"Ld. F. Oh, silly! yet his aunt is as fond of him, as if she had brought the ape into the world herself.
"Brisk. Who? my Lady Toothless? Oh, she is a mortifying spectacle; she's always chewing the cud like an old ewe,
"Ld. F. Then she's always ready to laugh, when Sneer offers to speak; and sits in expectation of his no jest, with her gums bare, and her mouth open—
"Brisk. Like an oyster at low ebb, egad—ha, ha, ha!
"Cynthia. (Aside.) Well, I find there are no fools so inconsiderable themselves, but they can render other people contemptible by exposing their infirmities.
"Lady F. Then that t'other great strapping Lady—I can't hit off her name: the old fat fool, that paints so exorbitantly.
"Brisk. I know whom you mean—but, deuce take her, I can't hit off her name either—paints, d'ye say? Why she lays it on with a trowel. Then she has a great beard that bristles through it, and makes her look as if she was plastered with lime and hair, let me perish."
It would be a task not uninteresting, to enter into a detailed comparison of the characteristics and merits of Mr. Sheridan, as a dramatic writer, with those of the other great masters of the art; and to consider how far they differed or agreed with each other, in the structure of their plots and management of their dialogue—in the mode of laying the train of their repartee, or pointing the artillery of their wit. But I have already devoted to this part of my subject a much ampler space, than to some of my readers will appear either necessary or agreeable;—though by others, more interested in such topics, my diffuseness will, I trust, be readily pardoned. In tracking Mr. Sheridan through his too distinct careers of literature and of politics, it is on the highest point of his elevation in each that the eye naturally rests; and the School for Scandal in one, and the Begum speeches in the other, are the two grand heights—the "summa biverticis umbra Parnassi" —from which he will stand out to after times, and round which, therefore, his biographer may be excused for lingering with most fondness and delay.
It appears singular that, during the life of Mr. Sheridan, no authorized or correct edition of this play should have been published in England. He had, at one time, disposed of the copy right to Mr. Ridgway of Piccadilly, but, after repeated applications from the latter for the manuscript, he was told by Mr. Sheridan, as an excuse for keeping it back, that he had been nineteen years endeavoring to satisfy himself with the style of the School for Scandal, but had not yet succeeded. Mr. Ridgway, upon this, ceased to give him any further trouble on the subject.
The edition printed in Dublin is, with the exception of a few unimportant omissions and verbal differences, perfectly correct. It appears that, after the success of the comedy in London, he presented a copy of it to his eldest sister, Mrs. Lefanu, to be disposed of, for her own advantage, to the manager of the Dublin Theatre. The sum of a hundred guineas, and free admissions for her family, were the terms upon which Ryder, the manager at that period, purchased from this lady the right of acting the play; and it was from the copy thus procured that the edition afterwards published in Dublin was printed. I have collated this edition with the copy given by Mr. Sheridan to Lady Crewe (the last, I believe, ever revised by himself), [Footnote: Among the corrections in this copy (which are in his own hand-writing, and but few in number), there is one which shows not only the retentiveness of his memory, but the minute attention which he paid to the structure of his sentences. Lady Teazle, in her scene with Sir Peter in the Second Act, says: "That's very true, indeed, Sir Peter: and, after having married you, I should never pretend to taste again, I allow." It was thus that the passage stood at first in Lady Crewe's copy,—as it does still, too, in the Dublin edition, and in that given in the Collection of his Works,—but in his final revision of this copy, the original reading of the sentence, such as I find it in all his earlier manuscripts of the play, is restored.—"That's very true, indeed, Sir Peter; and, after having married you, I am sure I should never pretend to taste again.">[ and find it, with the few exceptions already mentioned, correct throughout.