dozen link-boys, with whom he serenades his mistress, beats the watch, and riots through the streets. He is in love with a rich widow or rather her fortune; her maid describes how, at two o'clock in the morning, he comes thundering at her mistress's door, "As if it were upon life and death." Admission being refused, she goes on to say:

could see little and hear nothing could scarcely be a good judge. But "She Wou'd if She Cou'd" is a much better work than “Love in a Tub"; it contains no sentiment, and is written in not inelegant prose. Sir Oliver Cockwood and Sir Joslin Jolly are two amusing specimens of country knights, who when in London would fain pass themselves off as the arrantest rakes, but are tame enough when brought to the point.

low'd

lant, and then growing nervous of her reputation is afraid to avail herself of the opportunity, who when he is gone scolds her maid if she has re

As the serious scenes of this comedy are written in imitation of the sentimental vein of Molière, so the pantomime fun of the comic scenes is borrowed from such farces as 'Les Fourberies de Scapin," "M. de Pourceaugnac," etc. The title is taken from a trick played upon Sir Frederick's French valet by the widow's orders. Being made intoxicated, a tub is fixed round his neck by means of a hole in the bottom, and in this guise he is compelled to walk about until his tormentors see fit to release him.

Three months before Sedley produced his first comedy, Etherege brought out his second. Pepys was there on the first night; he records how he went to the Duke of York's playhouse; "where a new play of Etheridge's, called 'She Would if she Could'; and, though I was there by two o'clock, there was one thousand people put back, so that I could not have room in the pit, and I, at last, because my wife was there, made shift to get into the eighteen-penny box, and there saw: but Lord! how full was the house and how silly was the play, there being nothing in the world good in it, and few people pleased with it. The King was there; but I sat mightily behind, and could see but little and hear not at all." The last sentence will probably explain his unfavorable opinion, as an auditor who

has left them alone, is very well drawn, and is a refreshing deviation from the unmitigated shamelessness of the country and citizen wife of most of the plays of this period. The comedy is full

of intrigue and situation, the dialogue at all times lively, and frequently witty.

Eight years now elapsed before Etherege produced his last and best work, "The Man of Mode; or, Sir Fopling Flutter," which, as a picture of the manners of the high society of the day, by the wit and elegance of the dialogue, and the absence of the farcical element, might have served as a model for Congreve, whose style it certainly resembles. Several of the characters are supposed to have been drawn from life: Dorimant is said to have been intended for Rochester, Medley for Etherege himself, and a notorious coxcomb named Beau Hewit is credited with being the original of Sir Fopling, although a contemporary asserts that he bore a very great resemblance to his creator. Sir Fopling was the original of a century of coxcombs, and all his successors upon the stage have been more or less closely related to him. He is a fine satire upon the French mania of the day. He is a most exquisite gentleman, he wears gloves up to his elbows, and his periwig is more exactly curled than a lady's head newly dressed for a ball; every article of his attire is an original from the first hands in Paris; the greatest compliment he can be paid is to be taken for a Frenchman; he employs only French servants. "There's one English blockhead among 'em, you may know him by his mien," he says. "Trott, Trott, Trott! There's nothing so barbarous as the names of our English servants." He has French dancers in his train, and his own dancing has had the good fortune to please in Paris, where the Grand Monarque himself does not disdain to figure in a ballet. All English dancing is horrible. As Dorimant remarks, "He went to Paris a plain, bashful English blockhead, and is returned a fine, undertaking French fop."

As a picture of manners, this comedy is well worth perusing. An orange-woman, with whom

he talks and bandies jests in a most familiar style, is brought into Dorimant's dressing-room as soon as he is up, to supply him with fruit. Among other things, she tells him that a lady of title and her daughter are come to lodge at her house; after she has gone, there enters a drunken shoemaker, the style of whose conversation with his aristocratic patron argues a much greater familiarity between the classes than would be tolerated in this democratic age. "'Sbud," he says, "I think you men of quality will grow as unreasonable as the women; you would engross the sins of the nation. Poor folks can no sooner be wicked but they're railed at by their betters." Dorimant. Sirrah, I'll have you stand in the pillory for this libel."

