removed by his sudden
accession to fortune; yet all the rest of the play sees them kept apart
by the most flimsy obstacles, just to tantalize the audience, and make
them wonder if those two fools will ever come together. The means are
very simple, and yet quite powerful enough, as much so as the first
part of "Romeo and Juliet," where, by the by, almost all the interest
dies out after the balcony scene. The main secret of Bulwer then
reveals itself, like that of flirtation, to reside in the _art of
tantalization_.

We next come to Sheridan, the man who wrote the best comedy in the
English language, "School for Scandal." The secret of that play and the
"Rivals" has been thought by some to consist in the dialogue, but
dialogue alone never made a play run before a mixed audience. The worst
dialogue in the "Black Crook"--and God knows it was bad enough--could
not kill that play any more than the finest dialogue could make
Tennyson's "Queen Mary" into a real play, or galvanize it into a
semblance of interest before an audience. Sheridan has more than witty
dialogue. His situations are always capital, and his characters are
without exception real living beings, only very slightly caricatured.
To be sure they are rather too sharp and clever as a class, for we
seldom or never meet in society such a perfect galaxy of smart,
keen-witted people, Mrs. Malaprop not excepted; but the secret of
Sheridan lies below dialogue and character. It lies, I think, in the
natural sympathy felt by all mixed audiences in favor of youth and high
spirits, through all their pranks, as exemplified in Captain Absolute,
Charles Surface, Lydia Languish, and Lady Teazle, against
respectability, honest or the reverse, embodied in Sir Anthony
Absolute, Sir Peter Teazle, and Joseph Surface. It is the protest of
honest animal spirits against conventionality, ending in the
reconciliation of the rebels to society. Some people talk of the bad
moral of the "School for Scandal," never thinking that it is identical
in spirit with that of the parable of the Prodigal Son. A broad feeling
of charity and toleration for honest error, with a grimly sarcastic
treatment of all shams, pervade Sheridan's work just as they do those
of all the great satirists, whether novelists or dramatists. Goldsmith,
Fielding, Dickens, Thackeray, all run in the same track when they once
get started, and we must confess that they have pretty high authority
for their kindness toward the ret