gant, I confess, but it was used by Sir Walter Scott and other well-recognized masters of English, and I think that it accurately describes the methods of the strange creature who dealt with words as well as with opium in an Oriental fashion. In 1841, his biographer tells us, he "reached something like five thousand drops of laudanum per day." James Payn relates an incident at luncheon, when he was about to pour out a glass from a decanter which stood next to him, and Miss De Quincey whispered: "You must not take that; it is not port wine, as you think." It was, in fact, laudanum, to which De Quincey presently helped himself with the greatest sangfroid.'

"A strangely fragile, unsubstantial, and puerile figure, wherein, however, resided one of the most potent and original spirits that ever frequented a tenement of clay." Thus saith John Hill Burton, and with this concise characterization of him we may say farewell to him for a

AL

XIV

Theatrical literature.

fond of reading about

LMOST all men are actors and actresses, dramatists and plays. The love of the mimic world is common to prince and peasant, to noblemen and to nobodies. Hazlitt reminds us of the saying of Rochefoucauld, that the reason why lovers were so fond of each other's company was that they were always talking about themselves, and adds that the same reason almost might be given for the interest we feel in talking about plays and players; plays are the "brief chronicles of the time," the epitome of human life and manners. It is interesting to observe the abundance of the literature which has grown up about the stage, the number of columns which have been written about matters theatrical-gossip, criticism, and history. We buy and we read these books with avidity, and many of us are thereby led into gross extravagance in the acquisition of "dramatic portraits" wherewith to adorn and to "extra-illustrate" them.

One form of theatrical literature seems to have become obsolete; we do not now publish collections of plays like those of Dolby, Bell, and Mrs. Inchbald, so common a century or so ago. Somehow one of these collections is as dreary a thing as one would care to encounter on a rainy day in a country-house. It is strange that one never finds anything of interest in such circumstances. A young lady once told me that she was compelled to spend a stormy Sunday in an English inn, whose library consisted of Wright's Farriery and The Lives of Coxwell and Glaister, the aeronauts, since which memorable day she has been an encyclopædia of useful information about horses and balloons.

I have often tried to enjoy these collections of plays, but the effort has been fruitless. Some students may read them, but not many, I am sure. In our time the judicious have decided that few plays are worth collecting - actingplays at least. My experience is that good acting-plays make poor literature, and good readingplays very poor things to listen to or to behold; but I am not prepared to copyright this profound observation, as I have an impression that it has been made by large numbers of people who were confident that it was original with them.

I cannot believe that many can now take pleasure in the comedies of Congreve, for example, unless they happen to be students of the life and literature of his period. One of his most faithful admirers admits that "his plots hang fire, are difficult to follow, and are not worth remembering." Mr. Henley speaks of his "deliberate and unmitigable baseness of morality," and Thackeray refers to "his tawdry playhouse taper." His grossness of speech may be forgiven, because it was common in his time; but I complain chiefly of the utter worthlessness of his compositions-worthlessness when viewed in the spirit of this comparatively decent age. It revolts me to hear or to read the talk of some men about his "sparkling dialogue" and his "delicate raillery"; his sparkle is that of the proverbial rotten mackerel, which stinks and shines. Yet Mr. G. S. Street rather implies that Congreve's work was much better than Sheridan's in the "School for Scandal," and he sneers at Tom Robertson's "Caste," which he calls "an even river of sloppy sentiment, where the acme of chivalrous delicacy is to refrain from lighting a cigarette in a woman's presence, and where the triumph of humor is for a guardsman to take a kettle off the fire." He may be right about "Caste," which does not seem to me as delightful as it did a generation ago; but to put Sheridan's great comedy after Congreve's! Perhaps it is only the clever fooling of a whimsical writer who, like the Major-General in the Pirates of Penzance, has "a pretty taste for paradox," and who asserts and maintains a doubtful proposition merely for the sport of it.

Most of these dramas of the so-called Restoration, the works of Van Brugh, Wycherley, Congreve, and their contemporaries, have animation enough, but there is nothing real about them; they teach nothing; there is no heart in them; they are harsh, unpleasant, with an "undercurrent of tartness." As M. Taine says, "There streams up from all these scenes a smell of cooking, the noise of riot, the odor of a dunghill."

Lamb tried hard to defend Congreve in that pleasant essay On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century, but it was an unsuccessful effort. "The great art of Congreve," says the delightful Elia, "is especially shown in this, that he has entirely excluded from his scenes (some little generosities in the part of Angelica perhaps excepted) not only anything like a faultless character, but any pretensions to goodness or good feelings whatsoever." Upon this I move for judgment.

We may find material for a due compre

History of English Literature, vol. ii., 417.