Brought back into its accustomed grooves, English comedy seemed inclined to leave to farce the domain of healthy ridicule, and to coalesce with domestic tragedy in the attempt to make the stage a vehicle of homespun didactic morality. Farce had now become a genuine English species, and has as such retained its vitality through all the subsequent fortunes of the stage; it was actively cultivated by Garrick as both actor and author; and he undoubtedly had more than a hand in the very best farce of this age, which is ascribed to clerical authorship.[249] S. Foote, whose comedies[250] and farces are distinguished both by wit and by variety of characters (though it was an absurd misapplication of a great name to call him the English Aristophanes), introduced into comic acting the abuse of personal mimicry, for the exhibition of which he ingeniously invented a series of entertainments, the parents of a long progeny of imitations. Meanwhile, the domestic drama of the sentimental kind achieved, though not immediately, a success only inferior to that of _The London Merchant_, in _The Gamester_ of E. Moore, to which Garrick seems to have directly contributed;[251] and sentimental comedy courted sympathetic applause in the works of A. Murphy, the single comedy of W. Whitehead,[252] and the earliest of H. Kelly.[153] It cannot be said that this species was extinguished, as it is sometimes assumed to have been, by O. Goldsmith; but he certainly published a direct protest against it between the production of his admirable character-comedy of _The Good-Natured Man_, and his delightfully brisk and fresh _She Stoops to Conquer_, which, after startling critical propriety from its self-conceit, taught comedy no longer to fear being true to herself. The most successful efforts of the elder G. Colman[254] had in them something of the spirit of genuine comedy, besides a finish which, however playwrights may shut their eyes to the fact, is one of the qualities which ensure a long life to a play. And in the masterpieces of R. B. Sheridan some of the happiest features of the comedy of Congreve were revived, together with its too uniform brilliancy of dialogue, but without its indecency of tone. The varnish of the age is indeed upon the style, and the hollowness of its morality in much of the sentiment (even where that sentiment is meant for the audience) of _The Rivals_ and _The School for Scandal_; but in tact of construction, in distinctness of characters, and in pungency of social satire, they are to be ranked among the glories of English comedy. Something in Sheridan's style, but quite without his brilliancy, is the most successful play[255] of the unfortunate General Burgoyne. R. Cumberland, who too consciously endeavoured to excel both in sentimental morality and in comic characterization, in which he was devoid of depth, closes the list of authors of higher pretensions who wrote for the theatre.[256] Like him, Mrs Cowley[257] ("Anna Matilda"), T.