an injury—­a person towards whom duties are to be acknowledged—­the genuine crim-con antagonist of the villanous seducer Joseph.  To realise him more, his sufferings under his unfortunate match must have the downright pungency of life—­must (or should) make you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just as the same predicament would move you in a neighbour or old friend.  The delicious scenes which give the play its name and zest, must affect you in the same serious manner as if you heard the reputation of a dear female friend attacked in your real presence.  Crabtree, and Sir Benjamin—­those poor snakes that live but in the sunshine of your mirth—­must be rippened by this hot-bed process of realization into asps or amphisbaenas; and Mrs. Candour—­O! frightful! become a hooded serpent.  Oh who that remembers Parsons and Dodd—­the wasp and butterfly of the School for Scandal—­in those two characters; and charming natural Miss Pope, the perfect gentlewoman as distinguished from the fine lady of comedy, in this latter part—­would forego the true scenic delight—­the escape from life—­the oblivion of consequences—­the holiday barring out of the pedant Reflection—­those Saturnalia of two or three brief hours, well won from the world—­to sit instead at one of our modern plays—­to have his coward conscience (that forsooth must not be left for a moment) stimulated with perpetual appeals—­dulled rather, and blunted, as a faculty without repose must be—­and his moral vanity pampered with images of notional justice, notional beneficence, lives saved without the spectators’ risk, and fortunes given away that cost the author nothing?

No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast in all its parts as this manager’s comedy.  Miss Farren had succeeded to Mrs. Abingdon in Lady Teazle; and Smith, the original Charles, had retired, when I first saw it.  The rest of the characters, with very slight exceptions, remained.  I remember it was then the fashion to cry down John Kemble, who took the part of Charles after Smith; but, I thought, very unjustly.  Smith, I fancy, was more airy, and took the eye with a certain gaiety of person.  He brought with him no sombre recollections of tragedy.  He had not to expiate the fault of having pleased beforehand in lofty declamation.  He had no sins of Hamlet or of Richard to atone for.  His failure in these parts was a passport to success in one of so opposite a tendency.  But, as far as I could judge, the weighty sense of Kemble made up for more personal incapacity than he had to answer for.  His harshest tones in this part came steeped and dulcified in good humour.  He made his defects a grace.  His exact declamatory manner, as he managed it, only served to convey the points of his dialogue with more precision.  It seemed to head the shafts to carry them deeper.  Not one of his sparkling sentences was lost.  I remember minutely how he delivered each in succession, and cannot by any effort imagine how any of them could be altered for the better.