 1811, at the age of seventy-nine. Mrs. Cowley's pleasant comedy of The Belle's Stratagem was brought out with great success in 1780 this lady, whose first play, The Runaway, appeared in 1776, wrote also a number of long poems, now all forgotten, and survived till 1809. But the most brilliant contributions made to

* See, however, a much higher estimate of Foote in an article, equally lively and learned, in the Quarterly Review, No. 490, for Sept. 1854.

our dramatic literature in this age were Sheridan's celebrated comedies of The Rivals, brought out in 1775, when the author was only in his twenty-fifth year, The Duenna, which followed the same year, and The School for Scandal, which crowned the reputation of the modern Congreve, in 1777. After all that had been written, indeed, meritoriously enough in many instances, by his contemporaries and immediate predecessors, these plays of Sheridan's were the only additions that had yet been made to the classic comedy of Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar; and perhaps we may say that they are still the last it has received. Sheridan's wit is as polished as Congreve's, and its flashes, if not quite so quick and dazzling, have a softer, a more liquid light; he may be said to stand between the highly artificial point and concentration of Congreve and the Irish ease and gaiety of Farquhar, wanting, doubtless, what is most characteristic of either, but also combining something of each. Sheridan had likewise produced all his other dramatic pieces--The Trip to Scarborough, The Critic, &c.-before 1780; although he lived for thirty-six years after that date.

FEMALE WRITERS.

The direction of so large a portion of the writing talent of this age to the comic drama is an evidence of the extended diffusion of literary tastes and accomplishments among the class most conversant with those manners and forms of social life which chiefly supply the materials of modern comedy. To this period has been sometimes assigned the commencement of the pursuit of literature as a distinct profession in England; now, too, we may say, began its domestic cultivation among us-the practice of writing for the public as the occupation and embellishment of a part of that leisure which necessarily abounds in an advanced state of society, not only among persons possessing the means of living without exertion of any kind, but almost throughout the various grades of those who are merely raised above the necessity of labouring with their hands. Another indication of the same thing is the great increase that now took place in the number of female authors. Among the writers of plays, novels, and poetry, besides Mrs. Cowley, mentioned above, may be noticed Mrs. Sheridan

(originally Miss Frances Chamberlayne),-the admirable mother of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, for whose sake Samuel Johnson was contented to keep on terms, so long as she lived, with the vain, gasconading, mercurial projector and adventurer, her husband, the authoress of the two comedies of The Discovery, brought out with great success in 1763, and The Dupe, which was produced in 1765, and which, although it failed on the stage, owing, it is said, to a conspiracy of some hostile parties, was also well received by the public from the press, and of the novels of Sidney Bidulph and Nourjahad, all written in the darkest hours of a life of struggle and disappointment, which a complication of diseases terminated in 1766, at the age of forty-two; Mrs. Brooke (whose maiden name was Miss Frances Moore), the authoress of the novels of Lady Juliet Mandeville and Emily Montague, and of the musical drama of Rosina, as well as of some tragedies and other compositions in prose and verse-among the rest, a periodical work called The Old Maid, which appeared weekly from November, 1755, to July, 1756; Miss Jane Marshall, an Edinburgh lady, of whom there remain the novels of Clarinda Cathcart and Alicia Montague, which had considerable success on their first appearance, in 1765 and 1767, and the comedy of Sir Harry Gaylove, printed in 1772, although never acted, but whose most interesting production is a Series of Letters, in two volumes, Edinburgh, 1788, in which she gives a naïve and lively account of the mischances of her literary career; Mrs. Lennox (originally Miss Charlotte Ramsay, a native of New York), whose Memoirs of Harriet Stuart appeared in 1751, her Female Quixote, or Adventures of Arabella, to which Johnson wrote the dedication, in 1752, her Shakespeare Illustrated in 1753, her novel of Sophia in 1761, her comedy of The Sister in 1769, and who did not cease to write till near the end of the century; Miss Sophia Lee, whose two first performances, her amusing comedy of The Chapter of Accidents, and her popular romance of The Recess, were produced, the former in 1780, the latter in 1783; and Miss Frances Burney, afterwards Madame D'Arblay, whose two first novels of Evelina and Cecilia appeared, the former in 1777, the latter in 1782.* To these names may be

Along with, perhaps, a higher appreciation of the literary merits of Miss Burney's two early novels than has been expressed by any recent critic, Lord Macaulay has, in an article published in the Edinburgh Review for January, 1843, claimed for her the honour of being the true founder of the modern

added, as distinguished in other kinds of writing, blind Anna Williams, Dr. Johnson's friend, whose volume of Miscellanies in prose and verse was published in 1766; the learned Miss Elizabeth Carter, whose translation of Epictetus, however, and we believe all her other works, had appeared before the commencement of the reign of George III., although she lived till the year 1806; her friend Miss Catherine Talbot, the writer of a considerable quantity both of prose and verse, now forgotten; Mrs. Montagu (originally Miss Elizabeth Robinson), the pupil of Dr. Conyers Middleton, and the founder of the Blue Stocking Club, whose once famous Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare was published in 1769, and who survived till the year 1800; Mrs. Chapone (Miss Hester Mulso), another friend of Miss Carter, and the favourite correspondent of Samuel Richardson, whose Letters on the Improvement of the Mind appeared in 1773; Mrs. Macaulay (originally Miss Catherine Sawbridge, finally Mrs. Graham), the notorious republican historian and pamphleteer, whose History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Restoration was published in a succession of volumes between the years 1763 and 1771, and then excited much attention, though now neglected; and the other female democratic writer, Miss Helen Maria Williams, who did not, however, begin to figure as a politician till after the French Re

school of female novel writers. "Her appearance," he observes, "is an important epoch in our literary history. Evelina was the first tale written by a woman, and purporting to be a picture of life and manners, that lived, or deserved to live. . . . . Miss Burney did for the English novel what Jeremy Collier did for the English Drama; and she did it in a better way. She first showed that a tale might be written in which both the fashionable and the vulgar life of London might be exhibited with great force, and with broad comic humour, and which yet should not contain a single line inconsistent with rigid morality, or even with virgin delicacy. She took away the reproach which lay on a most useful and delightful species of composition. She vindicated the right of her sex to an equal share in a fair and noble province of letters. Several accomplished women have followed in her track. At present the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honourably distinguished by fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling. Several among the successors of Madame D'Arblay have equalled her; two, we think, have surpassed her. But the fact that she has been surpassed gives her an additional claim to our respect and gratitude; for, in truth, we owe to her not only Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla [published in 1796], but also Mansfield Park [Miss Austen] and The Absentee [Miss Edgeworth]."