"Lady S. No, no, you have no reason to avoid her, she is good nature itself.
"Mar. Yes, with an artful affectation of candor, she does more injury than the worst backbiter of them all."
"Enter MRS. CANDOR.
"Mrs. Cand. So, Lady Sneerwell, how d'ye do? Maria, child, how dost? Well, who is't you are to marry at last? Sir Benjamin or Clerimont? The town talks of nothing else."
Through the remainder of this scene the only difference in the speeches of Mrs. Candor is, that they abound more than at present in ludicrous names and anecdotes, and occasionally straggle into that loose wordiness, which, knowing how much it weakens the sap of wit, the good taste of Sheridan was always sure to lop away. The same may be said of the greater part of that scene of scandal which at present occurs in the second Act, and in which all that is now spoken by Lady Teazle, was originally put into the mouths of Sir Christopher Crab and others—the caustic remarks of Sir Peter Teazle being, as well as himself, an after creation.
It is chiefly, however, in Clerimont, the embryo of Charles Surface, that we perceive how imperfect may be the first lineaments, that Time and Taste contrive to mould gradually into beauty. The following is the scene that introduces him to the audience, and no one ought to be disheartened by the failure of a first attempt after reading it. The spiritless language—the awkward introduction of the sister into the plot—the antiquated expedient [Footnote: This objection seems to have occurred to himself; for one of his memorandums is—"Not to drop the letter, but take it from the maid.] of dropping the letter—all, in short, is of the most undramatic and most unpromising description, and as little like what it afterwards turned to as the block is to the statue, or the grub to the butterfly.
"Sir C. This Clerimont is, to be sure, the drollest mortal! he is one of your moral fellows, who does unto others as he would they should do unto him.
"Lady Sneer. Yet he is sometimes entertaining.
"Sir C. Oh hang him, no—he has too much good nature to say a witty thing himself, and is too ill-natured to praise wit in others.
"Enter CLERIMONT.