RICHARD LAND was quite as pronounced. False sentiment, springing partly from the French stage, partly from the hysterical tearfulness of the second-rate tragic writers in the previous century, made HUGH KELLY (1739-1777)—an Irishman who, on his first appearance as a man of letters, took care to inform the public that he was a staymaker-exceedingly popular. Later in the century RICHARD CUMBERLAND, the author of The West Indian (1771) and other dramas, carried on this sickly tradition CUMBER. with considerably more power, sense of construction, and vivacity of dialogue. He was a great-grandson and namesake of the laborious Bishop Cumberland of Peterborough. Of course there were numerous other writers who, in their time, achieved some ephemeral distinction. But, apart from Sheridan, the only important comic writer at the end of the century, when Mrs. Inchbald was the chief representative of sentiment and artificial pathos, was GEORGE COLMAN (1762-1836), the younger, whose Heir-at-Law, following the lines pursued by his father and Goldsmith, and acted first in 1797, is an excellent farce, full of absurd incidents. In this and in The Poor Gentleman (1801), which unfortunately borrowed its pathos from Tristram Shandy, there is a constant buoyancy reminding us of the greater genius of Farquhar. (1732-1811). RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN came of a famous Irish stock, and of a mother to whom we have already referred RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN (1751-1816). as a novelist. Johnson's criticism of his father, the actor, is well known. "Why, sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in nature." However, this paragon's son was a far brighter person. He was educated at Harrow, and, when he was only twenty-two, distinguished himself by eloping with Miss Elizabeth Linley, a charming young lady of Bath, who had a wonderful voice. Two years later he wrote The Rivals (1775), which was quickly followed by a series of comic pieces and small farces. In most of these Sheridan used materials derived from Vanbrugh or Wycherley; for example, Lord Foppington, in A Trip to Scarborough (1777), was simply a transfer from Vanbrugh's Relapse, and the whole play was a free adaptation of the older piece; or again, the famous gossiping scenes in The School for Scandal are rather more than an echo of similar passages in Wycherley's Plain Dealer. In fact Sheridan used the great post-Restoration comedies as their authors had used Molière. The School for Scandal itself belongs to 1777, and, in 1779, Sheridan closed his illustrious dramatic career with The Critic. Long after (1799) he produced another kind of play, Pizarro, at Drury Lane; but this adds nothing to his reputation. In 1780 he exchanged the drama for politics, and became a famous Whig orator. In the Warren Hastings impeachment he joined with Burke, but, on the outbreak of the French Revolution, Sheridan went in the opposite direction from Burke, and supported the Radical movement. While he was making his name in politics he also became a power in society. In 1777 Johnson himself had proposed him for election to the Literary Club; and his extraordinary wit and humour made him popular all his life. In later years he became a boon companion of the Prince Regent, and gave himself overmuch to conviviality. He was terribly extravagant and always in debt; and eventually, when he died, there were bailiffs in his house. He was buried in princely pomp, amid the applause of an admiring country. His Byron said of Sheridan that he had made the best speech, and written the best comedy, the best opera, and the best farce. The greater fame of Burke has obscured his brilliant rhetoric. The speech on the Begums of Oude comedies. still lives, but merely as a surprising tour de force of a clever orator. The Duenna (1775) is doubtless an excellent opera, and compares favourably with its predecessors and successors in that kind of writing; but there is absolutely no doubt that the merits of The School for Scandal and The Critic have, so far as nine-tenths of English readers are concerned, quite thrown into the shade the splendours of the Stewart and Orange comedy and the extravagant humour of The Rehearsal. The old dramatists, for their neglect of decency, paid the ultimate penalty by suffering neglect from posterity; an ingenious successor like Sheridan, who appropriated their best qualities without their licentiousness, held the stage to their exclusion, and holds it to-day. The School for Scandal is a brilliant comedy of manners, rich in satiric humour and "The School polished dialogue, and displaying a command of for Scandal" (1777). dramatic situation which is by no means the crowning merit of Congreve or Wycherley; but, as a literary masterpiece, it is not for one moment to be compared with The Way of the World or Love for Love; to compare it with any of Wycherley's plays is to set a brilliant and accurate copy side by side with its original. Sheridan, with all his quickness of apprehension and his faculty of training his own style to something of the same refinement, missed the fine and perfect subtlety of his models, failed to catch their discriminating delicacy of touch. In The School for Scandal we have the one work in which he approached perfection, in which he shows us the best of his genius. There is a great deal in The Critic that is extravagant and amusing, and is almost unsurpassed in the literature of burlesque; it is a great jeu d'esprit, which by itself would have given Sheridan an irregular niche in literature like that of Buckingham. His earliest comedy, The Rivals, with its immortal characters, excellent scenes, and finished dialogue, is nevertheless, compared with The School for Scandal, a very disjointed and unequal production, and the scenes between those fastidious lovers, Falkland and Julia, could not well be more tedious. But, if the accidental taste of the contemporary "The Rivals" (1775). playgoer, and its generous endorsement by an even more civilised posterity, have raised Sheridan to a too exalted pinnacle among comic writers, and have chosen to forget or degrade those masters of whose system of borrowing he so liberally availed himself, those dramatists themselves are at least something to blame for their own deposition; while Sheridan, in any case, remains the greatest of those who succeeded to their laurels, and The School for Scandal divides the honours of the later stage with She Stoops to Conquer. