A Trip to Scarborough; and, The Critic

by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

DANGLE.
Certainly it is only to be laughed at; for—

SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY.
You don’t happen to recollect what the fellow said, do you?

SNEER.
Pray, Dangle—Sir Fretful seems a little anxious—

SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY.
O Lud, no!—anxious!—not I—not the least.—I—but one may as well hear, you know.

DANGLE.
Sneer, do you recollect?—[Aside to SNEER.] Make out something.

SNEER.
[Aside to DANGLE.] I will.—[Aloud.] Yes, yes, I remember perfectly.

SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY.
Well, and pray now—not that it signifies—what might the gentleman say?

SNEER.
Why, he roundly asserts that you have not the slightest invention or original genius whatever; though you are the greatest traducer of all other authors living.

SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY.
Ha! ha! ha!—very good!

SNEER.
That as to comedy, you have not one idea of your own, he believes, even in your commonplace-book—where stray jokes and pilfered witticisms are kept with as much method as the ledger of the lost and stolen office.