"

Shoemaker. "Some of you deserve it, I am sure; there are so many of 'em that our journeymen nowadays, instead of harmless ballads, sing nothing but your damned lampoons!"

This character also is said to have been drawn from a living original, who became so famous from his introduction upon the stage, and customers so flocked to him in consequence, that he made a fortune.

The modes of coquetry are admirably hit off in a scene between Young Bellair and Harriet Woodville, in which, for the behoof of the old people, who desire a union between them to which they are by no means inclined, they pretend to say "all the passionate things imaginable" to each other.

Young B. At one motion play your fan, roll your eyes, and then settle a kind look upon me. Now spread your fan, look down upon it, and tell the sticks with a finger.

Har. "Very modish.

Young B. "Clap your hand up to your bosom, hold down your gown, shrug a little, draw up your breasts, and let 'em fall again gently with a sigh or two. . . . Clap your fan then in both your hands, snatch it to your mouth, smile, and with a lively motion fling your body a little forward, so-now spread it, fall back on the sudden, cover your face with it, and break out into a loud laughter. Take up, look grave, and fall a fanning of yourself. Admirably well acted."

With "The Man of Mode" Etherege brought his dramatic labors to a close. The marked improvement observable in each succeeding comedy promised better things than he ever achieved, and, had he industriously cultivated the undoubted talents he possessed, he might have ranked as a comedy writer little inferior even to Congreve. Through the influence of Mary of Modena, in whose favor he stood very high, he was sent Ambassador to Hamburg, and afterward to Ratisbon, where he remained until the deposition of King James. Upon his return to England, his

fortune was so impaired by the dissolute and extravagant life he had led, that, having met with a rich widow, he was induced to turn his thoughts to that state most abhorrent of all to the gay cavaliers of the time-marriage. Once fair, slender, and handsome, debauchery had done its work upon his face and person, and the widow was not to be tempted without a title; so to secure the prize he purchased a knighthood and became Sir George. He had no issue by this marriage; and a daughter he had by Mrs. Barry, the actress, with whom he had lived some time, after Rochester's death, died young. The date and manner of his death are both uncertain. Some say he followed King James into exile, and died in France; others that, conducting the departure of some guests after a night's carouse, he fell down stairs and broke his neck.

Now to return to his brother dramatist, Sir Charles. He was the author in all of six plays. His second, a tragedy, entitled “ Antony and Cleopatra," made its appearance in 1677, nine years after "The Mulberry Garden." Ten years more elapsed, and then he produced his second comedy, "Bellamira; or, the Mistress." The plot and most of the characters of this work are taken from Terence's "Eunuchus." Under the names of Bellamira and Keepwell, however, he is supposed to have satirized the Duchess of Cleveland and her royal lover. In construction, situation, and sprightliness of dialogue, it is far superior to his first comedy; but, almost destitute of originality, it falls very much below Etherege's last two works. After his death, in 1702, three more plays from his pen were published, "Beauty the Conqueror; or, the Death of Mark Antony," "The Grumbler," a comedy, and a third tragedy, "The Tyrant King of Crete"; but all are dull and uninteresting.

Sedley had a daughter, who, although by no means a beauty, captivated the heart of the Duke of York, who was famous for ugly mistresses, and who created her Countess of Dorchester. Although such a libertine himself, Sir Charles was exceedingly mortified at his daughter's dishonor. When James became king, he was one of the most determined opponents of the court policy in the House of Commons, and at the Revolution there was no more eager partisan for the Prince of Orange, or more bitter enemy of the King's, than he. Yet his hatred could still find vent in a bon mot: "I hate ingratitude,” he said, “and, as the King has made my daughter a countess, I will endeavor to make his daughter a queen." The years passed on, and still Sir Charles could write erotic verses, tragedies, and comedies, and be the pleasantest and wittiest of boon companions, until he reached his sixty-second year. He died in 1701.

