Charles Surface was named in different stages of the elaboration of Sheridan's masterpiece, Clarimont, Florival, Captain Harry Plausible, Harry Pliant or Pliable, Young Harrier, and Frank; Joseph Surface has been in former stages of his development Plausible, Pliable, Young Pliant, and Tom. After much careful elaboration, and the welding of two separately contrived plots into one, with frequent transcribing of scenes and condensations of their wit, Sheridan wrote the last five scenes of his School for Scandal in a hurry, under pressure from the theatre, adding at the bottom of the last leaf, "Finished at last. Thank God!-R. B. Sheridan." To which the prompter appended, on his own

account, Amen.-W. Hopkins."

The School for Scandal was first acted on the 8th of May, 1777, and its success remained so great that, as the treasurer of the theatre noted two years afterwards, it "damped the new pieces." It was worth £100 more to the house in 1778, upon an evening's receipts, than Hamlet or Macbeth, though Shakespeare was well acted and in request. In 1778, Sheridan, then twenty-seven years old, joined with his father-in-law and Dr. Ford in buying the other half of the share in Drury Lane. Garrick had valued his half share at £35,000, but for the remaining moiety £45,000 had to be raised. In 1779 Garrick died. Sheridan followed him to the grave as chief mourner, and wrote a Monody to his memory. In the course of the same year Sheridan produced the last of his plays, The Critic; or, a Tragedy Rehearsed.

Next year there was a dissolution of Parliament. Sheridan stood successfully for Stafford at the General Election, and took his seat in the House of Commons in October, 1780. His life as a dramatist then ended. He did, indeed, once afterwards, as manager, furnish his stage with a piece-Pizarro; but that was only a play translated and adapted from Kotzebue. Thirty-six years of carelessly overburdened social and political life remained to Sheridan, who died in 1816, at the age of sixty-five; but the short life as a dramatist, on which his lasting reputation rests, ended in 1780, at the age of twenty-nine.

..

Congreve had ceased to produce plays at eight-and-twenty, and had then retired upon his reputation as a wit. Sheridan was incapable of merely passive life. He carried his energies into the great world on whose stage he hoped to play a brilliant part. What he attained does not concern us here. But he attained no happiness equal to that of his earlier years, when wit, good humour, and energy were at their freshest, home was happiest, and his first successes gladdened him with sense of power. In a letter written at the time when he produced The Rivals, Sheridan said he had been reading Lord Chesterfield's "Letters." They were first published in 1774. He comments shrewdly upon his Lordship's system of training, which is, he says, 'in no one article calculated to make a great man. His frequent directions for constant employment are entirely ill-founded-a wise man is formed more by the action of his own thought than by continually feeding it. Hurry,' he says, 'from play to study; never be doing nothing.' I say, 'Frequently be unemployed; sit and think.' Sheridan read so little that he never felt safe in his spelling; he was capable of writing wich" for " which,' "nothink" for "nothing." But he acquired full mastery over one form of the subtle play of thought, and added to the number of our masterpieces of prose comedy. Sheridan's plays were written when the reaction against insincerity and formalism was developing new forces in Europe. In The Rivals, The School for Scandal, and The Critic, the dramatist attacks what Fielding declared to be the only fit object of ridiculeaffectation; false sentiment, hollow forms, and empty words in life and literature; the "shams" against which real life was rebelling actively through Europe, and the windy sentimentalities" that had become associated with one part of the rebellion. These Sheridan warred against with a healthy sincerity which set up against them not a remote ideal, but the honest side of such life as he knew. HENRY MORLEY.

May, 1883.

THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL.

A COMEDY.

DRAMATIS PERSONE.

AS ORIGINALLY ACTED AT DRURY-LANE THEATRE IN 1777.

ADDRESSED TO MRS. CREWE, WITH THE COMEDY OF THE SCHOOL

FOR SCANDAL.

BY R. B. SHERIDAN, ESQ.

TELL me, ye prim adepts in Scandal's school,
Who rail by precept, and detract by rule,
Lives there no character, so tried, so known,
So deck'd with grace, and so unlike your own
That even you assist her fame to raise,
Approve by envy, and by silence praise !
Attend !-a model shall attract your view-
Daughters of calumny, I summon you !
You shall decide if this a portrait prove,
Or fond creation of the Muse and Love.
Attend, ye virgin critics, shrewd and sage,
Ye matron censors of this childish age,
Whose peering eye and wrinkled front declare
A fix'd antipathy to young and fair ;
By cunning, cautious; or by nature, cold,-
In maiden madness, virulently bold ;-
Attend, ye skill'd to coin the precious tale,
Creating proof, where innuendos fail!
Whose practised memories, cruelly exact,
Omit no circumstance, except the fact !—

1

Attend, all ye who boast,-or old or young,-
The living libel of a slanderous tongue!
So shall my theme, as far contrasted be,
As saints by fiends or hymns by calumny.
Come, gentle Amoret (for 'neath that name
In worthier verse is sung thy beauty's fame)
Come-for but thee who seek the Muse? and while
Celestial blushes check thy conscious smile.
With timid grace and hesitating eye,

The perfect model which I boast supply :-
Vain Muse! couldst thou the humblest sketch create
Of her, or slightest charm couldst imitate-
Could thy blest strain in kindred colours trace
The faintest wonder of her form and face-
Poets would study the immortal line,
And Reynolds own his art subdued by thine;
That art, which well might added lustre give
To nature's best and heaven's superlative :
On Granby's cheek might bid new glories rise.
Or point a purer beam from Devon's eyes!
Hard is the task to shape that beauty's praise,
Whose judgment scorns the homage flattery pays?
But praising Amoret we cannot err,

