practice of old governments to the reason of the case, that the expences of them increase in the proportion they ought to diminish. It is but few general laws that civilized life requires, and those of such common usefulness, that whether they are enforced by the forms of government or not, the effect will be nearly the same. If we consider what the principles are that first condense men into society, and what the motives that regulate their mutual intercourse afterwards, we shall find, by the time we arrive at what is called government, that nearly the whole of the business is performed by the natural operation of the parts upon each other.

The Landed Interest.

It is difficult to discover what is meant by the landed interest, if it does not mean a combination of aristocratical land-holders opposing their own pecuniary interest to that of the farmer and every branch of trade, commerce, and manufacture. In all other respects it is the only interest that needs no partial protection. It enjoys the general protection of the world. Every individual, high or low, is interested in the fruits of the earth; men, women, and children, of all ages and degrees, will turn out to assist the farmer, rather than a harvest should not be got in; and they will not act thus by any other property. It is the only one for which the common prayer of mankind is put up, and the only one that can never fail from the want of means. It is the interest, not of the policy, but of the existence of man, and when it ceases, he must cease to be. No other interest in a nation stands on the same united support. Commerce, manufactures, arts, sciences, and everything else, compared with this, are supported but in parts. Their prosperity or their decay has not the same universal influence. When the valleys laugh and sing, it is not the farmer only, but all creation that rejoices. It is a prosperity that excludes all envy; and this cannot be said of anything else.

The completest editions of Paine's works are those by Mendum (3 vols. Boston, 1850), and Mr Moncure D. Conway (4 vols. London, 1895-96); of his numerous biographies may be mentioned those by Francis Oldys' (i.e. George Chalmers, 1791), Cheetham (1809), Rickman (1814), Sherwin (1819), Vale (1841), Blanchard (1860), and especially that by Moncure D. Conway (2 vols. 1892). See also Leslie Stephen's History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1880), and Alger's Englishmen in the French Revolution (1889).

George Colman 'the Elder' (1732-94), playwright and manager, was the son of the English envoy at Florence, was educated at Westminster and Oxford, and called to the Bar in 1755. His theatrical proclivities were much hampered by his mother's aristocratic connections, the Earl of Bath and General Pulteney; but in 1760 his first piece, Polly Honeycombe, was produced at Drury Lane with great success; next year came The Jealous Wife, and in 1766 The Clandestine Marriage, written in conjunction with Garrick. In 1767 he purchased, with three others, Covent Garden Theatre, and held the office of manager for seven years, when he sold his share. During his management he had quarrels with his partners, and with Garrick and Macklin; a pamphlet war and a succession of lawsuits followed. In 1776 he purchased the Haymarket Theatre from Foote. He wrote many minor comedies, produced

'acting' versions of plays by Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Terence, of Milton's Comus, and of some French pieces. His own translation of Terence was received with enthusiasm, and so was his translation, with notes, of Horace's De Arte Poetica. He wrote essays, edited Beaumont and Fletcher's works, and Ben Jonson's, and was author of some poems, criticisms, and other prose pieces (published in 3 vols. 1787). Many of his plays are not merely clever, but brilliant; and though a collection of his Dramatic Works was published in four volumes in 1777, many of his things have never been printed. Peake's Memoirs of the Colman Family (1841) and his own son's Random Recollections (1830) contain biographical materials; and Some Particulars of the Life of the Late George Colman (1795) is largely autobiographical. In 1785 he had a stroke of paralysis, and he died in confinement. His son, George Colman 'the Younger,' was perhaps even more famous on the same lines well into the next century.

