cate with them; they sneak into bye-corners, and do not, like Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, march along the high road, and form a procession; they do not entrench themselves strongly behind custom and precedent; they are not embodied in protessions and ranks in life; they are not organized into a system, they do not openly resort to a standard, but are a sort of straggling nondescripts, that, like Wart, "present no mark to the foeman." As to the gross and palpable absurdities of modern manners, they are too shallow and barefaced, and those who affect are too little serious in them, to make them worth the detection of the Comic Muse. They proceed from an idia, impudent affectation of folly in general, in the dashing bravura style, not from an infatuation with any of its characteristic modes In short, the proper object of ridicule is egotism. and a mas cannot be a very great egotist, who every day sees himself rep resented on the stage. We are deficient in comedy, because we are without characters in real life—as we have no historical pictures, because we have no faces proper for them

It is, indeed, the evident tendency of all literature to genera.se and dissipate character, by giving men the same artificial ela cation, and the same common stock of ideas; so that we see al objects from the same point of view, and through the same reflected medium-we learn to exist, not in oursives, bat in books;—all men become alike mere readers--specta" 25, not actors in the scene, and lose their proper personal adentry The templar, the wit, the man of pleasure, and the of fashion, the courtier and the citizen, the knight and squire, the lover and the miser-Lovelace, Lothario, W ! Honeycomb, and Sir Roger de Coverley, Sparkish and L-i Foppington, Western and Tom Jones, My Father and My Uncle Toby, Millamant and Sir Sampson Legend, Da Qax ote and Sancho, Gil Blas and Guzman d'Alfarache, Count Fathom and Joseph Surface, --have met and exchanged com mon places on the barren pluns of the haste literature-buil slowly on to the temple of science, “seen a long way off up a a level,' and end in one dull compund of politics, criti chemistry and metaphysics'

We cannot expect to reconcile opposite things If, for exain

ple, any of us were to put ourselves into the stage-coach from Salisbury to London, it is more than probable we should not meet with the same number of odd accidents, or ludicrous distresses on the road, that befell Parson Adams; but why, if we get into a common vehicle, and submit to the conveniences of modern travelling, should we complain of the want of adventures? ; Modern manners may be compared to a modern stage-coach; our limbs may be a little cramped with the confinement, and we may grow drowsy, but we arrive safe, without any very amusing or very sad accident, at our journey's end.

In this theory I have, at least, the authority of Sterne and the 'Tatler' on my side, who attribute the greater variety and · richness of comic excellence in our writers, to the greater variety and distinctness of character among ourselves; the roughness of the texture and the sharp angles not being worn out by: the artificial refinements of intellect, or the frequent collision of social intercourse. It has been argued on the other hand, indeed, that this circumstance makes against me; that the suppression of the grosser indications of absurdity ought to stimulate and give scope to the ingenuity and penetration of the comic writer who is to detect them; that the progress of wit and humour ought to keep pace with critical distinctions and metaphysical niceties; [that the more we are become like one another, or like nothing, the less distinction of character we have, the greater discrimination must it require to bring it out; that the less ridiculous our manners become, the more scope do they afford for art and ingenuity in discovering our weak sides and shades of infirmity, and that the greatest sameness and monotony, must in the end produce the most exquisite variety. What a pity it is, that so ingenious a theory should not have the facts on its side; and that the perfection of satire should not be found to keep pace with the want of materials. It is rather too much to assume on a mere hypothesis, that the present manners are equally favourable to the production of the highest comic excellence, till they do produce it. Even in France, where encouragement is given to the noblest and most successful exertions of genius by the sure prospect of profit to yourself or your descendants, every time your piece is acted in any

