is curious that to a Restoration dramatist, “a nether millstone,” we should owe a perfect brief description of ideal married life. In the scene of the fourth act of _Sir Harry Wildair_, where Lady Lurewell, with her “petrifying affectation,” is trying to tease Sir Harry out of all endurance on the subject of his wife (whom he believes to be lost or dead), and the degree of affection he had for her, he makes reply: “My own heart whispered me her desires, ’cause she herself was there; no contention ever rose but the dear strife of who should most oblige—no noise about authority, for neither would stoop to command, where both thought it glory to obey.” This is meant to be spoken rapidly, and not without its tantalizing lack of emphasis; but what a pearl it is, set there in the superlatively caustic dialogue! English chivalry and English literature have no such other golden passage in their rubrics, unless it be the famous tribute to the Lady Elizabeth Hastings that “to love her was a liberal education,” or Lovelace’s unforgettable song: “I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not Honour more!” The passage takes on a very great accidental beauty when we remember that it required courage, in its time and place, to have written it. It is characteristic also of Farquhar that it should be introduced, as it is, on the top wave of a vivacious and stormy conversation, which immediately sweeps it under, as if in proof that he understood both his art and his audience. The conjugal tie, among the leaders of fashion, was still something to laugh at and to toy with. Captain Vanbrugh, from whom nobody need expect much edification, had put in the mouth of his Constant, in a play which was a favorite with Garrick, a bit of sense and sincerity quoted, as it deserved to be, by Hunt: “Though marriage be a lottery in which there are a wondrous many blanks, yet there is one inestimable lot in which the only heaven on earth is written.” And again: “To be capable of loving one is better than to possess a thousand.” This was in 1698, and Farquhar therefore was not first, nor alone, in daring to speak for the derided idea of wedlock. Steele was soon to arise as the very champion of domestic life; and English wit, since he wrote, has never subsisted by its mockery of the conditions which create “home-keeping days and household reverences.” But it was Farquhar who spoke in behalf of these the most memorable word of his generation. After that lofty evidence of what he must be suspected to have been, it is well to see, as best we may, what manner of man George Farquhar was. And first let us take some extracts from his own account of himself, “candid and modest,” as Hunt named it.