Richard Cumberland (1732-1811), novelist and essayist, was the son of the Bishop of Clonfert and great-grandson of Dr Richard Cumberland (see page 47), and was born in the lodge of Trinity College, Cambridge. His mother was Joanna, daughter of Dr Bentley, erroneously said to be the Phoebe of Byrom's pastoral (see page 279); and he inherited not a little of his grandfather's combative temper. From Bury St Edmunds and Westminster, where he was contemporary with Cowper, Churchill, and Warren Hastings, he passed to Trinity College, Cambridge, and was a Fellow at twenty. Becoming private secretary to Lord Halifax, he gave up his intention of taking orders. Through the influence of his patron, he was made Crown-agent for the province of Nova Scotia; and he was afterwards appointed, by Lord George Germain, secretary to the Board of Trade. His popularity as a writer of plays introduced him to all the literary and distinguished society of his day. In 1780 he was employed on a secret mission to Spain, in order to endeavour to detach that country from the hostile confederacy against England; but after a twelvemonth at Madrid he was recalled, and payment of his drafts refused. A sum of £5000 was due to him; but as Cumberland had failed in the negotiation, and had exceeded his commission through excess of zeal, the Minister refused to reimburse him. The unfortunate dramatist-diplomatist was accordingly compelled to sell his paternal estate and retire into private life. He took up his abode at Tunbridge, and there poured forth farces, comedies, tragedies, pamphlets, essays, and poems, among them two epics, Calvary and The Exodiad, the latter written in conjunction with Sir James Bland Burgess. None of these was above mediocrity: the vivifying power of genius was shown only in two or three of his plays. In the Memoirs of his Own Life

Cumberland is graphic and entertaining, but too many of his anecdotes of contemporaries are imperfectly authenticated. His fame rests on two or three of his plays, which include The West Indian (1771)—his best, produced with much success by Garrick; The Brothers (1769); The Fashionable Lover (1772); The Jew; and The Wheel of Fortune. One would have thought that the unquestionable dramatic gift manifested in the best plays, his knowledge of life and manners at home and abroad, would have made Cumberland a notable novelist. But it was not so. His first novel, Arundel (1789), was hurriedly composed; but the scene being partly in college and at court, and dealing with high life, the author drew upon his recollections, and painted vigorously what he had felt and witnessed. His second work, Henry (1795), carefully elaborated in imitation of Fielding, was less happy; Cumberland was not at home in the humbler walks of life, and his portraits are grossly overcharged. The character of Ezekiel Dow, a Methodist preacher, was praised by Sir Walter Scott as exquisite and just. But the resemblance to Fielding's Parson Adams is too marked, and the Methodistic elements are less convincing than the learned simplicity and bonhomie of the worthy parson. And as Scott said: 'He had a peculiar taste in love-affairs, which induced him to reverse the natural and usual practice of courtship, and to throw upon the softer sex the task of wooing, which is more gracefully, as well as naturally, the province of the man.' In these wooing scenes there is inevitably a lack of delicacy; Scott, who ranked his comedies next to Sheridan's, thought his romances indecent. His third novel, John de Lancaster, was the inferior work of his advanced years. In the Retaliation Goldsmith somewhat hyperbolically praised him as

The Terence of England, the mender of hearts -surely one of the finest compliments ever paid by one author to another, were it not obviously satirical, though not perhaps unkindly meant. Actually Goldsmith does not seem to have been drawn to him, thought he had over-refined comedy, and set himself to succeed by avoiding his rival's defect; while Sheridan made the world laugh at him as Sir Fretful Plagiary.' The West Indian is a comedy of intrigue, and its scheme of honour and morals is by no means unexceptionable. The hero, arriving rich and libertine from Jamaica, falls in love with a beautiful girl, addresses her in the street, pursues her to her lodging, and importunes her to a dishonourable alliance. Some trouble ensues, but so soon as the hero has had an opportunity of explaining in a dignified manner that a disreputable landlady had hinted to him that the lady was not the sister but the mistress of the secondary hero, the mistake is at once seen to be natural and venial; the lady, her brother and father, and friends on both sides regard the principal hero's conduct on the whole as generous and

admirable in a high degree, and the insulted lady accepts, not merely without hesitation but with enthusiasm, his formal suit for her hand.

Mr Johnson and Tea-Drinking.