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. MINOR POETS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. A. FROM 1700 TO 1750. JOHN ARMSTRONG (1709-1779), a fellow-countryman, friend, and imitator of Thomson, was a physician in London, and devoted himself to celebrating his art in Thomsonian blank verse. His poem bears the unpromising title of The Art of Preserving Health; but he brought to it an easy faculty of verse, and the result is not nearly so bald and pompous as we might expect. This was in 1744, and was not Armstrong's first experiment. However, after the death of his friend and master, he became more prolific, wrote epistles and, in 1754, a tragedy, The Forced Marriage (published 1770), and, under the nom de plume of Lancelot Temple, published a book of essays (1758). Armstrong was fond of outlandish words and phrases, and anticipated the extravagance of Erasmus Darwin; but he was a much better poet, and was one of the most distinguished members of the Thomsonian school. ROBERT BLAIR (1699–1746), parish minister of Athelstaneford in East Lothian, published in 1743 a remarkable poem called The Grave, which, during the next half century, according to Boswell, "passed through many editions, and is still much read by people of a serious cast of mind." Blair was not exactly Thomsonian, although he wrote in blank verse which often approaches the manner of The Seasons. It has been pointed out that he was much in debted to the Jacobean dramatists. From time to time his verse falls into a succession of hendecasyllabic lines with weak endings and interjectional pauses, which exactly recall the scansion of Massinger; and the morbid spirit of the poem is thoroughly in tune with the spirit of the later school of playwrights. Blair may be compared with Young; but he wrote with more freedom and less dulness. HENRY BROOKE (1703?-1783), an Irish country gentleman from county Cavan, is now remembered as the author of the curious romance called The Fool of Quality, or The Adventures of Henry, Earl of Moreland, which came out in the same year as The Vicar of Wakefield (1766). Thirty-one years before (1735) this eccentric gentleman had published a long poem in six serial parts, bearing the portentous title of Universal Beauty. It was in the heroic couplet, and showed a wonderful acquaintance with the philosophical side of science. Like all the metaphysical poetry of the age, it was much in the debt of the accomplished Shaftesbury. Brooke's style was very hybrid, and he affected the same Græco-Latinisms as Armstrong in the next decade and Erasmus Darwin forty-four years later; but he constantly reminds us, as they very seldom do, of Lucretius; and, although this reminiscence is rather distant, it supplies a good test of his success in dealing with a difficult subject. In 1739 Brooke brought out a tragedy, Gustavus Vasa, which, owing to political allusions. was suppressed by the Lord Cham berlain; this not only brought the author into controversy, but provoked an ironical Complete Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage from Samuel Johnson, then struggling for a livelihood in London. ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE (17061760) of Trinity College, Cambridge, one of the first wits of this country, "got into Parliament" for Much Wenlock "and never opened his mouth." He wrote a Latin poem (1754) in imitation of Lucretius, and published (1736) A Pipe of Tobacco, a series of six parodies, aimed at Cibber, Ambrose Philips, Thomson, Young, Pope, and Swift. JOHN BYROM (1692-1763) was an eccentric man of letters. He went to Trinity College, Cambridge, got his fellowship, fell in love with Joan Bentley, who, in those days of strife, was the one bond of affection between the Master's Lodge and the College, and wrote in her honour the well-known pastoral in the Spectator-"My time, O ye muses, was happily spent. Later on he retired to his native place, Manchester, where he became a physician, and patented a system of shorthand. During the '45, in which Manchester played a conspicuous part, he was a strong but cautious Jacobite. His views and attitude are well expressed in his famous epigram- { God bless the King, God bless our faith's defender, God bless-no harm in blessing-the Pretender; But who Pretender is, and who is King, God bless us all! that's quite another thing. At the close of his life he fell under the influence of William Law's mystical treatises, and in a poem called Enthusiasm (1751) versified his master's thoughts in the heroic couplet much as Brooke and the others had versified Shaftesbury. His very miscellaneous works, including his journals, have been preserved by the local patriotism of the Chetham Society in Manchester, who, at long intervals, have published the whole body. JOHN DYER (1700?