rely into one's power, and gives one such an agreeable thirst of
using them ill, to show that power--'tis impossible not to quench it."

* * * * *

Compare this bristling dialogue with the inane stuff that too often
passes for comedy nowadays, and one finds all the difference between
real humour and flippancy. We stand at the threshold of the twentieth
century, boastfully proclaiming that we do everything better than ever
could our ancestors, yet where are the new comedies that might hold a
candle to the "Careless Husband," the "Inconstant," or the "School for
Scandal?" We may be presumptuous enough, nevertheless, to hold up that
much-quoted candle, but the light from it will burn pale and dim when
placed near the golden glow of the past. Would that we could purify
some of the old-time pieces and thus preserve them for future
generations of theatre-goers. Alas! that is impossible, for to cleanse
them with a sort of moral soap and water would destroy nearly all
their delightful glitter.

The lines of Lady Betty must have fairly sizzled with the fire of
comedy as they fell from the pretty lips of Oldfield. No wonder that
Londoners thought the character bewitching; no wonder that Cibber
wrote so enthusiastically of the actress in that wonderful Apology.
"Had her birth plac'd her in a higher rank of life," he notes, perhaps
forgetting that her very descent entitled the poor sewing-girl to a
position which poverty denied her, "she had certainly appear'd in
reality what in this play she only excellently acted, an agreeably gay
woman of quality a little too conscious of her natural attractions. I
have often seen her in private societies where women of the best
rank might have borr'd some part of her behaviour without the least
diminution of their sense or dignity. And this very morning, when I am
now writing at the Bath, November 11, 1738, the same words were said
of her by a lady of condition, whose better judgment of her personal
merit in that light has embolden'd me to repeat them."

The best of us have a wee bit of snobbishness buried deep in the
inmost recesses of our souls, and Colley, who was neither the best nor
the worst of humanity, had this quality well developed. To see that
one has but to read the above quotation between the lines. He loved a
lord as ardently as did the next man, and he attached to rank the same
exaggerated importance which pervades, with all the unwelcome odour o