At the tea-table he made considerable demands upon his favourite beverage; and I remember when Sit Joshua Reynolds at my house reminded him that he had drunk eleven cups, he replied: 'Sir, I did not court your glasses of wine; why should you number up my cups of tea?' And then, laughing in perfect good humour, he added: Sir, I should have released the lady from any further trouble if it had not been for you remark; but you have reminded me that I want one of the dozen, and I must request Mrs Cumberland to round up my number. When he saw the readiness and complacency with which my wife obeyed his call, he turned a kind and cheerful look on her, and said: 'Madam, I must tell you for your comfort you have escaped much better than a certain lady did a while ago, upon whose patience I intruded greatly more than I have done on yours; but the lady asked me for no other purpose than to make a zany of me, and set me gabbling to a parcel of people I knew nothing of; so, madam, I had my revenge on her, for I swallowed five-and-twenty cups of her tea, and did not treat her with as many words.' (From the Memoirs.)

From The West Indian.'

Mrs Fulmer. Why, how you sit, musing and moping, sighing and desponding! I'm ashamed of you. Mr Fulmer is this the country you described to me, a second Eldorado, rivers of gold and rocks of diamonds? You found me in a pretty snug retir'd way of life at Boulogne, out of the noise and bustle of the world, and wholly at my ease; you, indeed, was upon the wing, with a fiery persecution at your back: but, like a true son of Loyola, you had then a thousand ingenious devices to repair your fortune; and this your native country was to be the scene of your performances: fool that I was, to be inveigled into it by you: . . . for what have we got, whom have we gull'd but ourselves? which of all your trains has taken fire? even this poor expedient of your bookseller's shop seems abandoned; for if a chance customer drops in, who is there, pray, to help him to what he wants?

Fulmer. Patty, you know it is not upon slight grounds that I despair; there had us'd to be a livelihood to be pick'd up in this country, both for the honest and dis honest I have tried each walk, and am likely to starve at last there is not a point to which the wit and faculy of man can turn, that I have not set mine to; but : vain, I am beat through every quarter of the compass.

Mrs Ful. Ah! common efforts all: strike me a masterstroke, Mr Fulmer, if you wish to make any figure in this country.

Ful. But where, how, and what? I have bluster'd for prerogative; I have bellowed for freedom; I have offer'd to serve my country; I have engaged to betray it-a master-stroke, truly; why, I have talked treason, writ treason, and if a man can't live by that he can live by nothing. Here I set up as a bookseller, why men left off reading; and if I was to turn butcher, I believe o'my conscience they'd leave off eating.

Mrs Ful. Why, there now 's your lodger, old Captain Dudley, as he calls himself; there's no flint without fire;

something might be struck out of him, if you'd the wit to find the way.

Ful. Hang him, an old dry skin'd curmudgeon; you may as well think to get truth out of a courtier, or candour out of a critic: I can make nothing of him; besides, he's poor, and therefore not for our purpose.

Mrs Ful. The more fool he! Wou'd any man be poor that had such a prodigy in his possession?

Ful. His daughter, you mean; she is, indeed, uncommonly beautiful.

Mrs Ful. Beautiful! Why, she need only be seen, to have the first men in the kingdom at her feet. Egad, I wish I had the leasing of her beauty; what would some of your young Nabobs give— ?

Ful. Hush here comes the captain; good girl, leave us to ourselves, and let me try what I can make of him. Mrs Ful. Captain, truly! i' faith I'd have a regiment, had I such a daughter, before I was three months older. [Exit as Captain DUDLEY enters.

Ful. Captain Dudley, good morning to you. Dudley. Mr Fulmer, I have borrowed a book from your shop; 'tis the sixth volume of my deceased friend Tristram he is a flattering writer to us poor soldiers; and the divine story of Le Fevre, which makes part of this book, in my opinion of it, does honour not to its author only, but to human nature.

Ful. He's an author I keep in the way of trade, but one I never relish'd: he is much too loose and profligate for my taste.

Dud. That's being too severe: I hold him to be a moralist in the noblest sense; he plays indeed with the fancy, and sometimes perhaps too wantonly; but while he thus designedly makes his main attack, he comes at once upon the heart; refines, amends it, softens it; beats down each selfish barrier from about it, and opens every sluice of pity and benevolence.

Ful. We of the catholic persuasion are not much bound to him.-Well, Sir, I shall not oppose your opinion; a favourite author is like a favourite mistress; and there you know, Captain, no man likes to have his taste arraigned.

