;
sensuality is confounded with love, ribaldry mistaken for wit
The best that can be said of him that he contrasts favourably
with his contemporary dramatists; Virtue is not _always_
uninteresting in his pages. He is free from their heartlessness,
malignity, and cruelty. The plot of _The Beaux-Stratagem_ is
comparatively inoffensive, and the moral of the whole is
healthy. Although a wit rather than a thinker, Farquhar in
this play shows himself capable of serious feelings. It is
remarkable how much Farquhar repeats himself. Hardly an
allusion or idea occurs in this play that is not to be found
elsewhere in his works. In the Notes I have pointed out many of
these coincidences.

_The Characters_. This play has added several distinct
original personages to our stock of comedy characters, and it
affords an excellent and lifelike picture of a peculiar and
perishing phase of the manners of the time, especially those
obtaining in the country house, and the village inn frequented
by highwaymen. The sly, rascally landlord, Boniface (who
has given his name to the class), is said to have been drawn
from life, and his portrait, we are told, was still to be seen
at Lichfield in 1775. The inimitable 'brother Scrub,' that
'indispensable appendage to a country gentleman's kitchen'
(Hazlitt), with his ignorance and shrewd eye to the main
chance, is likewise said to have been a well-known personage
who survived till 1759, one Thomas Bond, servant to Sir
Theophilus Biddulph; others say he died at Salisbury in 1744.
Although Farquhar, like Goldsmith, undoubtedly drew his
incidents and personages from his own daily associations,
there is probably no more truth in these surmises than in
the assertion (repeatedly made, though denied in his preface
to _The Inconstant_) that Farquhar depicts himself in his young
heroes, his rollicking 'men about town,' Roebuck, Mirabel,
Wildair, Plume, Archer. Archer (copied by Hoadley in
his character of Ranger in _The Suspicious Husband_) is a
decided improvement on his predecessors, and is the best of
all Farquhar's creations; he is assuredly the most brilliant
footman that ever was, eminently sociable and, with all his
easy, rattling volubility, never forgetful of his self-respect
and never indifferent to the wishes or welfare of others. As
Hunt has pointed out, the characters of Archer and Aimwell
improve as the play progresses; they set out as mere intriguers,
but prove in the end true gentlemen. Th