The leading characters of Restoration
comedy, from Etherege to Vanbrugh, are consciously and almost
professionally wits. Simile and repartee are as indispensable a part of
a gentleman's social outfit as his wig or his rapier. In Congreve the
word "wit" is almost as common as the thing. When Farquhar made some
movement towards a return to nature, he was rewarded with Pope's line,
which clings like a burr to his memory--
"What pert, low dialogue has Farquhar writ."
If eighteenth-century comedy, as a whole, is not brilliantly written, it
is for lack of talent in the playwrights, not for lack of desire or
intention. Goldsmith, like Farquhar and Steele, vaguely realized the
superiority of humour to wit; but he died too early to exercise much
influence on his successors. In Sheridan the convention of wit
reasserted itself triumphantly, and the scene in which Lady Teazle, Mrs.
Candour, and the rest of the scandalous college sit in a semicircle and
cap malicious similes, came to be regarded as an unapproachable model of
comedy dialogue.
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