in Molière's writings. The sonnet scene has been imitated by both Steele and Addison in the "Tatler and "Spectator." Molière has ridiculed the fopperies of fashion in “Les Fâcheux;" the tricks of domestics in the "Fourberies de Scapin;" aristocratic assumption in "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme;" pedantry in "Les Femmes Savantes;" and the ignorance of quacks in many places, chiefly in "Le Malade Imaginaire." Nothing can be more humorous than the opening and some other scenes of this farcical comedy. The French consider the "Misanthrope" his chef-d'œuvre, but it is far less laughable than many others in his comic gallery. It is interesting to contrast Molière's "Misanthrope" with Shakespeare's "Timon," in which the poetic delineations of passion is only second to that exhibited in "Lear."

The comedy of Beaumont and Fletcher is almost poetic when compared with that of the dramatists of the Restoration. Some of Congreve's scenes are truly humorous, and no comedies exhibit such a corruscation of wit as his; but they are repulsive, not alone from their licentiousness, but from a sort of heartlessness which pervades them. His young men are a set of witty apes; morals are almost excluded from the circle of those comedies. Even the French of Voitaire's day express their astonishment at the grossness of the English artificial drama. In this group Vanburgh displays most humour; Farquhar most animation, adventure, and variety in scene and dialogue. His best play is "The Beau's Stratagem," and from the point of view indicated, bad is the best. Congreve is a more polished writer than any of them. In brilliancy he excels even Sheridan; his characters lose distinction in the profusion of wit put into their mouths; but, unlike the Irishman, he was deficient in the dramatic art on which the interest of a play depends. It is pleasing to contrast the comedies of Goldsmith with the coarse plays of the epoch of the Restoration-comedies which it is neither an injury or a waste of time to

peruse.

Among the best comedies of the period succeeding those of the Restoration, always including those of Goldsmith, is the "Clandestine Marriage." The character of Lord Ogleby is almost as good as any of Shakespeare's comic delineations. The humour arises from the contrast between the senility of this personage and his affectation of youth-as in Dogberry, from the union of utter imbecility of intellect and perfect self-esteem and self-confidence. The delicate traits of nature in the character of Lord Ogleby, his vanity, principles of honour, reliance on his unconquerable fascination, and his good-nature, have never been excelled in so slight a sketch. Garrick and Colman are the reputed authors of this character, which, however, they derived from a MS. farce, written by a clergyman, which had been long lying unused on the shelves of the press of the theatre, and which

has never been printed. Of Sheridan's plays, it is enough to say that they are all complete in their way. His "School for Scandal" is the most perfect comedy of the conventional order in the English language. There is humour in the conception of the piece as a whole, and characters, scenes, situations, dialogue-all are effective. There is no French play in which the wit-which is that of comparison-is so brilliant. The esprit of our Gallic neighbours consists in gaiety, rather than the uttering of sparkling antitheses and fancies-vide Beaumarchais, who is called the French Sheridan, or his modern succeedant, Sardou. Modern English comedy is neither so poetic as that of the epoch of Elizabeth and James, or so humorous as that of Charles II. and Anne's time; and in conception and finished art, Sheridan has met with no rival. The popularity of Bulwer's plays, which are so deficient in vis comica, has resulted from their structure— Kotzebue was his model. In our day prose fiction, not the drama, has become the chief medium for humour and wit. It is something to feel a national pride in, that Ireland has in various ways produced some of the most perfect compositions in English or any literature-the profoundest general satire ever penned, "Gulliver's Travels;" the most charming of little novels, "The Vicar of Wakefield;" the Comedies of Sheridan, the Lyrics of Moore, and the most inspiring of all oratory, in the English language at least that of Grattan.

N. W.

TO THE NIGHTINGALE.
FROM PETRARCH.

O Nightingale, whose sad, inconstant plaint
Ripples the still hours of the summer night,
Now fountaining the stillness of the light,
Now fading mournfully in distance faint;
Now, like the hymn of sad, impassioned saint,
Soaring; and now, as yonder planet bright,
Dips through the dark wood, ceasing :-mingle still
Thy song with the sad sighs that from this breast
Murmur my beating heart's forlorn unrest
For one now gathered to the starry host;
And, from the dusk leaves o'er yon weeping rill,
Let thy song, echoing now death, now heaven,
Recall the happy hours that fate has given,
And from yon star the dear one I have lost.

H.

THE MOORES OF MOORE'S COURT.

BY DENIS F. HANNIGAN.

CHAPTER XV.

THE narrative now finds itself in much the same condition as the celebrated modern hypothesis regarding the origin of species: inasmuch as it requires for its completeness that a certain "missing link" should be discovered. The missing link in requisition is no other than Squire Donovan, whom the story and the mail-coach left behind in a state of unconsciousness in the historic city of Kilkenny, and whom we now find, at rather a late hour in the night, in the parlour of his private residence, which was situated in one of the quietest streets of the old town of Clonmel : his public residence being in no particular locality, as at one time it was in the Marshalsea Prison, in Dublin; at another, in some tavern, into which accident or a yearning after stimulants had carried him; and, occasionally, in the Clonmel bridewell, where he was sometimes forced to spend the night, owing to his irregular mode of living.

