DECEMBER _5th._—Saw Cumberland’s Word for Nature first time, was much pleased. He too often unravels his whole fable, which is slight enough, in the first or second acts. In this, some little suspense is preserved, and very much of those generous feelings, which interest while they improve. His usual self-conceit was exceedingly prominent in the prologue, and sufficiently so in the play. The epilogue was an incongruous farrago, and took away much of the pleasant feeling the piece had left. It likewise was egotistical. In the dialogue, he was guilty of his common fault, a repeated play upon words, little better than quibbling; and though not held in so much contempt, inferior perhaps to punning, of which it is but a meagre species. His characters of the termagant wife, hen-pecked husband, and old officer, are repetitions of himself: that is, of Ironsides, with Sir Benjamin and Lady Dove, in the Brothers; except that in the Brothers, if I remember rightly, the three characters are much better drawn. The chief, and almost the sole merit of the present comedy centers in the youth Leonard, to whom all the rest are very properly made subservient adjuncts. In this comedy, as in the Wheel of Fortune, there are some few impertinent excrescences. These two pieces, however, have more of wholeness and simplicity in the fable, than most others in the English language, of those at least that, because of their insipidity, are not forgotten. These are the thoughts that occur after having once seen the comedy. Perhaps when I read and consider it more attentively, I may correct or alter my opinion. It was received. _6th._—The papers to-day have been less favourable in the account given of Cumberland’s comedy, than I supposed they would have been. _7th._—Coming from Debrett’s, I met S——, who likewise spoke unfavourably of Cumberland’s comedy.