timate manner, and whose glories were extinguished with the
reign of Macready, when we were boys, _nous autres_.

The first piece he contributed to this stage was 'A Trip to
Scarborough,' Which was only a species of 'family edition of Vanbrugh's
play, 'The Relapse;' but in 1777 he reached the acme of his fame, in
'The School for Scandal.'

But alack and alas for these sensual days, when it is too much trouble
to think, and people go to the play, if they go at all, to feast their
eyes and ears, not their minds; can any sensible person believe that if
'The School for Scandal,' teeming as it does with wit, satire, and
character, finer and truer than in any play produced since the days of
Ben Jonson, Massinger, and Marlowe, were set on the boards of the
Haymarket at this day, as a new piece by an author of no very high
celebrity, it would draw away a single admirer from the flummery in
Oxford Street, the squeaking at Covent Garden, or the broad, exaggerated
farce at the Adelphi or Olympic? No: it may still have its place on the
London stage when well acted, but it owes that to its ancient celebrity,
and it can never compete with the tinsel and tailoring which alone can
make even Shakspeare go down with a modern audience.

In those days of Garrick, on the other hand, those glorious days of true
histrionic art, high and low were not ashamed to throng Drury Lane and
Covent Garden, and make the appearance of a new play the great event of
the season. Hundreds were turned away from the doors, when 'The School
for Scandal' was acted, and those who were fortunate enough to get in
made the piece the subject of conversation in society for many a night,
passing keen comment on every scene, every line, every word almost, and
using their minds as we now use our eyes.

This brilliant play, the earliest idea of which was derived from its
author's experience of the gossip of that kettle of scandal and
backbiting, Bath, where, if no other commandment were ever broken, the
constant breach of the ninth would suffice to put it on a level with
certain condemned cities we have somewhere read of, won for Sheridan a
reputation of which he at once felt the value, and made his purchase of
a share in the property of Old Drury for the time being, a successful
speculation. It produced a result which his good heart perhaps valued
even more than the guineas which now flowed in; it induced his father,
who had long been at war with him, to seek a reconc