The parlour in which we now find him is painfully suggestive of faded gentility. The paper on the walls is almost entirely peeled away; the Cupids which once adorned the marble chimney-piece have their heads and arms broken; and the chimney-piece itself looks sadly battered and dilapidated. The only furniture in the room consists of two old-fashioned chairs, now reduced to a state of hopeless decrepitude, a mahogany table which might have been new a century ago, and two discoloured oil-paintings: one of which, representing a water-nymph (in a very watery condition), hangs over the chimney-piece; while the other, hanging at the opposite side, suggests the idea of some hazy landscape, whose outlines are utterly lost in a dense fog.

The squire has only just returned from some social gathering, where he must have been unusually convivial; for, in endeavouring to enter the room, a few minutes since, he fell heavily against the door, and inflicted some injury on his nasal organ. The squire's wife sits in a corner, in one of the two old-fashioned chairs that the room contains, looking paler than when Charles Callanan met her, about a month ago, in the mail-coach coming from Dublin. Her eyes are moist as if she had been weeping. Her whole appearance is strongly suggestive of poverty and suffering; but there is something, too, in the expression of her face to-night that looks like desperation.

What kind of a cursed door is that?" the squire exclaims,

with a thickness of articulation which is scarcely consistent with. strict sobriety. "Is there any chair about the place?" he adds, making a violent effort to sit down on the table.

"There's a chair near you," the lady replies calmly.

"Ah! you're there, are you, ma'am?" the squire says, glaring at her rather ferociously with his small eyes. 'Why don't you look after your husband's comfort, ma'am?-ch? Where's the chair, I say? Begad, I see no chair at all. This is a nice way to treat a gentleman in his own house!"

The lady, rising from her seat, crosses the room, and quietly moves the other old-fashioned chair to the side of the table, on which the squire has been vainly endeavouring to seat himself. With an irregular gyration, he now tumbles into the chair; and, as the lady is retreating towards her former position in the corner, he cries, in a voice interrupted by those spasmodic movements commonly know as "hickups :"

"Don't go away-here! make yourself useful! thing to drink."

Get me some

Would it not be better for you to drink no more to-night ?" she quietly asks.

"Drink no more what to-night?" he cries, with a furious look. "What do you mean by that? Why, I drank little or nothing yet, to-night; but I mean to drink, Mrs. D.-do you hear? Don't dictate to me, ma'am-do you hear?"

"Well, let me remind you that things are coming, at last, to a crisis," she returns, as if she had some lingering hope of arousing a feeling of self-reproach within his breast. "We have nothing

left; and the landlord of the house sent a messenger to-day, to say that if the arrears are not paid up, he will immediately eject us.”

"What's all this about?" cries the squire, excitedly. "What do I care about landlords or ejectments? I am a landlord myself -at least I was once; and I ejected people whenever it suited me. I'll bet he'll keep pretty far away from me, for he knows I'm a damned good shot. I know what's due to a gentleman. Come! hurry, and don't keep me waiting, woman! think I can sit here looking at you whimpering that way? me a drop of brandy in all haste."

Do you

Get

Tears are rising

The lady has resumed her seat once more. to her eyes; but, with proud self-repression, she forces them back. She slowly draws forth her handkerchief, wipes away all traces of weeping from her face, and says calmly:

"You shall not have any more drink to-night."

"Eh! What do you mean?" roars the squire, striking the table fiercely with his clenched fist. "Are you going to defy me? Are you going to break out into open rebellion?"

"Listen to me!" the lady rejoins, looking fixedly at him, till his small eyes blink uneasily. "If your nature is not entirely

brutalized, perhaps what I say now may make some impression on you. I incurred my brother's lasting displeasure by marrying you. I lost the friendship of my family. We have now been married many years. During nearly all that time you have lived the life of a sot

"Look here, Julia, my dear," says the squire, interrupting her, "I know you can talk well when you like. But you see I'm not in a condition to discuss matters of business. What I require is some refreshment. Get me some brandy, for God's sake, and you'll get as much respect and kindness from me as you could wish to have. There now, you see, Julia, I'm very considerate Let me have something to drink, and things will be all right."

He utters these words in rather a wheedling manner, as if he wished to make the lady believe that his intemperance was a kind of wild generosity, which should only render him more amiable in her eyes. But the lady does not seem to take this view of the case; for her face grows, if possible, whiter, and she starts up suddenly from her seat, exclaiming :

"I'll not endure this misery any longer! I will not submit to your brutal insolence and drunken scurrility."

The squire makes a violent movement, as if he were ineffectually trying to rise from the chair. "What's that you're saying?" he asks, with a menacing look. "I'd advise you to keep that tongue of yours double-locked. Brutal! and drunken! Are these fit words to be applied to a gentleman? I suppose you'd like to treat me as your inferior, because your brother's a baronet? Do you think I'll submit to your petticoat government? Come, I say, get me something to drink before the thing goes any farther! Isn't this a pretty way to treat a gentleman?"

He has now staggered to his feet, and stands very unsteadily, supporting his tottering frame by laying one hand on the back of the chair, while he uses the other for the purpose of striking the table at the end of every broken sentence he utters.

The lady, who has been watching her husband's movements, advances towards the door, as if to leave the room; but the squire, perceiving this, roars at her :

"Come back! where are you going now? Is it trying to cut away you are, and leave me here by myself? Get me some brandy, quickly, I say again, or I'll maul you."

"I will not," she replies distinctly; and with these words, rushes out of the room.

In less than a quarter of an hour she again presents herself at the door, arrayed in her bonnet and shawl, and carrying in her hand a faded-looking reticule.

The squire, endeavouring to balance himself against the table, remains in a state of unstable equilibrium. "Where are you going now-ch?" he asks, trying to fix his bloodshot little cycs upon her,