-1758) was born at Aberglasney in Carmarthenshire and educated at Westminster. He began life as a painter and student of the picturesque, travelled much in Wales, and went to study his art in Italy. Eventually he wrote poetry and took Holy Orders. Grongar Hill, a descriptive poem in a sing-song metre and rhyme which is often slovenly, was published in 1726: and thus Dyer, by a happy accident of temperament, became one of the first poets who showed the way to nature. Another short poem, The Country Walk, followed the same lines; but, in his later life, Dyer allowed himself to become didactic, and wrote The Ruins of Rome (1740) and The Fleece (1757). The subject, sir," said Johnson, I cannot be made poetical. How can a man write poetically of serges and druggets!" But Wordsworth, at the beginning of the next century, praised Dyer's imagination and style; and Gray, who saw in the poet a kindred spirit, wrote to Walpole, Dyer has more of poetry in his imagination than any of our number, but rough and injudicious." Posterity has more or less consented to forget the author of The Fleece, but Grongar Hill may be still remembered. RICHARD GLOVER (1712-1785), a London merchant and member of Parliament for Weymouth, was, in poetry, a follower of Thomson, and, in politics, an opponent of Walpole. In the length of Leonidas (1737) and its posthumous sequel The Athenaid (1787), which are full of political allusions, Glover almost rivalled the father of epic poetry; but his best thing is the political ballad called Admiral Hosier's Ghost (1739). MATTHEW GREEN (1696-1737), a clerk in the Customs, who had quietly admired nature all his life, became posthumously known by The Spleen (1737), a poem in octosyllables, to which his friend Glover contributed a preface. Green is a delightful poet, touching his subject in that spirit of compromise between the dying classicism and the coming romanticism which we see at its best in Collins. He was a cheerful, contented bachelor, find- | ing in his charming groves with their nymphs and dryads an admirable remedy for melancholy; and thus his poem has something of the gay, irresponsible idleness of a garden scene by Watteau. AARON HILL (1685-1750) is best known through the conflict with Pope, on which he ventured after being satirised in The Dunciad. Seventeen plays are attributed to him, besides some other writings now altogether forgotten; and his one claim to remembrance is his part in the introduction of Thomson to the public. His style was correct and cold, fashioned on the model of the French classical writers. RICHARD SAVAGE (d. 1743), to whose memory Johnson, his early companion in tribulation, paid a splendid and partial tribute, was a notoriously dissipated person, and advertised himself well by his claim to be the son of Lord Rivers and Lady Macclesfield. This was the subject of his first successful poem, The Bastard (1728). He had, however, been writing poems and comedies for more than ten years before. In 1729 a long descriptive poem, The Wanderer, and, in 1730, a set of Verses on Viscountess Tyrconnel's Recovery, complete the tale of any work of Savage's that can be called memorable. Johnson's special pleading and the interest which attaches itself to all dissipated poets have overcharged Savage's memory with importance; as a matter of fact, although he is allied to Thomson, he is by no means in the van of the battalion, but is a prominent skirmisher on its flanks. He is buried in St. Peter's churchyard at Bristol. CHARLES WESLEY (1707-1788) was the poet of the movement whose apostle was his great brother, and wrote an enormous number of hymns and sacred lyrics. Although their subjective fervour and consequent want of restraint are serious literary drawbacks and involve temptations to bathos, many are very perfect and, while appealing to all classes alike, have a music and charm of their own. "Jesus, lover of my soul," will always be one of the most popular hymns in English-a spontaneous lyric, which goes straight to the heart and finds its echo in every generation. Moreover, these hymns emphasise the importance of the Evangelical movement on its less special side, as part and parcel of the contemporary revolution in manners, politics, and literature. WILLIAM WHITEHEAD (17151785) was made Poet Laureate in 1757, when Cibber died, and after Gray had declined the office. He wrote seven dramas, of which the most important are The Roman Father (1750) and Creüsa, Queen of Athens (1754). SIR CHARLES HANBURY WILLIAMS (1708-1759) was one of the chief satirists of George II's reign. Sir Robert Walpole was his chief patron and friend, and found his pen of no small use in the support of his own policy. Williams sat in Parliament for some years, and was afterwards sent on embassies to Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, and St. Petersburg. His poems, consisting for the most part of fugitive pieces, were imperfectly collected in 1822; but their coarse savagery has now lost its personal interest, as they refer almost entirely to the events of that age. B. FROM 1750 TO 1800. CHRISTOPHER ANSTEY (1724 1805), author of the well-known New Bath Guide (1766), was the father of English vers de société. This series of fifteen letters in verse, making fun of the well-known habitués of Bath, was the most popular work of its day. The impression which it made may be seen from a letter of Horace Walpole to George Montague (June 20, 1766): "What pleasure have you to come! . . . It is called the New Bath Guide. It stole into the world, and for a fortnight no soul looked into it, concluding its name was its true name. No such thing. It is a set of letters in verse, in all kind of verses, describing the life at Bath, and incidentally everything else; but so much wit, so much humour, fun, and poetry, so much |