THE NEW EDITION OF WFCHERLEY, CONGREVE, VANBRUGH, AND FARQUHAR.

Tins publication of the indefatigable Mr. Moxox will, in one -volume of an elegant form and readable type, furnish a library

with the masterpieces of that comedy which intervened between the more poetitml drama of the Elizabethan age and the species of novel in dialogue, part three, part sentiment, part meledrama, that was in vogue for the greater part of the last century and the

beginning of this. The text is unaccompanied by notes, which perhaps arc scarcely needed; but Mr. LriGti IluaT has fu7nirshed

a series of biographield and critical notices. The biographies, though not containing a very complete narrative of the heroes' career, or a very profound view of their characters, are exceedingly

agreeable and gossiping commentaries on their lives, givina one a notion of the writer and his times; abounding in pleasant anecdote and characteristic points ; saying all the good that Can be said of

the man, and finding excuses for what cannot be praised. The cri-

ticism is less in bulk, and indeed of is : but Mr. limaT has

judiciously quotel the very elaborate :led eelay remarks of CHARLES LAMB and IlAzurr upon these four great writers in their peculiar style.

This style has been called the comedy of manners: but manners are the distinguishing characteristic of all comedy. Not that this species of drama embodies events that commonly oacur, or may even occur at all in actual life.—for allowance must always be made for the necessities of the dramatic art : but that the characters and incidents of comedy present the quintessence of passing life ; reflect, it' not the common morality of the day, such a morality RS plIblie opinion will tolerate ; and C011YCV the subjects and style ef the prevalent conversation. improved by the powers of the writer.

In this Sense. 010 C0111 L'.1iCS of WYCH ER tie. CoNGRYA U.

IIIHG11, and FARQU HAIL ere not so much the caeoel:es man- ners, as of lieence. With some inferior ,o1.1 se: earlier

date, they represent the sexual moral: my tm mm f. ea the

Restoration till some time after the mitt c:1; 0:' me h so of Brunswick, and perhaps till the doinestia regularity of o Rot

the Third rendered this sort of e ondu,:t ,:ootned it to secrecy it' it could not destroy it. An opinion has lately been advanced, to cover the maral monstrosities of the new French school, that the events introduced into a fietion are not to be taken literally as examples of' contemporary praetiae ; which opinion is partly dint of Mr. Hs NT in the volume before us. 'Ishe proposition is true, no doubt, in its full extent ; but the inference drawn front it is untrue. No writer. especially in writIng for the stage and painting contemporary life, ever ventures upon any thing which outrages public opinion ; and it is more than probable that he invents such incidents and snch conduct in his heroes as shall rather raise the admiration titan extort the censure of the free- thinking part of the community. Tried by this test, (and we believe it to be the true test,) the pointed dialogue, or the lively repartee of the Augustan age, be comedies of the school we are speaking of exhibit a very gross and conveyed by people many of whom would be rejected by a shop. revolting picture of certain classes of society, as well as a very low state of public opinion. Avoiding offensive details, we may ob-

serve that intrigue is made the grand business of ,life both in men

and women; not even the simplest thing being attempted by direct means. Heroines, not personally unchaste, (for that is the only description,) associate with the loosest characters; amours, from the meanest to the highest kind, are the staple conversation of the gallants, and only bragged of when their number is extra- ordinary ; adulteries are planned, and, as STEELE observed, all but executed, in the presence of the audience; the constitutional vigour of the lover is one of the topics with which he occasionally urges his suit, and observations as to the state of his health are tot always confined to the presence of his male associates. With time and space, these things are resolvable into the cir- cumstances of the period, without attributing any monstrous pro- fligacy to the persons. It must also constantly be borne in mind, that the life described was fashionable life, or that of those persons who either by their vices or their follies become connected with fashionable people ; and that the frequenters of a playhouse, in those days, were of a much looser class than they subsequently became. But, apart from a juster judgment in morals and a much greater external decorum, it may be questioned whether we are so greatly improved in the essentials of ethics as we fancy. No one now-a- days would hold up to ridicule ill-used husbands, as is done in the case of Foresight and Fondlewife,—though, even here, plain com- mon sense might furnish an excuse to our ancestors : but take up a fashionable novel by a person well acquainted with the fashionable world—liaisons with married women are as common as in the old comedies, though brought less prominently forward, and bandied with less indelicacy. Not even a novelist would now allow any of his characters to talk so nakedly of his amours as Belmour ; but there is scarcely one of Sir EDWARD BULWER'S pet heroes who

is not painted as a devil among the women. And this is to be said in favour of the old school—they never:attempted to pass off their

irregularities as virtues, or to consider them any thing more than "vices of the blood." It is the modern fashion to throw the veil of sentiment over licence, and to hold up vice as virtue if it be re- fined. The grossness of the old school is not of a kind to inflame the passions, but merely to amuse when it does not disgust. Whether these plays are adapted to general perusal, is a ques- tion which every family must answer for itself. To a person who desires an acquaintance with manners under the latter STUARTS- who would pleasantly trace the history of our literature by an exa- mination of the cliefs-Weeuvre of its comedy, or who wishes to study a close, cogent, sparkling, or polished style, abounding in searching wit or pointed observation—the dramas of WYCHERLEY, CONGREVE, and FARqUHAR, are indispensable, and VANDRUGII may finish the quartet. Their revival on the stage is hopeless. It is not the mere plain- ness or grossness of their language, as is generally alleged ; for mere language may be cut away, as Mr. BOWDLER has managed with SHAKSPERE. The grossness of these comedies is all-pervading. Remove, for instance, the frailty of Mrs. Frail, and the character