But the most famous name among the Restoration comedy writers is that of William Wycherley. A gentleman by birth, he was born at Clive, near Shrewsbury, in 1640. A polite education not being easily attainable under the reign of Puritanism, he was sent to France. There he was so fortunate as to be introduced to the Montausiers, and to be initiated into the famous Précieuse circle of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. There he formed his taste, but it is a pity that he did not more fully assimilate the elegance and refinement, which distinguished that society, to temper his English coarseness. It was doubtless some pretty précieuse devote-for it is impossible to credit our young gallant with any serious religious convictions-who induced him to go to mass and call himself a Catholic. Upon his return to England at the Restoration, he entered Queen's College, Oxford, gave up popery, and, as a matter of course, following the well-bred custom of the country, went to church again. Like Etherege and Sedley, he left the university without taking a degree, and like the former he entered himself as a student at one of the Inns of Court (the Middle Temple), and with about as much intention of devoting himself to the law as had his confrère. We next hear of him as a volunteer on board one of his Majesty's ships during a battle with the Dutch. But tar and bilge-water, and the rough life of a man-of-war's man of that day, were not to the taste of the pupil of Julie de Montausier, and a brief experience of their pleasures sufficed him. Nevertheless, these short excursions into the regions of law and war were not so much time wasted, since they proved useful for his conceptions of Manly and the Widow Blackacre. But, to use the cant phraseology of that age, the Muses had more attraction for him than gunpowder or musty tomes, and we next find him in the character of a poet.

The dramatic was the supreme literature of the time, no other form was at all comparable to it in court favor, and all wit and genius were naturally attracted to the stage, in the service of which, whether as writer or actor, the brightest laurels were to be won. So, after giving to the world a few copies of verses, he wrote a comedy called "Love in a Wood," which was produced, it is generally believed, in 1672. This date has, however, been disputed on the authority of Pope, who used to relate that he had been told by Wycherley himself that it was written in 1659, when the author was only nineteen. A first draught of the play might have been written thus early, but it was certainly not the form in which it has been handed down to us, since in the commencement of Acts I. and III. there are references to the fire of London, and, further, VOL. VIII.-8

the play is dedicated to the Duchess of Cleveland. That it was not acted until after 1669 is almost certain, since, had it been produced previously, it would scarcely have escaped the notice of such a persistent first-night man as Pepys, who makes no mention of it in his "Diary." The "wood" is St. James's Park, in which much of the action takes place; the plot, which turns upon the well-worn themes of lovers' jealousies, mistaken identity, and rogues outwitting one another, is ingeniously worked out, and with more complications and imagination than are displayed in the works of Etherege and Sedley, resembling in those respects rather the comedies of Mrs. Behn.

Although all are well drawn, the characters are conventional types of the day-the gay gallant, the silly knight, the libidinous old city usurer; Dapperwit, who never utters a sentence without a simile, in which, by the by, he greatly resembles Puny in Cowley's "Cutter of Colman Street," is the most original; Ranger was afterward, name and all, and with his best situation, appropriated by Hoadley in "The Suspicious Husband"; and Valentine bears too close a likeness to Sheridan's Falkland not to render us suspicious of a common parentage. Christina and Lydia are more decorous than most of the comedy ladies of this period, but this concession to modesty is more than neutralized by that most disgusting female creation in all English drama-Mrs. Flippant.

The last verse in Mrs. Flippant's song, in Act I., which is in praise of the children of ladies of easy virtue, is said to have brought about Wycherley's introduction to the Duchess of Cleveland. One day as his coach was passing hers in Pall Mall, she looked out of the window and greeted him with the full title of illegitimacy. He immediately turned round and followed, and soon came up with her. "Madam," he said, saluting her with a profound obeisance, "you have been pleased to bestow on me a title which belongs only to the fortunate. Will your ladyship be at the play to-night?" "Well, and what if I am there?" she replied, saucily. "Why, then, I will be there to wait on your ladyship, though I disappoint a fine woman who has made me an assignation." "So," replied the Duchess, “you are sure to disappoint a woman who has favored you for one who has not." "Yes," he answered, with a bold look, "if the one who has not favored me is the finer woman of the two! But he who can be constant to your ladyship till he can find a finer is sure to die your captive." From this badinage an intimacy sprang up between them, and very soon the gallant poet's name was inscribed on the list of her ladyship's lovers; not unfrequently, the royal mistress, dis

guised as a country girl in straw hat and pattens, and with a box or basket in her hand to keep up the character, paid visits to his lodgings in Bow Street. "Love in a Wood" upon its publication was dedicated to her, after the usual style of the poets of that day to the favorite sultanas. Under such powerful protection Wycherley soon made his way at court, and was taken under the patronage of Buckingham, who gave him a commission in his regiment and made him one of his equerries; his wit and conversational talents also attracted the King himself, who took such a fancy to him that when the poet lay ill he visited him at his house, and made him a present of five hundred pounds to enable him to try the air of Montpellier.

