One remembers George Eliot’s tale of the lady who tried to repeat in English the pathetic story of a French mendicant—‘J’ai vu le sang de mon père’—but failed to excite sympathy, owing to the hopeless realism of Saxon speech. But though better in French, the journal is interesting in English. Whether, like the dreadful Dean, you regard man as an odious race of vermin, or agree with an erecter spirit that he is a being of infinite capacity, you will find food for your philosophy, and texts for your sermons, in the ‘Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff.’
SIR JOHN VANBRUGH.
Jeremy Collier begins his famous and witty, though dreadfully overdone, ‘Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage’ with the following spirited words:
‘The business of Plays is to recommend Virtue and discountenance Vice; to show the Uncertainty of Human Greatness, the sudden turns of Fate, and the unhappy conclusions of Violence and Injustice; ’tis to expose the singularities of Pride and Fancy, to make Folly and Falsehood contemptible, and to bring everything that is ill under Infamy and Neglect.’
He then adds: ‘This design has been oddly pursued by the English Stage;’ and so he launches his case.
Sir John Vanbrugh, who fared very badly at the doctor’s hands, replied—and, on the whole, with great spirit and considerable success—in a pamphlet entitled ‘A Short Vindication of “The Relapse” and “The Provok’d Wife” from Immorality and Profaneness.’ In this reply he strikes out this bold apophthegm:
‘The business of Comedy is to show people what they should do, by representing them upon the stage, doing what they should not.’
He continues with much good sense: