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 or pass sentence on the manners of a public and self-exposed libeller. I would only remark that when the reader is led or driven off the bare highway of truth it is but fair to afford him some morsel of slander so spiced and sauced that it may perhaps slip glibly down some one's gullet without sticking, some palatable and digestible condiment of calumny, some pleasanter pasture, at least, than a twice-cooked and twice-chewed mess of thistles: for it cannot be certain that he will by some divine inborn instinct prefer that diet to any other. Mr. Bayne's calumnies are somewhat dry, a little flat and hard; Crabtree, in this revival of Sheridan's play, moves clumsily in the coarse livery of slander in undress, without the brocade and perfume of Backbite, the genial grace of Mrs. Candour, or the sinewy and flexible facility of Snake. His crude fiction wants breadth, delicacy, sureness of touch; Tartuffe would scarcely have taken him on trial as a fellow-servant with Laurent. In one point he is liker another once famous figure in the drama. The valet in Farquhar's comedy knew when people were talking of him, "they laughed so consumedly." Mr. Peter Bayne has sounded a baser string of humility than the valet. When he does but scent or suspect anywhere a contemptuous allusion, he knows "they must be talking," not of him, but of the gods of his worship. Scrub knew his own place; but Mr. Bayne knows the place of his gods; and indeed, if we judge of a deity by his worshippers, he may be right in thinking that what he adores must be naturally liable to men's contempt. He remarks, with cruelly satirical reference to my alleged heresies and audacities in the choice of guides and teachers not chosen to his mind,