took place, that the two comedies, written as they were by men well known to each other and who had lived the same sort of life, were to be pitted against each other; and so broadly were they opposed in character and style, that the first in the field, supposing it well received, could hardly fail to be a stumbling-block to its successor. Kelly had sounded the depths of sentimentalism. I have glanced at the origin of that school as of much earlier date; nor can it be doubted that it was with Steele the unlucky notion began, of setting comedy to reform the morals, instead of imitating the manners of the age. Fielding slily glances at this, when he makes Parson Adams declare the Conscious Lovers to be the only play fit for a Christian to see, and as good as a sermon; and in so witty and fine a writer as Steele, so great a mistake is only to be explained by the intolerable grossness into which the theatre had fallen in his day. it happen in such reaction, that good and

For often does bad suffer toge

taken out of it, Where a sickly

ther; and that while one has the sting the other loses energy and manhood. sensibility overspreads both vice and virtue, we are in the right to care as little for the one as for the other; since it is Life that the stage and its actors should present to us, and not anybody's moral or sentimental view of it. A most masterly critic of our time, Hazlitt, has disposed of Steele's pretensions as a comic dramatist; and poor Kelly, who has not survived to our time, must be disinterred to have his pretensions judged: yet the stage continues to suffer,

even now, from the dregs of the sentimental school; and it would not greatly surprise me to see the comedy with which Kelly's brief career of glory began, again lift up a sickly head amongst us.

It is not an easy matter to describe that comedy. One can hardly disentangle, from the maze of cant and makebelieve in which all the people are involved, what it precisely is they drive at; but the main business seems to be, that there are three couples in search of themselves throughout the five acts, and enveloped in such a haze or mist of False Delicacy (the title of the piece) that they do not, till the last, succeed in finding themselves. There is a Lord who has been refused, for no reason on earth, by a Lady Betty who loves him; and who, with as little reason and as much delicacy on his own side, transfers his proposals to a friend of Lady Betty's whom he does not love, and selects her ladyship to convey the transfer. There is Lady Betty's friend, who, being in love elsewhere, is shocked to receive his lordship's proposals; but, being under great obligations to Lady Betty, cannot in delicacy think of opposing what she fancies her ladyship has set her heart upon. There is a mild young gentleman, who is knocked hither and thither like a shuttlecock; now engaged to this young lady whom he does not love, now dismissed by that whom he does; and made at last the convenient means of restoring, with all proper delicacy, Lady Betty to his lordship. There is a young lady who in delicacy ought to marry the mild young gentleman, but indelicately prefers

instead to run away with a certain Sir Harry. There is Sally her maid, who tells her mistress that she has transported her poor Sally by that noble resolution' (to run away). And there is the delicate old Colonel her father, who plays eaves-dropper to her plan of flight; intercepts her in the act of it; gives her in the midst of her wickedness £20,000 (which he pulls out of a pocket-book), because he had promised it when she was good; and tells her to banish his name eternally from her remembrance, and be as happy as she can with the consciousness of having broken an old father's heart. There are only two people in the play with a glimmering of common sense or character; an eccentric widow, and a slovenly old bachelor; who are there to do for the rest what the rest have no power to do for themselves; and, though not without large infusions of silly sentimentality and squeamish charity, to bring back enough common sense to furnish forth a catastrophe. It is the most mechanical of contrivances: yet it is the proof, if any were wanting, that such a piece has no life in itself; and it is the distinguishing quality, which, thanks to Mr. Kelly's example, in proportion as reality or character is absent from a modern comedy, will still be found its chief resource. Examples need not be cited. Mr. Kelly's style will never want admirers. While it saves great trouble and wit to both actor and author, it exacts of an audience neither judgment nor discrimination; and with an easy, indolent indulgence of such productions, there will always be mixed up a sort of secret

satisfaction in their mouthing morals and lip professions of humanity.

Let us not be so hard on our grandfathers and grandmothers for having taken so mightily to Mr. Kelly's False Delicacy, as not to admit thus much. It had every advantage, too, in its production. Garrick not only wrote a prologue and epilogue, and was said to have heightened the old bachelor played by King, but went out of his way to induce Mrs. Dancer to forgive the abuse of Thespis and act the widow. Produced on Saturday the 23rd of January, it was received with such singular favour that, though the management was under a solemn pledge 'not for the 'future to run any new piece nine nights successively,' it was played eight nights without intermission, and in the course of the season repeated more than twenty times: the publisher announced, the morning after its publication, that three thousand copies of it had been sold before two o'clock; so unabated did its interest continue, that it had sold ten thousand before the season closed, Kelly had received a public breakfast at the Chapter Coffee House, and its publisher had expended twenty pounds upon a piece of plate as a tribute to his genius; it was translated into German, and (by order of the Marquis de Pombal) into Portuguese, while its French translation, by Garrick's lively friend Madame Riccoboni, had quite a run in Paris and to sum up all in a word, False Delicacy became the rage.

Poor Goldsmith may be forgiven if the sudden start of such success a little dashed his hopes at the last rehearsals

of his Good-natur'd Man. Colman had lost what little faith he ever had in it; Powell protested he could do nothing with Honeywood; Harris and Rutherford had objected from the first nor, with the exception of Shuter, were the actors more hopeful than the management. Goldsmith always remembered this timely good opinion of the excellent comedian, and the praise proffered him by a pretty actress (Miss Wilford, just become Mrs. Bulkley) who played Miss Richland. What stood him most in stead, however, was the unwavering kindness of Johnson, who not only wrote the prologue he had promised, but went to see the comedy rehearsed: and as, some half-century before, Swift had stood by Addison's side at the rehearsal of his tragedy, wondering to hear 'the drab that played Cato's daughter' laughing in the midst of her passionate part, and crying out what next? one may imagine the equal wonder with which the kind-hearted sage by Goldsmith's side heard the mirth he so heartily admired, and had himself so loudly laughed at, rehearsed with doleful anticipations. The managerial face lengthened in proportion as the fun became broad; and when, against the strongest remonstrance, it was finally determined to retain the scene of the bailiffs, Colman afterwards told his friends that he had lost all hope.

The eventful night arrived at last; Friday the 29th of January. It was a club night (the day of meeting having been altered from Monday somewhat earlier than I formerly stated); and a majority of the members, following Johnson's