Even in his earlier comedy these two characteristics are manifest. In the world of drama, young Honeywood is the legitimate descendant of Massinger's Wellborn on the one side, and of Congreve's Valentine Legend on the other, with a more distant collateral resemblance to Ben Jonson's Younger Knowell. But in the field of experience this "Good-natured Man" is that aspect of "Goldy" himself which, when he was poorest, made him not so poor but that Irishmen poorer still could live on him; that aspect of the glorious "idiot in affairs" which could make to the Earl of Northumberland, willing to be kind, no other suggestion of his wants than that he had a brother in Ireland, "poor, a clergyman, and much in need of help." Similarly might those rare creations Croaker and Jack Lofty be traced to their predecessors in the field of drama, even though remote. That they had their analogies in the life of Goldsmith, and have them in the lives of others, it is unnecessary to prove. But graphic as these characters are, they cannot make of 'The Good-natured Man' more than a passable second to 'She Stoops to Conquer.' For the premises of the plot are absurd, if not impossible; the complication is not much more natural than that of a Punch-and-Judy show, and the denouement but one shade less improbable than that of 'The Vicar of Wakefield.' The value of the play is principally historical, not æsthetic. Congreve's 'Love for Love,' Vanbrugh's 'Relapse, Farquhar's 'Beaux' Stratagem,' Goldsmith's 'She Stoops to Conquer,' and Sheridan's 'School for Scandal,' are the best comedies written since Jonson, Fletcher, and Massinger held the stage. In plot and diction 'She Stoops to Conquer' is equaled by Congreve; in character-drawing by [Pg 6507] Vanbrugh; in dramatic ease by Farquhar, in observation and wit by Sheridan: but by none is it equaled in humor, and in naturalness of dialogue it is facile princeps. Here again the characterization presents the twofold charm of universality and reality. Young Marlow is the traditional lover of the type of Young Bellair, Mirabell, and Aimwell, suggesting each in turn but different from all; he is also, in his combination of embarrassment and impudence, not altogether unlike the lad Oliver who, years ago, on a journey back to school, had mistaken Squire Featherstone's house in Ardagh for an inn.