and abused old man. It is so in all comic scenes of the kind, from the slaves of Terence down to the valets of Moliere and Regnard. Ask any wise and discreet mother of a family, if she would allow her children to associate with the party-coloured gentlemen below stairs; she will tell you that it is of all things what she is at pains to avoid; because in their society her children would learn low manners, habits of cunning, of trick, and of falsehood. Yet you bring them into such company in the comedies of the virtuous Moliere, where, if the valets are more clever and witty than those of ordinary life, they are only the more expert and agreeable rogues. We do not bring them into such society, you say; we only exhibit it to their view. But you show them people of equal rank with themselves mixed with that society, profiting by those rogueries, applauding the invention which gives them birth. If the drama is to have any effect at all, its operation in this case must be unfavourable to truth and to virtue.

In tragedy, this effect does not require exhibition to give it force; on the contrary, it is perhaps in the reading that it fastens most strongly on young and susceptible minds. The softer feelings, to which it addresses itself, are more accessible in solitude and silence than in society. It is otherwise with comedy, ridicule operating more powerfully in company and in a crowd. There is besides no hero of a player equal to the hero of a tragedy; but the handsome figure, the showy garb, the assured countenance, the unembarrassed address, the easy negligence, of many a comedian, is fully equal to the character he is to represent. The fine gentleman of real life is a sort of comic actor. When we consider how much imitation, how much art, how much affectation, go to make up his part, we

shall not wonder, if even those who have often seen such exhibitions, should sometimes mistake the player who personates for the character personated; but the young and the inexperienced naturally transfer the brilliancy of the character to his mimic representative. This gives a double force to the dialogue of the piece, and affords, in the person of a pretty fellow of a player, a very winning apology for whatever is exceptionable in the character he performs.

In the observations I formerly made on the moral effects of Tragedy, I took notice of the consequences resulting from the almost uniform introduction of love, as the ruling motive of tragic action. To this objection comedy is equally liable; but there is an additional circumstance in which it is still more objectionable than the other department of the drama. As love is the principal action, marriage is the constant end of comedy. But the marriage of comedy, is generally of that sort which holds forth the worst example to the young; not an union the result of tried attachment, of sober preference, sanctified by virtue and by prudence. These are the matches which comedy ridicules. Her marriages are the frolics of the moment, made on the acquaintance of a day, or of some casual encounter. In many comedies, amidst the difficulties of accomplishing the marriage on which the intrigue of the piece turns, and in the course of which its incidents are displayed, the restraints of parents and guardians are introduced only to be despised and out-witted; age, wisdom, experience, every thing which a well-educated young person should respect and venerate, is made a jest of; pertness, impudence, falsehood, and dishonesty, triumph and laugh; the audience triumphs and laughs along with them; and it is not till within a few sentences

of the conclusion, that the voice of morality is uttered, not heard. The interest of the play is then over, the company is arranging its departure; and if any one listens, 'tis but to observe how dull and common-place these reflections are. Virtue is thus doubly degraded, both when she speaks and when

she is silent.

The purity of the British comedy in modern times, has been often contrasted with the drama of our forefathers, in those days of licentiousness and immorality when Wycherly and Congreve wrote for the rakes and libertines of a profligate court. I forbear to cite, in contradiction to this, the ribaldry with which, for some time past, our stage has been infested, in the form of Comic Operas and Burlettas, by which the laugh and the applause of Sadler's Wells and Bartholomew Fair have been drawn from the audiences of Covent-Garden and Drury-Lane. But I must observe, that in this comparative estimate no account has been taken of a kind of licentiousness in which some of our latest comedies have indulged, still more dangerous than the indelicacy of the last century: those sometimes violated decency, but these attack principle; those might put modesty to the blush, or contaminate the purity of innocence; but these shake the very foundations of morality, and would harden the mind against the sense of virtue.

It is somewhat remarkable, that the French stage, formerly so proud of its bienseance, should have nearly at the same period with that of England, assumed the like pernicious licentiousness. Figaro, though a less witty, is as immoral a play as the School for Scandal.

Dramas of this pernicious sort arose upon the fashionable ridicule against what was called Sentimental comedy, which it had become customary to

decry, as subverting the very intention of that department of the stage, and usurping a name, from which the gravity of its precepts, and the seriousness of its incidents, should have excluded it. This judgement, however, seems to be founded neither on the critical definition of Comedy, nor on the practice of its writers in those periods when it had attained its highest reputation. Menander and Terence wrote Comedies of Sentiment; nor does it seem easy to represent even follies naturally, without sometimes bringing before us the serious evils which they may produce, and the reflections which arise on their consequences. Morality may no doubt be trite, and sentiment dull in the hands of authors of little genius; but profligacy and libertinism will as often be silly as wicked, though, in the impudence with which they unfold themselves, there is frequently an air of smartness which passes for wit, and of assurance which looks like vivacity. The counterfeits, however, are not always detected at that time of life which is less afraid of being thought dissipated than dull, and by that rank which holds regularity and sobriety among the plebeian virtues. The people, indeed, are always true to virtue, and open to the impressions of virtuous sentiment. With the people, the comedies in which these are developed still remain favourites; and corruption must have stretched its empire far indeed, when the applauses shall cease with which they are received.

V

"I was much pleased with one of your late papers, published on the last day of last year, in which you suggested several uses that might be made of a recollection of past events, and of a proper consideration of the power of Time.

"The neglect of the improvement of time is an evil of which every moralist has complained, on which therefore it were presumption in me to attempt to enlarge. But without repeating what has been so often and so well said on its waste or its abuse, permit me to take notice of that forgetfulness of its progress, which affects the conduct and deportment of so many in the different relations of life. In matters of serious concern, we cannot violate the rights of time without rendering ourselves unhappy; in objects of smaller importance, we cannot withdraw from its jurisdiction without making ourselves ridiculous. Its progress, however, is unfortunately very apt to be unnoticed by ourselves, to whom its daily motion is gradual and imperceptible; but by others it will hardly fail to be marked, and they will expect a behaviour suitable to the character it should stamp upon us.

"How often do the old forget the period at which they are arrived, and keep up a behaviour suitable, or perhaps only excusable in that which they have long ago passed? We see every day sexagenary beaux, and gray-haired rakes, who mix with the gay