English comedy was certainly greatly reformed, in some senses of the word reform, during the period which followed the publication of "The Rehearsal," and, in the hands of writers like Wycherley, Shadwell, Congreve, and D'Urfey, the dulness of the Howards was exchanged for an extreme degree of vivacity. The plot was as little considered as ever--it was a mere peg on which to hang scenes brilliant with wit and _repartee_. The small intrigue is often but a frame for a great picture of society in its forms then most open to caricature, with all the petty intrigues inseparable from it. "Epsom Wells," one of Shadwell's earlier comedies, and perhaps his best, will bear comparison with Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair." The personages represented in it are exactly those which then shone in such society--three "men of wit and pleasure," one of the class of country squires whom the wits of London loved to laugh at, and who is described as "a country justice, a public spirited, politick, discontented fop, an immoderate hater of London, and a lover of the country above measure, a hearty true English coxcomb." Then we have "two cheating, sharking, cowardly bullies." The citizens of London are represented by Bisket, "a comfit-maker, a quiet, humble, civil cuckold, governed by his wife, whom he very much fears and loves at the same time, and is very proud of," and Fribble, "a haberdasher, a surly cuckold, very conceited, and proud of his wife, but pretends to govern and keep her under," and their wives, the first "an impertinent, imperious strumpet," and the other, "an humble, submitting wife, who jilts her husband that way, a very ----." One or two other characters of the same stamp, with "two young ladies of wit, beauty, and fortune," who behave themselves not much better than the others, and a full allowance of "parsons, hectors, constables, watchmen, and fiddlers," complete the _dramatis personæ_ of "Epsom Wells." With such materials anybody will understand the character of the piece, which was brought out on the stage in 1672. "The Squire of Alsatia," by the same author, brought upon the stage in the eventful year 1688, is a vivid picture of one of the wildest phases of London life in those still rather primitive times. Alsatia, as every reader of Walter Scott knows, was a cant name for the White Friars, in London, a locality which, at that time, was beyond the reach of the law and its officers, a refuge for thieves and rogues, and especially for debtors, where they could either resist with no great fear of being overcome, or, when resistance was no longer possible, escape with ease. With such a scene, and such people for characters, we are not surprised that the printed edition of this play is prefaced by a vocabulary of the cant words employed in it. The principal characters in the play are of the same class with those which form the staple of all these old comedies. First there is a country father or uncle, who is rich and severe upon