All this seems terribly degrading to a man of genius, but it was not considered so in that age, when no man was so great that he would blush to receive any favor or bounty at the hands of any vile Jezebel by whom the King was ruled. Charles, however, seems to have had a real esteem for Wycherley, who bore the character, and deservedly it would appear, of being an honest and sincere man; and such virtues as honesty and sincerity were so rare in that corrupt court that they could not be but prized, if only as exotics.

In 1673 he produced his second comedy, "The Gentleman Dancing-Master." In the character of M. de Paris, as in that of Sir Fopling Flutter, we have a satire upon the French mania of the day. Mr. Paris, the son of a rich city merchant, is newly returned from France, and with the most supreme contempt for everything English: even his native tongue he speaks with a French pronunciation, and interspersed with French phrases and oaths; he esteems a French scullion more than an English gentleman, and all the perfections of man are in his eyes naught if his tailor lives within Ludgate, if his valet-dechambre be not a Frenchman, and if he should be seen by daylight going into an English eatinghouse. No man can be well bred if "he can't dance a step, nor sing a French song, nor swear a French oath, nor use the polite French word in his conversation; and, in fine, can't play at hombre, but speak base good Englis, with the commune home-bred pronunciation; and, in fine, to say no more, never carries a snuff-box about with him." Etherege's and Wycherley's portraits make a pair: Sir Fopling is drawn more delicately, with less exaggeration, and is decidedly the more natural and finished of the two; but that is because he is a gentleman, while "M. de Paris" is but a vulgar, upstart, young citizen, and would therefore go to more absurd extremes than would his aristocratic brother. In contrast to this Frenchified Englishman, we have an old

citizen named Formal, who from long residence in the Peninsula has become infected with an equally strong mania for Spanish costume, manners, and language; but in the contests between the two our author has scarcely evolved as much humor as the situations suggest. Apart, however, from his foreign affectations, Formal, or Don Diego as he calls himself, is an amusing and well-drawn character; his superlative egotism, which allows him to be egregiously gulled because he will not allow that the penetration of any person can be superior to his own, which, when at last he discovers the trick his daughter and her lover have put upon him, although his sister has repeatedly warned him of the truth, makes him claim the discovery as the result of his own sagacity, and then, when checkmated at every point, actually pretend that he was cognizant of the cheat, and was winking at it when pretending to be most angry, is as diverting as it is true to human nature. Mrs. Caution, the old aunt, whose youthful reminiscences render her such a Cerberus over her niece, and who is ready to construe every look and word into impropriety, must have been even more amusing upon the stage than she is in the book. The plot is partly borrowed from Molière's “L'Ecole des Femmes." The heroine, Hippolita, avails herself of the silliness of her affianced husband, M. de Paris, as the means of bringing about meetings between her and her lover, and of ultimately marrying him by the very parson the young cit has brought into the house to perform that office for himself. The scenes in which Gerrard, the lover, while not able either to dance or play on the violin, passes himself off for a dancing-master, are highly diverting, and would be more so were not the same situation repeated too frequently.

Two years after the production of this comedy, in 1675,* he wrote "The Country Wife." Altered into a decent form by Garrick, and rechristened "The Country Girl," this work was a favorite until within living memory. Peggy was one of Mrs. Jordan's finest impersonations; its last representative was Fanny Kelly. The plot of this work is altogether too gross to be described; but its wit and cleverness can not be denied. The character of Mrs. Margery Pinchwife was undoubtedly inspired by the immortal Agnès, in "L'Ecole des Femmes." There is, however, an exquisite naïveté, a delicacy of touch, in Molière's portrait, and beside it Wycherley's lines look very rough and coarse. But this difference speaks more for his genius than for his sense of decorum, for while professedly copying

* None of the dates here given, however, can be pronounced with any certainty to be correct; and can be accepted only in the absence of more precise information.