Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/185

 Satire's View of Sentimentalism 179 asserted of Cumberland: "In my opinion he has done very great service to the cause of morality and of literature. " 60 But O'Keefe and the sentimental dramatists of whom, after the retirement of Cumberland, he was the leader, were not often treated kindly by the satirists. An interesting passage from the Epistle in Rhyme to M. G. Lewis shows the typical attitude: Not so the monstrous brood that shock belief, Palm'd on the town by Morton and O'Keefe, Who, still with nature and good sense at strife, Profanely stile their figures drawn from life, Ev'n Boaden's ghost is surely full as good As Holcroft's characters of flesh and blood, To which, throughout the year, no day goes by But gives in ev'ry lineament the lie. 61 Another passage represents a more important element in satire's criticism of romantic sentimentalism on the British stage. In the good old days, says the satirist: No Stranger charm'd the un-illumin'd pit With French morality and German wit, (Where they who deem the principle too light, May bless a style that counteracts it quite.) 62 It is significant that though the "sensible" author of The Children of Apollo praised Mrs. Inchbald he objected to her translating plays from French and German, and though the author of the Epistle to Lewis could find merits in a play of "Monk" Lewis he could find none in a play of Kotzebue. Sentimentalism of domestic origin was a thing to ridicule gently, but sentimentalism imported from foreign part sand tainted with moral and political revolutionism, no satirist could tolerate. William Gifford, that staunch conservative, took occasion in The Maemad (1795) to express his regret for the wretched state of dramatic poetry. It seemed to him that the taste vitiated by the lively nonsense of O'Keefe and company was destined to be 60 Pursuits oj Literature, 348-349. 61 Epistle to Lewis, 8. Cf. The Groie. A Satire (London, n.d.), 28, where Boaden is pleasantly derided in heavy irony. The Groie is attributed to "the author of the Pursuits of Literature" but is probably not the work of Mathias. 82 Ibid., 9-10.