haracters, male or female (with
few exceptions they are alike), and place it in a modern play, and
my virtuous indignation shall rise against the profligate wretch as
warmly as the Catos of the pit could desire; because in a modern play
I am to judge of the right and the wrong. The standard of _police_
is the measure of _political justice_. The atmosphere will blight
it, it cannot live here. It has got into a moral world, where it has
no business, from which it must needs fall headlong; as dizzy, and
incapable of making a stand, as a Swedenborgian bad spirit that has
wandered unawares into the sphere of one of his Good Men, or Angels.
But in its own world do we feel the creature is so very bad?--The
Fainalls and the Mirabels, the Dorimants and the Lady Touchwoods, in
their own sphere, do not offend my moral sense; in fact they do not
appeal to it at all. They seem engaged in their proper element. They
break through no laws, or conscientious restraints. They know of none.
They have got out of Christendom into the land--what shall I call
it?--of cuckoldry--the Utopia of gallantry, where pleasure is duty,
and the manners perfect freedom. It is altogether a speculative scene
of things, which has no reference whatever to the world that is. No
good person can be justly offended as a spectator, because no good
person suffers on the stage. Judged morally, every character in
in these plays--the few exceptions only are _mistakes_--is alike
essentially vain and worthless. The great art of Congreve is
especially shown in this, that he has entirely excluded from his
scenes,--some little generosities in the part of Angelica perhaps
excepted,--not only any thing like a faultless character, but any
pretensions to goodness or good feelings whatsoever. Whether he did
this designedly, or instinctively, the effect is as happy, as the
design (if design) was bold. I used to wonder at the strange power
which his Way of the World in particular possesses of interesting you
all along in the pursuits of characters, for whom you absolutely care
nothing--for you neither hate nor love his personages--and I think it
is owing to this very indifference for any, that you endure the whole.
He has spread a privation of moral light, I will call it, rather
than by the ugly name of palpable darkness, over his creations; and
his shadows flit before you without distinction or preference. Had
he introduced a good character, a single gush of moral feeling, a
rev