tro de Danzar, not by any means one of the happiest comedies of the
great Castilian poet. The Country Wife is borrowed from the Ecole des
Maris and the Ecole des Femmes. The groundwork of the Plain Dealer is
taken from the Misanthrope of Moliere. One whole scene is almost
translated from the Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes. Fidelia is
Shakespeare's Viola stolen, and marred in the stealing; and the Widow
Blackacre, beyond comparison Wycherley's best comic character, is the
Countess in Racine's Plaideurs, talking the jargon of English instead of
that of French chicane.

The only thing original about Wycherley, the only thing which he could
furnish from his own mind in inexhaustible abundance, was profligacy. It
is curious to observe how everything that he touched, however pure and
noble, took in an instant the color of his own mind. Compare the Ecole
des Femmes with the Country Wife. Agnes is a simple and amiable girl,
whose heart is indeed full of love, but of love sanctioned by honor,
morality, and religion. Her natural talents are great. They have been
hidden, and, as it might appear, destroyed by an education elaborately
bad. But they are called forth into full energy by a virtuous passion.
Her lover, while he adores her beauty, is too honest a man to abuse the
confiding tenderness of a creature so charming and inexperienced.
Wycherley takes this plot into his hands; and forthwith this sweet and
graceful courtship becomes a licentious intrigue of the lowest and least
sentimental kind, between an impudent London rake and the idiot wife of
a country squire. We will not go into details. In truth, Wycherley's
indecency is protected against the critics as a skunk is protected
against the hunters. It is safe, because it is too filthy to handle, and
too noisome even to approach.

It is the same with the Plain Dealer. How careful has Shakespeare been
in Twelfth Night to preserve the dignity and delicacy of Viola under her
disguise! Even when wearing a page's doublet and hose, she is never
mixed up with any transaction which the most fastidious mind could
regard as leaving a stain on her. She is employed by the Duke on an
embassy of love to Olivia, but on an embassy of the most honorable kind.
Wycherley borrows Viola; and Viola forthwith becomes a pandar of the
basest sort. But the character of Manly is the best illustration of our
meaning. Moliere exhibited in his misanthrope a pure and noble mind,
which had been sorely vexed