is destroyed ; though she is a very attractive person with all her

boldness, and the scene where she quarrels with Ben, after Ben has quarrelled with his father, is very admirable. The intrigue of Scandal with Mrs. Foresight, though not essentially necessary to the conduct of the play, has so been made by the author, that the part must be rewritten, or retained as it stands. Miss Prue must be got rid of altogether ; and in another play of CONGREVE'S, The Old Bachelor, the majority of the incidents, and the conduct they spring from, smack of unmentionable places. Independent of this defect, plays which depict only the manners of their age are, to the mass of an audience, unintelligible, or at least uninteresting, when the mode changes. The allusions to temporary subjects, which at first added double relish to the jest, fall flat and meaningless upon another age ; the topics and style of the dialogue and the air of the persons are strange and odd; and very often the incidents seem unnatural, or, as in some of the dramas before us, offensive. Nor let the old comedians be defrauded of their due praise : it is probable that they assisted to purify the practices they satirized. The race of brutal and sottish husbands, and the tyrannical interference of parents with the affec- tions of their children, have both been to a great degree restrained : probably the unequal matches in respect to age, tastes, tempera- ment, and every thing, are less frequent than of yore. And in literature, as in life, the destroyers of an abuse must expect to be put aside when they have accomplished their end.

To a few of the plays before us the w hole of these observations may not apply ; but if all the plays were in their nature capable of being revived on the modern stage, where are we to find actors?

A drama whose incidents are founded upon the domestic events of general life, or which professes to represent the passions, is always secure of some kind of perfumers ; but the comedy of manners cannot be played when the life which it depicted has passed away, and deprived the player of the model he must copy from. Low as managers, mummery, music, our altered modes of living, and the starring system, have reduced the stage, it is nowhere so conspi- cuous as in the dearth of actors for " genteel comedy." Even in the School Ar Scandal, though nearer to our own day by the bet- ter part of a century, the gentlemen look like footmen in their masters' clothes, and the less that is said of the ladies the better.

Bow then can the graceful carriage, the gallant bearing, "the no- bleman-look," as Poi% expresses it, and the strong, terse, and keeper advertising for "a young man of genteel address."

In the Memoirs there is very little that can be called original, though much of it will be new to many readers. Mr. Hiner has, however, dug up some of CONGREVE'S manuscript letters from the repository in the British Museum, which are curious relics for various reasons. They exhibit his familiar style; they show the loose mode or no-mode of orthography prevalent in those days ; and whilst the first contains a fact which MUNCHAU- SEN expanded, the second, by displaying the difficulties Of travel- ling, lets us into one of the means by which the gentlemen of those times acquired their knowledge of man.

" New Year Day.

" This is to wish you and Mrs. Porter and my friends in Howard Street a happy new year, and next to condole with you for the damnd weather God knows when the snow will let me stir ; or if a thaw should conic upon it when the flouds will be down. I am by a great fire, yet my ink freezes so fast I can- not write. The Hautboys who plaYd to us last night had their breath froze in their instruments till it dropt of the ends of 'cm in icicles by God this is true nay service and sorrow to my friends for not being with 'em. "I run ye: most obedient servant, " W CONGREVE" (Outside.) " For Mr. Porter, at his house in Surrey Street, in the Strand London" (Post-marks.) " Buckingham.—Frank, It. Temple."

"The following is to Mrs. Porter— "Rotterdam, 7 be 27: 1700 " I leave you to judge whether Holland can be said to be wanting in Gal- lantry, when it is Customary there to enclose a Billet doux to a Lady in a letter to her husband I have not so much as made mention of this, to yours ; and if you tell first, let the sin fall upon your head instead of his, for my part I keep the Commandment, I love my neighbour as my selfe, and to avoid coveting my neighbour's wife I desire to be coveted by her; which you know is quite an- other thing. About — weeks since, I wrote a very passionate letter to you from Antwerp which I believe you never received, for just now it is found care- fully put up by my man, who has been drunk ever since. I understand you have not been in the Country, I am glad of it ; for I should very much have apprehended the effect which solitude might have produced. Joined with the regrett which I know you feel for my absence, take it for granted that I sigh extreamly : I would have written by the Aleayd, but that would make me re- flect that I was at a distance from her, which is pain I cannot, bear. I would have written to your mother hut that I have changed my religion twice since I left England, I am at present so unsettled, that I think it tit to fix before I endeavour to convert her to my opinion which I design to do as soon as I know what it is. I have discoursed with friars and monks of all orders, with zealots, enthusiasts and all sectaries of the reformed churches. and Iliad the benefit to travel 12 leagues together in Guelderland with a mad Phanatick in a waggon, who preached to me all the way things not to be written. Pray take care that Mr. Ebbub has good wine, for I have mach to say to you over a bottle under- ground: and I hope within 3 weeks to satisfie you that no man upon the face of the earth is more dear neighbour " your ffaithfull and affectionate humble servant " W : C " (Outside.) " For Mrs. Porter."