His next, _The Double Dealer_, caused Dryden to proclaim him the equal of Shakspeare! Perhaps his most famous comedy is _Love for Love_, which is besides an excellent index to the morality of the age.

The author was quoted and caressed; Pope dedicated to him his Translation of the Iliad; and Voltaire considered him the most successful English writer of comedy.
His merit consists in some degree of originality, and in the liveliness of his colloquies.

His wit is brilliant and flashing, but, in the words of Thackeray, the world to him "seems to have had no moral at all." How much he owed to the French school, and especially to Moliere, may be judged from the fact that a whole scene in _Love for Love_ is borrowed from the _Don Juan_ of Moliere.

It is that in which Trapland comes to collect his debt from Valentine Legend.

Readers of Moliere will recall the scene between Don Juan, Sganarelle and M.Dimanche, which is here, with change of names, taken almost word for word.