Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/181

 Satire's View of Sentimentalism 175 Say, was it that vainly directing his view To find out men's virtues, and finding them few, Quite sick of pursuing each troublesome elf, He grew lazy at last, and drew from himself?* 6 Thus Goldsmith gently insinuated his private opinion of the essential falsity of sentimental comedy. His satire shows no stern opposition to the absurd kind of drama that the public happened to want in those days, though he had in his own plays tried to restore the popularity of straightforward "laughing" comedy. Throughout the eighth decade of the century, indeed, sentimental plays and their makers were but mildly rebuked by the writers of verse-satire, though in 1779, the year in which that pitiless dramatic mockery of sentimentalism, The Critic, was presented, the drama of sensibility was at its triumphant zenith. 46 The sentimental drama flourished in the ninth decade of the eighteenth century as in the eighth, and satire continued to criticize it adversely, belaboring the sentimental dramatists with increasing vigor. The author of The Temple of Folly 45 The Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith. . . ed. Austin Dobson (Lon- don, 1905), 56-57. Cumberland seems to have taken this irony seriously, see Williams, Richard Cumberland (New Haven, 1917), 126-130. 48 For an account of the sentimental drama in general, and of opposition to it on the part of Goldsmith, Foote, and Sheridan, see Bernbaum, E., The Drama of Sensibility. The Theatres gives a keen edge to its courteous satire upon sentimental comedy in this concluding passage of unstinted commenda- tion for that burlesquer of all sentimentality, Samuel Foote: "The muse at length, with painful censure tir'd, Meets with an author worthily admir'd, Rival'd in strength of character by few, Rich in a fund of humour ever new; Whose pregnant pencil takes from life each tint, Whose thoughts are stamp'd in brilliant Fancy's mint; Who never makes a vain, or feeble hit; Terse in his stile, and polish'd in his wit: Copious in subject, yet compact in scenes, Dull explanation never intervenes: Each line, each person, under just controul, Speaks to the heart, and beautifies the whole: Laughter attends spleen flies the house ot joy When Genius Foote and nature never cloy. "