ey are sad rogues, no
doubt, but they have no bitter cynicism, no meanness; Aimwell
refuses to marry Dorinda under any deception. They
thoroughly good fellows at bottom, manly, accomplished his
spirited, eloquent, generous--the forerunners of Charles Surfor.
Marriage retrieves them and turns them into respectable and
adoring husbands. Though rattle-brained, much given to
gallantry, and somewhat lax in morality, they are not knaves
or monsters; they do not inspire disgust. Even the lumpish
blockhead, Squire Sullen--according to Macaulay a type of
the main strength of the Tory party for half a century after the
Revolution--contrasts favourably with his prototype Sir John
Brute in Vanbrugh's _Provoked Wife_, He is a sodden sot,
who always goes to bed drunk, but he is not a demon; he does
not beat his wife in public; he observes common decency
somewhat. His wife is a witty, attractive, warm-hearted
woman, whose faults are transparent; the chief one being that
she has made the fatal mistake of marrying for fortune and
position instead of for love. There is something pathetic in her
position which claims our sympathy. She is well contrasted with
her sister-in-law, the sincere, though somewhat weakly drawn,
Dorinda; whilst their mother-in-law, Lady Bountiful, famed for
her charity, is an amusing and gracious figure, which has often
been copied. Cherry, with her honest heart and her quickness
of perception, is also a distinct creation. Strange to say, the
only badly drawn character is Foigard, the unscrupulous Irish
Jesuit priest. Farquhar is fond of introducing an Irishman into
each of his plays, but I cannot say that I think he is generally
successful; certainly not in this instance. They are mostly
broad caricatures, and speak an outlandish jargon, more like
Welsh than Irish, supposed to be the Ulster dialect: anything
more unlike it would be difficult to conceive. The early
conventional stage Irishman, tracing him from Captain. Macmorris
in Henry V.,through Ben Jonson's _Irish Masque_ and _New
Inn_, Dekker's Bryan, Ford's Mayor of Cork, Shadwell's
O'Divelly (probably Farquhar's model for Foigard), is truly
a wondrous savage, chiefly distinguished by his use of the
expletives 'Dear Joy!' and 'By Creesh!' This character
naturally rendered the play somewhat unpopular in Ireland,
and its repulsiveness is unrelieved (as it is in the case of
Teague in _The Twin Rivals_) by a single touch of humour or
native comicality. It is