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66

WILLIAM WYCHERLEY.

his life; whereupon a notorious wag who was present, observed in an encouraging tone, "Ah, indeed, very well, very well: Ben Jonson has said worse things,-and better." What a desperate

postscript is this to a letter of compliment!

No. 81. WILLIAM WYCHERLEY.

From an original Picture, in the Collection of the Dutchess of Dorset.

THIS is a fine bold head of a bold and fine writer. WYCHERLEY was the patriarch of modern comedy. His characters (and in them his strength lies) have been modelled and re-modelled a dozen times. Our most brilliant wits have not disdained to borrow from him: for even Congreve and Vanbrugh (and others) are his debtors. Wycherley's comedy is strong and masculine. His dramatis personæ are not sketchy, shadowy phantoms, who are lost in the dazzle of the wit, or the vapid insipidity of the dialogue; but are full-sized men and women, distinctly and completely drawn. There is a great body of comedy in his works; and his "Plain Dealer" alone is sufficient to justify his claim to be considered a vigorous and original comic writer. In his youth he is said to have been very handsome, and to have attracted the admiration of women. In this portrait, however, we see him as he was in his age—with the look of a gentleman upon him, and a shrewd and observing character in his eye. The Widow Blackacre is there, and her son Jerry, and Novel, and Varnish and his exquisite helpmate, and Hoyden, and the blunt and rugged Manly, who returns from overcoming the rebellious billows and the uncertain winds, to be conquered in his turn, and harassed by the fickleness of a jilt, and the exemplary perfidy of a fashionable friend. Mr. and Mrs. Varnish must be dead, we apprehend, by

THOMAS PARNELL.

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this time; but they have left a large and thriving progeny behind them, which will endure as long as cheating smiles and hollow sayings shall retain their value; as long as there shall be watchful knavery in quest of plunder, or confiding honesty for its prey, or a polished scoundrel to lie away the life of the absent, or an unprincipled woman to be won.

No. 82. THOMAS PARNELL.

From an original Picture, in the possession of Sir George Parnell.

ALTHOUGH We do not recognize any lofty marks of genius, either in the poetry or the portrait of PARNELL, we may give him credit for harmonious ease, and placidity if not depth of manner. He was an unassuming moral writer of verse; and (notwithstanding some feeble lines which it contains) his "Hermit" still lives in the memory, like one of the bright summer evenings or sunshine holidays which gilded the gloom of our boyhood. We will not read it with our critical spectacles on, lest we should detect the flaws of which we are now happily ignorant ;—but let it remain !-like the other dreams and wonders of childhood, like the splendours of oriental fable, or the song of the thrush and the nightingale to the stranger in distant lands, a glory of the imagination, an hallucination of the mind, to be coveted and not destroyed. We would not, for much that could be offered, give up these things to the rapacious grasp of the thing that is deified as "Common Sense :"-But, so long as the burs and thistles of the every-day world are liable to harm us, we would fain, from mere wisdom, keep one place secure and holy, which we can flee to as

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NICHOLAS ROWE.

a refuge from all sorrow, and, laying ourselves down beneath delectable mountains and Arcadian skies, refresh ourselves with the ever-sweet waters of enchantment.

No. 83. NICHOLAS ROWE.

From a Picture, by Kneller, in the Collection of the Earl of Harcourt.

We have a great objection to Mr. NICHOLAS ROWE. In the first place, he has had a far greater reputation than he deserved; and in the second place, and more particularly, he was clearly guilty of a most unparalleled piece of knavery, in stealing the whole plot and character of Massinger's play of "The Fatal Dowry." He trimmed it up, and clipped it in some respects, and hammered it out in others, and tamed down the poetry to monotonous prosaic verse; and, thus altered, he exhibited it to the world as his own, (without any acknowledgement, or reference to Massinger's name,) under the title of "The Fair Penitent." This appears to us to be little better than swindling; yet we are not aware that Rowe has met with much reprehension for doing this. In that age, indeed, Massinger was unknown, or nearly so; and latterly the sin has, we suppose, been considered of so old a date as to have passed beyond the "legitimate" period of censure. We do not otherwise understand how this culprit has escaped. He was a literary thief, and should be arraigned in the court of the Muses, and lashed by the most stinging laurel rods that ever shot up on the harshest parts of Parnassus. Mrs. Oldfield was accustomed to say, that "the best school she had ever known, was the hearing Rowe read her part in his tragedies.”—We suspect, from this anecdote, that Mrs. Oldfield, were she alive, would not

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play the characters of Shakspeare to our satisfaction. Rowe's poetry was indifferent, and his tragedy bad. He is valued, at present, we believe, more as a translator than as an original writer.

No. 84. SAMUEL GARTH.

From an original Picture, in the College of Physicians.

DOCTOR GARTH, the friend of wits and a wit himself, the pleasant author of the "Dispensary," is next. He has immortalized the quarrels of quacks and physicians, and has exhibited in ludicrous detail the engagements as well of the guerillas as of the more regular corps, who shoot, under a cloud of Latin, their poisonous arrows at the human race. The " Dispensary" is an edifying poem. Could it be translated into the homely prose of all languages, and carried about, as an antidote, to carnivals and revels, it would operate as a styptic to that current of eloquence with which the mountebanks of the continent still continue to overwhelm the faculties of their listeners, the clowns. In England, indeed, those times are pretty nearly gone by; but in Germany, and Spain, and Italy, this low loquacious roguery still flourishes. Garth's sharp jests would at least contribute to cut it down, like the poppies of Tarquin, to a level with the rustic intellect which it at present overtops. It was this author, we believe, who uttered that bold joke in the presence of the notorious Duchess of Marlborough, when she said (pressing the Duke to take some medicine) that "she would be hanged if it did not prove serviceable ;"-to which Garth replied, "Do take it, then, my lord; for it must be of service,-in one way or other." This is as clever as the utterance of it was courageous: for the Dutchess had almost as much of the combatant in her as her lord. She was notorious, while he was famous.

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JOSEPH ADDISON.

No. 85. SHEFFIELD, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

From an original Picture, in the Bodleian Gallery.

THIS author, who has been by many persons confounded with the second Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, (who also, by the way, lived during the reign of Charles the Second)—is not the hero of "Cliveden's gay alcoves," nor the gallant who figures in "Peveril of the Peak," but the author of certain essays, now not much valued, of some poems, and more particularly of the burlesque drama of the "Rehearsal." This last is his best work; and it showed some boldness to attack Dryden himself, whose hostility was not to be considered trivial, whatever the rank of his enemy. It has been said by some wit, that Lord Byron is the only peer whose laurels have been large enough to hide his coronet; and we see nothing in the verses of Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, that stimulates us to deny this assertion.

No. 86. JOSEPH ADDISON.

From a Picture, by Jervas, in the Collection of the Dutchess of Dorset. WE should have been glad to have detected some of the features of the Coverley family in this likeness of the celebrated Spectator, but we are unable to do so. He was the father of "Sir Roger," yet we do not perceive that there existed any resemblance between them. Even supposing that the knight was altogether a fiction, we should have expected to meet some of the traces of that humour which is so gracefully scattered over his biography :- But ADDISON is here

"neat, trimly drest, Fresh as a bridegroom,"

in short, merely the friend of lords and high commoners, and moving amongst them until, as it would seem, the points of wit

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