s managed the jest with far greater verve and spirit. Honest Tom
D'Urfey is in fact one of the least read and most maligned of all our
dramatists. He had the merriest comic gifts, and perhaps when the
critics and literary historians deign to read his plays he will attain a
higher position in our theatrical libraries.

Some critics have suggested that D'Urfey, in his _The Intrigues at
Versailles_, produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1697, may have taken a
hint from Mrs. Behn's Mirtilla, and Wycherley's Olivia (_The Plain
Dealer_) for his 'Madame de Vandosme a right jilt in all humours',
a role created by Mrs. Barry. There is indeed some resemblance between
all these three characters, base heartless coquettes; and D'Urfey, in
making his jilt prefer Sir Blunder Bosse, 'a dull sordid brute and
mongrel, whose humour is to call everybody by clownish names', to all
her other gallants, seems not to have forgotten Mirtilla's marriage with
Sir Morgan Blunder. The very names call attention to the plagiarism.
_The Intrigues at Versailles_ is none the less a clever and witty
comedy, but a little overcrowded with incident and business.

THEATRICAL HISTORY.

As sufficiently explained by Gildon, under whose auspices this
posthumous play was produced at Drury Lane in 1696, _The Younger
Brother; or, The Amorous Jilt_ met with brutal treatment from the
audience. There appears to have been a faction, particularly in evidence
at its first performance and on the third day, who were steadfastly
resolved to damn the comedy, and in spite of fine acting and every
advantage it was hissed from the boards. Gildon attributes the failure
to 'the tedious Scenes in Blank Verse betwixt Mirtilla and Prince
Frederick' which he thinks demanded 'another more easy Dress,' but, in
truth, it can only be attributed to the most verjuiced spite and
personal malice. The plot, though somewhat complicated with perhaps a
press of crowding incidents, is none the less highly interesting, and
the characters are most of them excellently, all well, drawn and
sustained. The fact that certain episodes had to be cut in
representation in order to bring the comedy within a reasonable time
limit, though it may have tended to obscure the connection of the
intrigue, could not have insured in spite of its many real merits so
absolute a doom for the much maltreated play, a sentence which seems to
have wantonly precluded any revival.

THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY

TO