Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/191

 Satire's View of Sentimentalism 185 from Kotzebue. Concerning this melodrama, the author of the Satirical Epistle to the Poet Laureate said: Depriv'd of pageants, chorus, flags, and fights, O'er-prais'd Pizarro ne'er had liv'd nine nights. 78 Naturally enough, the satirist of London society devoted several pages to Sheridan; Lady Anne Hamilton, author of The Epics of the Ton, epitomizes his career as a dramatist thus: To rival Shakspeare see his genius rise, His taste excels, his wit with Shakspeare vies: Yet see the pigmy monument he rears! Two plays for all the work of thirty years; Save one burlesque to mock the Bavian throng, One maudlin farce, mere vehicle of song, At length, deserting genius, see him job A German tragedy to please the mob; Prop with smart crutch Anne Plumptre's hobbling stile And of its blossoms the Gaaette despoil. 79 Sentimentalism on the stage was, as we have seen, almost never praised by English verse-satirists between Churchill and Byron. The writers of domestic sentimental plays were vigor- ously rebuked, and translators from the German, even more harshly.. Cumberland's plays and those of his followers were indeed heartily condemned. But the plays of Kotzebue as rendered by Mrs. Inchbald or even by so great a dramatist as Sheridan, were attacked by the satirists almost as eagerly as they were attended by playgoers. IV Since sentimental poets were even more numerous than sentimental dramatists in the revolutionary half of the eigh- teenth century, and since also a considerable number of the sentimental poets were criticized, not always unfavorably,in verse-satire, it becomes a problem of some delicacy to determine from what groups of material selection should be made for such a summarizing article as this. Indeed the principal difficulty in 78 A Satirical Epistle to the Poet Laureate, 23. There is an interesting note of detailed criticism. 79 The Epics of the Ton, 195-196. Anne Plump tre was another translator of Kotzebue.