corner of the empire,—we find the best critics going back to the grossness and illiberality of the age of Louis XIV. for the production of the best comedies; which is rather extraordinary, considering the infinitely refined state of manners in France, and the infinite encouragement given to dramatic talent But there is a difference between refinement and imbecility, between general knowledge and personal elegance, between metaphys cal subtlety and stage-effect. All manners, all kinds of folly, and all shades of character are not equally fit for dramatic representation. There is a point where minuteness of distinction becomes laborious foolery, and where the slenderness of the materials must baffle the skill and destroy the exertions of the artist. A critic of this sort will insist, indeed, on pulling off the mask of folly, by some ingenious device, though she has been stripped of it long ago, and forced to compose her features into a decent appearance of gravity; and apply a microscope of a new construction to detect the freckles on her face and inequalities in her skin, in order to communicate amusing discoveries to the audience, as some philosophical lecturer does the results of his chemical experiments on the decomposition of substances to the admiring circle. There is no end to this, His penetrating eye is infinitely delighted with the grotesque appearance of so many imperceptible deviations from a night line, and mathematical inclinations from the perpendicular The picture of the Flamborough Family,' painted with each an orange in his hand, must have been a master-piece of nire dis crimination and graceful inflection Upon this principle of going to work the wrong way, and of making something out of nothing, we must reverse all our rules of taste and evenmom sense. No comedy can be perfect till the dramatu pormona might be reversed without creating much confusion, or the ingredients of character ought to be so blended and poured re peatedly from one vessel into another, that the differen-e would be perceptible only to the finest palate Thus, if Moliere had lived in the present day, he would not have drawn his “A vare," his ' Tartuffe,' and his Misanthrope with those strong tourbes and violent contrasts which he has done, but with those delicatə traits which are common to human nature in general, that is,

his Miser without avarice, his Hypocrite without design, and his Misanthrope without disgust at the vices of mankind;] these theorists, in short, have been sanguine enough to expect a regular advance from grossness to refinement in wit and pleasantry, on the stage and in real life, marked on a graduated scale of human perfectibility, and have been hence led to imagine that the best of our old comedies were no better than the coarse jests of a set of country clowns-a sort of comedies bourgeoises, compared with the admirable productions which might, but have not, been written in our times. I must protest against this theory altogether, which would go to degrade genteel comedy from a high court lady into a literary prostitute. I do not know what these persons mean by refinement in this instance. Do they find none in Millamant and her morning dreams, in Sir Roger de Coverley and his widow? Did not Etherege, Wycherley, Suckling, and Congreve, approach tolerably near

Are

Is there no distinction between an Angelica and a Miss Prue, a Valentine, a Tattle, and a Ben? Where, in the annals of modern literature, shall we find anything more refined, more deliberate, more abstracted in vice than the nobleman in 'Amelia?' not the compliments which Pope paid to his friends, to Murray and to Cornbury, equal in taste and elegance to any which have been paid since? Are there no traits in Sterne ? Is not Richardson minute enough? Must we part with Sophia Western and her muff, and Clarissa Harlowe's "preferable regards" for the loves of the plants and the triangles? Or shall we say that the Berinthias and Alitheas of former times were mere rustics, because they did not, like our modern belles, subscribe to circulating libraries, read ' Beppo,' prefer 'Gertrude of Wyoming' to the Lady of the Lake,' or the 'Lady of the Lake' to 'Gertrude of Wyoming,' differ in their sentiments on points of taste or systems of mineralogy, compose learned treatises, and deliver dissertations on the arts with Corinna of Italy? They had something else to do and to talk about. They were employed in reality, as we see them on the stage, in setting off their

charms to the greatest advantage, in mortifying their rivals by the most pointed irony, and trifling with their lovers with infnite address. The height of comic elegance and refinement is not to be found in the general diffusion of knowledge and civis ization, which tends to level and neutralise, but in the pride of individual distinction, and the contrast between the conflicting pretensions of different ranks in society. [The beauty of these writers in general was that they gave every kind and gradatiem of character, and they did this because their portraits were taken from life. They were true to nature, full of meaning, perfectly understood and executed in every part. Their coarseness was not mere vulgarity, their refinement was not a mere nezation of precision. They refined upon characters, instead of refn ng them away. Their refinement consisted in working out the parts, not in leaving a vague outline. They painted human m ture as it was, and as they saw it with individual character att circumstances, not human nature in general, abstracted from time, place, and circumstance. Strength and refinement are far from being incompatible, that they assist each other, as hardest bodies admit of the finest touches and the brightest p But there are some minds that never understand anything as by a negation of its opposite. There is a strength with finement, which is grossness, as there is a refinement strength or effect, which is insipidity Neither are gr

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and refinement of manners inconsistent with each other in same period. The grossness of one class adds to their fine of another, by circumscribing it, by rendering the feeling m pointed and exquisite, by irritating our self love, &c can be no great refinement of character where there is n tinction of persons The character of a gentleman is a re term The diffusion of knowle lge, of artificial and inte equality, ten is to level this distinction, and to confound tha perception and hi h sense of honour, which arises fromia mei-ness of situation, and a perpetual attention to peric prety, and the claims of personal respect. It is ema think, to matike refinement of individual charą, ter for gr knowledge and intelle tual subtlety, with which it is there to do that, with the dexterity of a rope dancer of jika a