Dud. Upon my word, Sir, I don't know what a man likes in that case; 'tis an experiment I never made. Ful. Sir!-Are you serious.

Dud. 'Tis of little consequence whether you think so. Ful. What a formal old prig it is! [aside]. I apprehend you, Sir; you speak with caution; you are married? Dud. I have been.

Ful. And this young lady, which accompanies youDud. Passes for my daughter.

Ful. Passes for his daughter! humph-[aside]. She is exceedingly beautiful, finely accomplished, of a most enchanting shape and air.

Dud. You are much too partial; she has the greatest defect a woman can have.

Ful. How so, pray?

Dud. She has no fortune.

'tis a wearisome time; 'tis an apprenticeship to a profession fit only for a patriarch. But preferment must be closely followed: you never could have been so far behind hand in the chace unless you had palpably mistaken your way. You'll pardon me, but I begin to perceive you have lived in the world, not with it.

Dud. It may be so; and you, perhaps, can give me better counsel. I'm now soliciting a favour; an exchange to a company on full pay; nothing more; and yet I meet a thousand bars to that; tho', without boasting, I should think the certificate of services which I sent in might have purchased that indulgence to me.

Ful. Who thinks or cares about 'em? Certificate of services, indeed! Send in a certificate of your fair daughter; carry her in your hand with you. Dud. What! Who! My daughter! daughter! Well, and what then?

Carry my

Ful. Why, then your fortune 's made, that's all. Dud. I understand you and this you call knowledge of the world? Despicable knowledge; but, sirrah, I will have you know—[threatening him].

Ful. Help! Who's within? Wou'd you strike me, Sir; wou'd you lift up your hand against a man in his own house?

Dud. In a church, if he dare insult the poverty of a man of honour.

Ful. Have a care what you do; remember there is such a thing in law as an assault and battery; ay, and such trifling forms as warrants and indictments.

Dud. Go, Sir; you are too mean for my resentment: 'tis that, and not the law, protects you. Hence !

Ful. An old, absurd, incorrigible blockhead! I'll be reveng'd of him [aside].

See his Memoirs (2 vols. 1807), and George Paston's Little Memoirs of the Eighteenth Century (1901). His plays are in Mrs Inchbald's British Theatre.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, dramatist and political orator, was the most brilliant of a gifted family representing an old native Irish clan in County Cavan. His great-grandson, Lord Dufferin, reckoned that in two hundred and fifty years the family had produced twenty-seven authors and upwards of two hundred books; and the author of Letters from High Latitudes was fully entitled to include himself and his gifted mother, the author of The Lament of the Irish Emigrant. Thomas Sheridan, D.C.L. and Jacobite historical writer, suffered for the cause of James II., and was father of the Chevalier Sheridan, Prince Charlie's tutor and comrade in arms; Thomas's nephew, another Thomas, D.D. and friend of Swift, was a schoolmaster in Dublin, and translator. His son,

a third Thomas (1719-88), became a teacher of elocution in Dublin and author of a Life of Swift, but was first an actor and playwright, and at this stage of his career married the poetess Frances Chamberlaine, who as Mrs Frances Sheridan (1724-66) was to be a notable novelist and dramatist; her works comprise three unimportant comedies and two novels-The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Biddulph (1761), which was praised by Johnson, approved by the public, and translated into French by the Abbé Prevost; and The

Irish Union, and zealously defended the liberty of the press. On Dr Johnson's motion, he was made a member of the famous Literary Club; and he was a member of Brooks's, and eminently popular in society. His political orations, if they erred on the side of exuberance, were many of them great oratorical triumphs. His bitterness against Warren Hastings was doubtless the outcome of sincere conviction that the Indian proconsul merited the worst that could befall him; for 'Sherry' was always transparently free from envy or malice, and was charitable to a fault.

