When we left it before the Commonwealth the great English literary school of playwriting--the romantic drama--was already dead.

It has had since no second birth.

There followed after it the heroic tragedy of Dryden and Shadwell--a turgid, declamatory form of art without importance--and two brilliant comic periods, the earlier and greater that of Congreve and Wycherley, the later more sentimental with less art and vivacity, that of Goldsmith and Sheridan.

With Sheridan the drama as a literary force died a second time.

It has been born again only in our own day.