_The Lying Lover_ goes a little further and reforms the hero at the end, as is done in the comedies of Cibber. But even this similarity is only superficial, for the hero is not really vicious, being guilty only of some entertaining lying, and the reformation is brought about, not by approved sentimental feminine means, but by the fact that the hero finds himself in prison. But even though the hero is humiliated by temporary imprisonment, his delinquencies are so diverting that the reader is entirely in sympathy with him. Our sympathy for him, indeed, is so great that it is a distinct disappointment that the lady is given to the honest and jealous lover instead of to him. Steele lays no claim to originality in the reform, “compunction and remorse” of his hero, for in his preface he says that such things had been “frequently applauded on the stage.” Nor is the versifying of the elevated portions of the play a new thing; it is found both earlier and later than sentimental comedy and is not a distinctive mark of that type. _The Tender Husband_ was indebted to Cibber’s _Careless Husband_, which had recently appeared, but is not to be compared to it in its sentimental qualities. In both plays, however, we have the reconciliation of an estranged husband and wife. In Cibber it is the husband who is the offender, and he is recalled from his vices by the patient fidelity of his wife; a reformation based on sentiment. In _The Tender Husband_, the wife is reformed from extravagance in her expenditure of time and money on trivialities, and from failure in her duty to her husband, but the reformation is brought about by a mere trick that the husband plays upon the wife rather than by the interaction of personality on personality. Steele shows nothing of the serious grasp of the situation that Cibber shows in his play on the same theme, _The Provoked Husband_. Steele’s handling is distinctly less artistic and distinctly less sentimental than in either of Cibber’s plays. This is seen also in Steele’s light treatment of the wife’s equivocal action toward Fainlove, whom she mistakenly supposes to be a man, and toward whom she makes questionable advances. Not only in regard to such situations as this, but in the attitude toward actual breaches of morality, Steele shows a lower standard than Cibber. In both _The Careless Husband_ and _The Tender Husband_ the hero keeps a mistress, but while Cibber brings the illicit amour to an end with the disgrace of the mistress and a distinct moral, Steele not only shows none of this disapproval but provides the mistress with a husband of means and gives her a good dowry.