The Country Wife is borrowed from the _E’cole des Maris_ and the _E’cole des Femmes_. The groundwork of the Plain Dealer is taken from the _Misanthrope_ of Molière. One whole scene is almost translated from the _Critique de l’E’cole des Femmes_. Fidelia is Shakspeare’s Viola stolen, and marred in the stealing; and the Widow Blackacre, beyond comparison Wycherley’s best comic character, is the Countess in Racine’s _Plaideurs_, talking the jargon of English instead of that of French chicane. The only thing original about Wycherley, the only thing which he could furnish from his own mind in inexhaustible abundance, was profligacy. It is curious to observe how every thing that he touched, however pure and noble, took in an instant the colour of his own mind. Compare the _E’cole des Femmes_ with the Country Wife. Agnes is a simple and amiable girl, whose heart is indeed full of love, but of love sanctioned by honour, morality, and religion. Her natural talents are great. They have been hidden, and, as it {386}might appear, destroyed by an education elaborately bad. But they are called forth into full energy by a virtuous passion. Her lover, while he adores her beauty, is too honest a man to abuse the confiding tenderness of a creature so charming and inexperienced. Wycherley takes this plot into his hands; and forthwith this sweet and graceful courtship becomes a licentious intrigue of the lowest and least sentimental kind, between an impudent London rake and the idiot wife of a country squire. We will not go into details. In truth, Wycherley’s indecency is protected against the critics as a skunk is protected against the hunters. It is safe, because it is too filthy to handle, and too noisome even to approach.