No tongue o'ervalues Heaven, or flatters her!
Yet she by fate's perverseness-she alone

Would doubt our truth, nor deem such praise her own!
Adorning fashion, unadorn'd by dress,

Simple from taste, and not from carelessness;

Discreet in gesture, in deportment mild,

Not stiff with prudence, nor uncouthly wild :
No state has Amoret ; no studied mien ;

She frowns no goddess, and she moves no queen,
The softer charm that in her manner lies
Is framed to captivate, yet not surprise;
It justly suits the expression of her face,-
'Tis less than dignity, and more than grace!
On her pure cheek the native hue is such,
That, form'd by Heaven to be admired so much,
The hand divine, with a less partial care,
Might well have fix'd a fainter crimson there,
And bade the gentle inmate of her breast-
Inshrined Modesty-supply the rest.
But who the peril of her lips shall paint?
Strip them of smiles-still, still all words are faint!
But moving Love himself appears to teach
Their action, though denied to rule her speech;
And thou who seest her speak, and dost not hear,
Mourn not her distant accents 'scape thine ear;

Viewing those lips, thou still may'st make pretence
To judge of what she says, and swear 'tis sense :
Clothed with such grace, with such expression fraught,
They move in meaning, and they pause in thought !
But dost thou farther watch, with charm'd surprise,
The mild irresolution of her eyes,

Curious to mark how frequent they repose,
In brief eclipse and momentary close-
Ah! seest thou not an ambush'd Cupid there,
Too tim'rous of his charge, with jealous care
Veils and unveils those beams of heavenly light,
Too full, too fatal else, for mortal sight?
Nor yet, such pleasing vengeance fond to meet,
In pard'ning dimples hope a safe retreat.
What though her peaceful breast should ne'er allow
Subduing frowns to arm her altered brow,
By Love, I swear, and by his gentle wiles,
More fatal still the mercy of her smiles!
Thus lovely, thus adorn'd, possessing all
Of bright or fair that can to woman fall,
The height of vanity might well be thought
Prerogative in her, and Nature's fault.
Yet gentle Amoret, in mind supreme

As well as charms, rejects the vainer theme;
And, half mistrustful of her beauty's store,

She barbs with wit those darts too keen before :-
Read in all knowledge that her sex should reach,

Though Greville, or the Muse, should deign to teach,
Fond to improve, nor timorous to discern
How far it is a woman's grace to learn;
In Millar's dialect she would not prove
Apollo's priestess, but Apollo's love,

Graced by those signs which truth delights to own,
The timid blush, and mild submitted tone:

Whate'er she says, though sense appear throughout,
Displays the tender hue of female doubt;
Deck'd with that charm, how lovely wit appears,
How graceful science, when that robe she wears!
Such too her talents, and her bent of mind,
As speak a sprightly heart by thought refined;
A taste for mirth, by contemplation school'd,
A turn for ridicule, by candour ruled,

A scorn of folly, which she tries to hide ;
An awe of talent, which she owns with pride!

Peace, idle Muse! no more thy strain prolong,
But yield a theme, thy warmest praises wrong;
Just to her merit, though thou canst not raise
Thy feeble verse, behold th' acknowledged praise

Has spread conviction through the envious train,
And cast a fatal gloom o'er Scandal's reign!
And lo! each pallid hag, with blister'd tongue,
Mutters assent to all thy zeal has sung-
Owns all the colours just-the outline true;
Thee my inspirer, and my model-CREWE !

PROLOGUE.

WRITTEN BY MR. GARRICK.

A SCHOOL for Scandal! tell me, I beseech you,
Needs there a school this modish art to teach you?
No need of lessons now, the knowing think;
We might as well be taught to eat and drink.
Caused by a dearth of scandal, should the vapours
Distress our fair ones-let them read the papers;
Their powerful mixtures such disorders hit ;
Crave what you will-there's quantum sufficit.
"Lord!" cries my Lady Wormwood (who loves tattle,
And puts much salt and pepper in her prattle),
Just risen at noon, all night at cards when threshing
Strong tea and scandal-" Bless me, how refreshing!
Give me the papers, Lisp-how bold and free! [Sips.
Last night Lord L. [Sips] was caught with Lady D.
For aching heads what charming, sal volatile! [Sips.
If Mrs. B. will still continue flirting,

We hope she'll DRAW, or we'll UNDRAW the curtain.
Fine satire, poz-in public all abuse it,

But, by ourselves [Sips], our praise we can't refuse it.
Now, Lisp, read you there, at that dash and star.”
Yes, ma'am-A certain Lord had best beware,

66

Who lives not twenty miles from Grosvenor Square; For should he Lady W. find willing,

Wormwood is bitter"- -"Oh! that's me! the villain ! Throw it behind the fire, and never more

Let that vile paper come within my door."

Thus at our friends we laugh, who feel the dart ;
To reach our feelings, we ourselves must smart.
Is our young bard so young, to think that he
Can stop the full spring-tide of calumny?
Knows he the world so little, and its trade?
Alas! the devil's sooner raised than laid.

So strong, so swift, the monster there's no gagging :
Cut Scandal's head off, still the tongue is wagging.
Proud of your smiles once lavishly bestow'd,
Again our young Don Quixote takes the road;
To show his gratitude he draws his pen,
And seeks his hydra, Scandal, in his den.