We cling to the painful
necessities of shame and blame. We would indict our very dreams.
Amidst the mortifying circumstances attendant upon growing old, it is
something to have seen the _School for Scandal_ in its glory. This
comedy grew out of Congreve and Wycherley, but gathered some allays
of the sentimental comedy which followed theirs. It is impossible that
it should be now _acted_, though it continues, at long intervals, to
be announced in the bills. Its hero, when Palmer played it at least,
was Joseph Surface. When I remember the gay boldness, the graceful
solemn plausibility, the measured step, the insinuating voice--to
express it in a word--the downright _acted_ villany of the part, so
different from the pressure of conscious actual wickedness,--the
hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy,--which made Jack so deservedly
a favourite in that character, I must needs conclude the present
generation of playgoers more virtuous than myself, or more dense. I
freely confess that he divided the palm with me with his better brother;
that, in fact, I liked him quite as well.
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