You  must  indeed  be  clever  if  you  can  parody  without,
in  a  manner,  plagiarising.  The  School  for  Scandal  and
the  third  piece  to  which  we  are  coming  belong  to
classes  ;  and  in  the  wise  way,  though  not  in  the  unwise
above  referred  to,  they  may  be  compared.  The  Rivals,
as  has  been  said,  is  like  nothing  else — at  least  nothing
that  came  before  it.  Malapropism  may  go  back  through
the  recent  work  of  Smollett  (associated  likewise  with
Bath),  through  Swift  to  Shakespeare  ;  the  testy  father
is  as  old,  even  in  criticism,  as  the  Epistle  to  the  Pisos,  and
Heaven  knows  how  much  older  in  drama  ;  the  comic
Irishman,  though  he  only  now  comes  to  his  own,  is,
though  in  another  sense,  of  almost  as  ancient  a  house
as  he  could  himself  claim,  and  Bob  Acres's  ancestors
were  born  with  the  comic  drama.  But  in  all  the
immense  bulk  and  range  of  our  theatre  you  will  find
no  whole  piece  of  quite  the  same  kind  ;  nor  will  you,
if  you  extend  the  search  to  the  houses  of  Moliere  or
of  Calderon.  And  as  Sheridan  had  here  no  predecessor
in  fee,  so  he  has  had  no  exact  successor,  despite  the
immense  popularity  of  the  thing  and  the,  beyond  all
doubt  numerous,  attempts  at  imitation.  His  sole  heir
(as  it  seems  to  the  present  writer,  though  he  puts
forward  the  suggestion  humbly  and  diffidently),  and
that  in  a  transformed  fashion,  was  the  late  Sir  William
Gilbert.
The  Critic,  it  has  been  confessed,  is  less  of  an  a-per-se.