As dramatist, he ranks in popularity next to Shakespeare, and is the last great writer of English comedy. He represents that comedy of manners, of wit and repartee, of which Etherege and Wycherley were the first notable exponents, Congreve the supreme master, and Goldsmith the reviver. And if in sheer brilliancy of wit Congreve surpasses all of them, Sheridan is surpassed by none in truly mirth-provoking situations and collocations, in entertaining dialogue, or in the fascination which is the dramatist's highest triumph. His satire is not that of the moralist; indeed, it has been objected to the School for Scandal that, as in Tom Jones-with which it has some points of resemblance the extravagant libertine is generous and warm-hearted, the grave and decorous character a mean hypocrite. If the School for Scandal has borrowed some features from Tom Jones and Blifil, the Rivals owes not a little to Humphry Clinker. Captain Absolute has a prototype in testy Matthew Bramble; and Mrs Malaprop's immortal allegory on the banks of the Nile has not a few congeners in Mrs Winifred Jenkins's derangement of epitaphs. On the other hand, some of the speeches in Pizarro were said to have a closer resemblance to Sheridan's own oratory in the House of Commons than to that of the sixteenth century Spaniards or Kotzebue's Peruvians. Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen,' sung in the School for Scandal, became a standard English song. 'Had I a heart for falsehood framed' is the only one in the score of songs and 'airs' in the Duenna that is still remembered. I own the soft impeachment' is another of Mrs Malaprop's sayings which, in whole or in part, is now an essential part of the Philistine vocabulary; and it was Sir Benjamin Backbite who first spoke of 'a beautiful quarto page, where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin.' 'The malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick,' and 'When ingratitude barbs the dart of injury, the wound has double danger in it,' occur both in the School for Scandal.

'Love gilds the scene and

women guide the plot' is from the epilogue to the Rivals; and at least one saying of the playwrightpolitician in his own proper character has become proverbial: The right honourable gentleman is indebted to. his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts' was a retort by Sheridan to Dundas in the House of Commons. It rarely

happened that Sheridan's stage characters were identified with actual persons, but it was universally taken for granted that Sir Fretful Plagiary was a caricature of Cumberland the dramatist. Pizarro is forgotten; but no comedies have a stronger hold on modern play-going Englishmen of all classes than the Rivals and the School for Scandal, as strong as in the days when Kemble and Mrs Siddons were still playing for the genial dramatist-manager.

Song from 'The Duenna.'

Had I a heart for falsehood framed,

I ne'er could injure you;

For though your tongue no promise claim'd, Your charms would make me true.

To you no soul shall bear deceit,

No stranger offer wrong;

But friends in all the aged you'll meet,
And lovers in the young.

But when they learn that you have blest Another with your heart,

They'll bid aspiring passion rest,
And act a brother's part:
Then, lady, dread not here deceit,
Nor fear to suffer wrong;

For friends in all the aged you'll meet,
And brothers in the young.

From The Critic.'

Servant [entering]. Sir Fretful Plagiary, sir. Dangle. Beg him to walk up.-Now, Mrs Dangle, Sir Fretful Plagiary is an author to your own taste. Mrs Dangle. I confess he is a favourite of mine, because everybody else abuses him.

Sneer. Very much to the credit of your charity, madam, if not of your judgment.

Dan. But, egad! he allows no merit to any author but himself; that's the truth on 't, though he's my friend.

Sneer. Never. He is as envious as an old maid verging on the desperation of six-and-thirty; and then the insidious humility with which he seduces you to give a free opinion on any of his works, can be exceeded only by the petulant arrogance with which he is sure to reject your observations.

Dan. Very true, egad! though he's my friend.

Sneer. Then his affected contempt of all newspaper strictures; though, at the same time, he is the sorest man alive, and shrinks like scorched parchment from the fiery ordeal of true criticism: yet is he so covetous of popu larity, that he had rather be abused than not mentioned at all.

Dan. There's no denying it; though he's my friend. Sneer. You have read the tragedy he has just finished, haven't you?

Dan. O yes; he sent it to me yesterday.

Sneer. Well, and you think it execrable, don't you?

Dan. Why, between ourselves, egad! I must ownthough he's my friend-that it is one of the mosthe's here! Aside]-finished and most admirable perform

Sir Fretful. Mr Sneer with him, did you say? [Enters.]

Dan. Ah, my dear friend! Egad! we were just speaking of your tragedy. Admirable, Sir Fretful; admirable!