thing could apologize for the Major's screen, I conceived there were screens in plenty upon that, which formed separate streets and entrances, which concealed the actors from each other, and gave occasion to a great deal of listening and overhearing in their comedy.

"But this occurs," said Lord Lyttelton, "from the construction of the scene, not from "the contrivance and intent of the character, as in your case; and when such an expedient "is resorted to by an officer, like your Major, "it is discreditable and unbecoming of him as a man of honour. This was decisive, and I made no longer any struggle. What my predecessors in the drama, who had been dealers in screens, closets and key-holes for a century past, would have said to this doctrine of the noble critic, I don't pretend to guess; it would have made sad havoc with many of them and cut deep into their property; as for me, I had so weak a cause and so strong a majority against me, (for every lady in the room denounced listeners) that all I could do was to insert without loss of time a few words of palliation into the Major's part, by making him say upon resorting to his hiding place-I'll

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step behind this screen and listen: a good soldier must sometimes fight in ambush as well as in the open field.

I now leave this criticism to the consideration of those ingenious men, who may in future cultivate the stage; I could name one now living, who has made such happy use of his screen in a comedy of the very first merit, that if Aristotle himself had written a whole chapter professedly against screens, and Jerry Collier had edited it with notes and illustrations, I would not have placed Lady Teazle out of ear-shot to have saved their ears from the pillory: but if either of these worthies could have pointed out an expedient to have got Joseph Surface off the stage, pending that scene, with any reasonable conformity to nature, they would have done more good to the drama than either of them have done harm; and that is saying a great deal.

There never have been any statute-laws for comedy; there never can be any; it is only referable to the unwritten law of the heart, and that is nature; now though the natural child is illegitimate, the natural comedy is according to my conception of it what in other words

we denominate the legitimate comedy. If it represents men and women as they are, it pictures nature; if it makes monsters, it goes out of nature.

It has a right to command the aid of spectacle, as far as spectacle is properly incidental to it, but if it makes its serving-maid its mistress, it becomes a puppet-show, and its actors ought to speak through a comb behind the scenes, and never shew their foolish faces on the stage. If the author conceives himself at liberty to send his characters on and off the stage exactly as he pleases, and thrust them into gentlemen's houses and private chambers, as if they could walk into them as easily as they can walk through the side scenes, he does not know his business: If he gives you the interior of a man of fashion's family, and does not speak the language, or reflect the manners, of a well-bred person, he undertakes to describe company he has never been admitted to, and is an impostor: if he cannot exhibit a distressed gentleman on the scene without a bailiff at his heels to arrest him, nor reform a dissipated lady without a spunging-house to read his lectures in, I am sorry for his dearth of fancy, and lament his want of taste: If he

cannot get his Pegasus past Newgate without his restively stopping like a post horse at the end of his stage, it is a pity he has taught him such unhandsome customs: if he permits the actor, whom he deputes to personate the rake of the day to copy the dress, air, attitude, straddle and outrageous indecorum of those caricatures in our print-shops, which keep no terms with nature, he courts the galleries at the expence of decency, and degrades himself, his actor and the stage to catch those plaudits, that convey no fame, and do not elevate him one inch above the keeper of the beasts in the Tower, who puts his pole between the bars to make the lion roar. In short it is much better, more justifiable and infinitely more charitable, to write nonsense and set it to good music, than to write ribaldry, and impose it upon good actors. But of this more fully and explicitly hereafter, when committing myself and my works to the judgment of posterity, I shall take leave of my contemporaries, and with every parting wish for their prosperity shall bequeath to them honestly and without reserve all that my observation and long expe

rience can suggest for their edification and advantage.

However before I quite bid farewel to The West-Indian, I must mention a criticism, which I picked up in Rotten-Row from Nugent Lord Clare, not ex cathedrâ, but from the saddle on an easy trot. His lordship was contented with the play in general, but he could not relish the five wives of O'Flaherty; they were four too many for an honest man, and the over-abundance of them hurt his lordship's feelings; I thought I could not have a better criterion for the feelings of other people, and desired Moody to manage the matter as well as he could; he put in the qualifier of en militaire, and his five wives brought him into no further trouble; all but one were left-handed, and he had German practice for his plea. Upon the whole I must take the world's word for the merit of The West-Indian, and thankfully suppose that what they best liked was in fact best to be liked.

A little straw will serve to light a great fire, and after the acting of The West-Indian, I would say, if the comparison was not too pre