serted at the same time. It serves to show the interest the town took
in the players, that the fact was referred to on the stage. The lady's
part was taken by Mrs. Ayliff; Mrs. Leigh played the nurse--a very poor
part after Lady Plyant; Dogget's success as Ben Legend has been noted.
Mrs. Bracegirdle's Angelica was doubtless ravishing: a 'virtuous young
woman,' as our ancestors phrased it, but quite relieved from insipidity.

It would need a greater presumption than the writer is gifted withal to
add his contribution to the praises critics have lavished on _The Way of
the World_. It is better to quote Mr. Swinburne. 'In 1700 Congreve
replied to Collier with the crowning work of his genius--the unequalled
and unapproached masterpiece of English comedy. The one play in our
language which may fairly claim a place beside, or but just beneath, the
mightiest work of Moliere, is _The Way of the World_.' But he continues:
'On the stage, which had recently acclaimed with uncritical applause the
author's more questionable appearance in the field of tragedy,'--_The
Mourning Bride_,--'this final and flawless evidence of his incomparable
powers met with a rejection then and ever since inexplicable on any
ground of conjecture.' There the critics are not unanimous. Mr. Gosse,
for instance, has his explanation: that the spectators must have
fidgeted, and wished 'that the actors and actresses would be doing
something.' Very like, indeed: the spectators, then as now, would no
doubt have preferred 'knock-about farce.' But, I venture to think, the
explanation is not complete. The construction of the play is weak,
certainly, but the actors and actresses do a great deal after all. For
that matter, audiences will stand scenes of still wit--but they like to
comprehend it; and the characters in _The Way of the World_, or most of
them, represent a society whose attitude and speech are entirely ironical
and paradoxical, a society of necessity but a small fraction of any
community. Some sort of study or some special experience is necessary to
the enjoyment of such a set. It is not the case of a few witticisms and
paradoxes firing off at intervals, like crackers, from the mouths of one
or two actors with whom the audience is taught to laugh as a matter of
course: the vein is unbroken. Now, literalness and common sense are the
qualities of the average uninstructed spectator, and _The Way of the
World_ was high over the heads of its audie