Living in an age of loose manners and corrupt morals, the result, as has often been pointed out, of the unnatural state of repression which accompanied the Puritan supremacy, Wycherley cannot be acquitted of the vices of his time, nor can it be contended that it was altogether with the object of lashing these vices that he decked them out with all the allurements of brilliant dialogue and diverting situations. Yet I venture to assert that, in spite of their licentiousness, these comedies possess claims to recognition not lightly to be ignored. Nay, more: that their very indecency, although the most open, is certainly not the most pernicious form of immorality known to us in literature. For as the harm of licentious allusions consists in their appeal to the basest passions of human nature, so the appeal is stronger as the impression of human passion is deeper. But these simulacra, these puppet semblances of humanity, which Wycherley and his contemporaries summon upon the stage for our diversion, what human passion can we discover in these to which we should be in danger of unworthily responding? As we read the plays no sense of reality disturbs us. Transfer the language they employ, the actions they perform, to the characters in a play of Shakespeare's, a novel of Richardson's, and our resentment and detestation are instantly awakened. But the dramatis personæ of Wycherley or of Congreve are not, as the characters of Shakespeare and Richardson, men and women whom we feel to be as real and living as those with whom we daily associate. They merely simulate humanity so far as is requisite for the proper enactment of their parts. And herein lies the test: a Cordelia, an Iago, a Clarissa, a Lovelace, are, to our feelings, real creatures of flesh and blood, whom we love or hate, as the case may be. The characters of Wycherley and Congreve, on the contrary, we neither love nor detest; we are interested not in what they are, but only in what they say and do. They have no further existence for us than as they act and speak on the stage before our eyes; touch them, and, like ghosts in Elysium, they turn to empty air in our grasp.
Another counter-influence to the unwholesomeness of these comedies is the current of mirth which runs through them, more or less, from end to end. For laughter may be reckoned in some sort an antidote to sensuality, at least to sensuality in its vilest and most insinuating mood. "There is no passion," as Sterne says, "so serious as lust;" and we may safely conclude that when laughter is provoked, the wit of expression or the ludicrousness of situation is more active to our apprehension than the license of sentiment.
It is sometimes urged against the comedies of this school that Virtue, in them, is brought on the stage only to be derided. But this charge is manifestly unjust. Virtue, indeed, is an unfrequent guest in this house of mirth; she finds a refuge in the house of mourning hard by, in the tragedies of the times. Yet if she chance to cross the unwonted threshold, it is not to be laughed out of countenance, but more often to be entertained as an honoured guest. Take, for instance, the character of Christina, in Wycherley's Love in a Wood, or even that of Alithea, in The Country Wife; the sentiments of honour and purity that are set on their lips, or expressed in their actions, are evidently intended to excite our esteem and admiration. Nay, it may even be affirmed that if, among these shadowy creatures, there be any that affect us, beyond the others, with some sense of an approach to living reality, it is precisely the virtuous characters from whom such an impression is derived. It is true, on the other hand, that the sin of adultery, so common to the dramatic plots of this period, is treated not only without severity, but as a pleasant jest. To the husbands, in general, small mercy is shown. Yet what husbands are these—these Pinchwifes, Fondlewifes, et hoc genus omne? It is less the sanctity of marriage that is attacked, or held up to ridicule, in their persons, than their own vices, their jealousy, tyranny, or folly. And, after all, it is by no means in the crime itself, but in the ingenuity of intrigue, that we are expected to find diversion; and the utter absence of genuine passion on the part of these stage criminals renders any appeal to passion in ourselves out of the question.
It is not with any intention of excusing the license which abounds in Wycherley's comedies that I have ventured to offer these few considerations in their behalf. I contend only that their laughing outrages upon decency, are infinitely less harmful, because more superficial, than the sentimental lewdness which, arising from a deeper depravity, instils a more subtle venom; that, condemn it as we needs must, we may yet stop short of attaching to the immorality of the dramatists of the Restoration such consequence as to debar ourselves, for its sake, from enjoying to the full the admirable wit and ingenuity which constitute the chief merit of their performances.
Wycherley produced but four comedies, which, however, contain almost all of intrinsic value that remains from his pen. Besides these, he himself published but one volume, a folio of Miscellany-Poems, which appeared in 1704, when the author was sixty-four years of age. Of these pieces nothing favourable can be affirmed even by the friendliest critic. They form a strange olla podrida of so-called philosophy and obscenity; they are dull without weight, or lewd without wit; or if even here and there a good thought occur, the ore is scarcely of such value as to be worth the pains of separating from the dross. The book suggests a curious picture of the veteran dramatist, ever and anon laying aside his favourite Rochefoucauld or Montaigne to chuckle feebly over the reminiscence of some smutty story of his youthful days. The versification is, as Macaulay says, beneath criticism; Wycherley had no spark of poetry in his whole composition. In fine, we may apply to this volume, without qualification, Dryden's remarks upon poor Elkanah Settle; "His style is boisterous and rough-hewn; his rhyme incorrigibly lewd, and his numbers perpetually harsh and ill-sounding." Yet there is one thing which redeems the volume from utter contempt, as a testimony, not, indeed, to the author's talent, but to the constancy and disinterestedness of his temper. I refer to the brave verses addressed to his friend the Duke of Buckingham, on the occasion of that versatile nobleman's disgrace and imprisonment in the Tower. The key note is struck in the opening lines:
"Your late Disgrace is but the Court's Disgrace,
As its false accusation but your Praise."
These lines, it may be remarked, are intended as a rhymed couplet, and may serve as one instance out of many of the "incorrigible lewdness" of Wycherley's rhyme; but, paltry as the verses may be, the feeling which prompted them was surely deserving of respect.
The pieces in prose and verse, which, "having the misfortune to fall into the hands of a mercenary, were published in 1728, in 8vo, under the title of The Posthumous Works of William Wycherley Esq.," are on the whole superior to the Miscellany-Poems, yet, excepting perhaps some of the prose aphorisms which constitute the first part of the collection, little or nothing is to be found, even here, worth resuscitating. Such facility or occasional elegance as the verses possess must be wholly ascribed to the corrections of Pope; but Pope himself failed in the impracticable attempt to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Some few of the best pieces, as the lines on Solitude, might possibly pass muster as the worst in a better volume, while the epistle to Dryden (who had invited Wycherley's collaboration in the construction of a comedy—an honour which the younger author gratefully and modestly declined) is interesting personally, and the strain of elaborate compliment, to which, after the fashion of the day, Wycherley treated his correspondents, is here, for once, not wholly misapplied. The Maxims, however, contain better stuff than the verses, and fully justify Pope's repeated hints to the author that "the greater part" of his pieces "would make a much better figure as single maxims and reflections in prose, after the manner of your favourite Rochefoucauld, than in verse."[1] Although, for the most part, as trite as moral aphorisms usually are, they are not without here and there a touch of wit, of terseness, or even of wisdom. Here, for instance, is a pretty simile:—"False friends, like the shadow upon a dial, are ever present to the sunshine of our fortunes, and as soon gone when we begin to be under a cloud." Here, again, is a touch of characteristic satire:—"Old men give young men good counsel, not being able longer to give them bad examples."[2] And for a specimen of his wisdom take the following:—"The silence of a wise man is more wrong to mankind than the slanderer's speech."
I have now noticed all that has appeared in print of Wycherley's authorship beyond his letters to Pope (which possess at least the merit of occasioning Pope's letters to Wycherley),