r mirth--must be ripened 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. No
man could deliver brilliant dialogue--the dialogue of Congreve or of
Wycherley--because none understood it