is an admirable creature of broad comedy that never subsides or overflows or degenerates into farce.
'A Match at Midnight' is as notable for vivid impression of reality, but not so likely to leave a good taste—as Charlotte Brontë might have said—in the reader's mouth. Ancient Young, the hero, is a fine fellow; but Messrs. Earlack and Carvegut are hardly amusing enough to reconcile us to toleration of such bad company. It is cleverly composed, and the crosses and chances of the night are ingeniously and effectively invented and arranged: there is real and good broad humour in the parts of the usurer and his sons and the attractive but unwidowed Widow Wag. And I am not only free to admit but desirous to remark that a juster and more valuable judgment on such plays as these than any that I could undertake to deliver may very possibly be expected from readers whom they may more thoroughly arride—to use a favourite phrase of the all, but impeccable critic, the all but infallible judge, whose praise has set the name of Rowley so high in the rank of realistic painters and historic naturalists forever.
The copies of two dramatic nondescripts now happily preserved and duly treasured in the library of the British Museum bear inscribed in
