than Alceste as man. In Congreve's Way
of the World, Millamant overshadows Mirabel, the sprightliest male figure
of English comedy.

But those two ravishing women, so copious and so choice of speech, who
fence with men and pass their guard, are heartless! Is it not preferable
to be the pretty idiot, the passive beauty, the adorable bundle of
caprices, very feminine, very sympathetic, of romantic and sentimental
fiction? Our women are taught to think so. The Agnes of the Ecole des
Femmes should be a lesson for men. The heroines of Comedy are like women
of the world, not necessarily heartless from being clear-sighted: they
seem so to the sentimentally-reared only for the reason that they use
their wits, and are not wandering vessels crying for a captain or a
pilot. Comedy is an exhibition of their battle with men, and that of men
with them: and as the two, however divergent, both look on one object,
namely, Life, the gradual similarity of their impressions must bring them
to some resemblance. The Comic poet dares to show us men and women coming
to this mutual likeness; he is for saying that when they draw together in
social life their minds grow liker; just as the philosopher discerns the
similarity of boy and girl, until the girl is marched away to the
nursery. Philosopher and Comic poet are of a cousinship in the eye they
cast on life: and they are equally unpopular with our wilful English of
the hazy region and the ideal that is not to be disturbed.

Thus, for want of instruction in the Comic idea, we lose a large audience
among our cultivated middle class that we should expect to support
Comedy. The sentimentalist is as averse as the Puritan and as the
Bacchanalian.

Our traditions are unfortunate. The public taste is with the idle
laughers, and still inclines to follow them. It may be shown by an
analysis of Wycherley's Plain Dealer, a coarse prose adaption of the
Misanthrope, stuffed with lumps of realism in a vulgarized theme to hit
the mark of English appetite, that we have in it the keynote of the
Comedy of our stage. It is Moliere travestied, with the hoof to his foot
and hair on the pointed tip of his ear. And how difficult it is for
writers to disentangle themselves from bad traditions is noticeable when
we find Goldsmith, who had grave command of the Comic in narrative,
producing an elegant farce for a Comedy; and Fielding, who was a master
of the Comic both in narrative and in dialogue, not even approachin