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THE

COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT

IN TWELVE VOLUMES

VOLUME EIGHT

_All rights reserved_

[Illustration:

_William Hazlitt._

_From a crayon drawing by W. Bewick executed in 1822._

]

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF

WILLIAM HAZLITT

EDITED BY A. R. WALLER

AND ARNOLD GLOVER

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

W. E. HENLEY

❦

Lectures on the English Comic Writers

A View of the English Stage

Dramatic Essays from

‘The London Magazine’

❦

1903

LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO.

McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.: NEW YORK

Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTENTS

PAGE

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH COMIC WRITERS 1

A VIEW OF THE ENGLISH STAGE 169

DRAMATIC ESSAYS FROM ‘THE LONDON MAGAZINE’ 381

NOTES 485

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH COMIC WRITERS

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The first edition (here reprinted) was published in 1819 in one 8vo.

volume (343 pp.), with the following title-page:—‘Lectures on the

English Comic Writers. Delivered at the Surry Institution. By William

Hazlitt. “It is a very good office one man does another, when he tells

him the manner of his being pleased.” Steele. London: Printed for Taylor

and Hessey, 93. Fleet Street. 1819.’ The volume was printed by J.

Miller, Noble Street, Cheapside. The ‘third edition’ (the second having

been presumably a mere re-print of the first), edited by the author’s

son and published by Templeman, appeared in 1841, and included some

additions collected from various sources. These additions are referred

to in the notes to the present volume. The first edition was republished

by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in Bohn’s Library in 1869, and the third edition

has quite recently been included in the Temple Classics series ‘under

the immediate editorial care of Mr. Austin Dobson’ (1900).

CONTENTS

LECTURE I.

PAGE

Introductory—On Wit and Humour 5

LECTURE II.

On Shakspeare and Ben Jonson 30

LECTURE III.

On Cowley, Butler, Suckling, Etherege, etc. 49

LECTURE IV.

On Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar 70

LECTURE V.

On the Periodical Essayists 91

LECTURE VI.

On the English Novelists 106

LECTURE VII.

On the Works of Hogarth. On the Grand and Familiar Style of

Painting 133

LECTURE VIII.

On the Comic Writers of the last Century 149

LECTURES ON

THE COMIC WRITERS, ETC.

OF GREAT BRITAIN

LECTURE I INTRODUCTORY

ON WIT AND HUMOUR

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal

that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what

they ought to be. We weep at what thwarts or exceeds our desires in

serious matters: we laugh at what only disappoints our expectations in

trifles. We shed tears from sympathy with real and necessary distress;

as we burst into laughter from want of sympathy with that which is

unreasonable and unnecessary, the absurdity of which provokes our spleen

or mirth, rather than any serious reflections on it.

To explain the nature of laughter and tears, is to account for the

condition of human life; for it is in a manner compounded of these two!

It is a tragedy or a comedy—sad or merry, as it happens. The crimes and

misfortunes that are inseparable from it, shock and wound the mind when

they once seize upon it, and when the pressure can no longer be borne,

seek relief in tears: the follies and absurdities that men commit, or

the odd accidents that befal them, afford us amusement from the very

rejection of these false claims upon our sympathy, and end in laughter.

If every thing that went wrong, if every vanity or weakness in another

gave us a sensible pang, it would be hard indeed: but as long as the

disagreeableness of the consequences of a sudden disaster is kept out of

sight by the immediate oddity of the circumstances, and the absurdity or

unaccountableness of a foolish action is the most striking thing in it,

the ludicrous prevails over the pathetic, and we receive pleasure

instead of pain from the farce of life which is played before us, and

which discomposes our gravity as often as it fails to move our anger or

our pity!

Tears may be considered as the natural and involuntary resource of the

mind overcome by some sudden and violent emotion, before it has had time

to reconcile its feelings to the change of circumstances: while laughter

may be defined to be the same sort of convulsive and involuntary

movement, occasioned by mere surprise or contrast (in the absence of any

more serious emotion), before it has time to reconcile its belief to

contradictory appearances. If we hold a mask before our face, and

approach a child with this disguise on, it will at first, from the

oddity and incongruity of the appearance, be inclined to laugh; if we go

nearer to it, steadily, and without saying a word, it will begin to be

alarmed, and be half inclined to cry: if we suddenly take off the mask,

it will recover from its fears, and burst out a-laughing; but if,

instead of presenting the old well-known countenance, we have concealed

a satyr’s head or some frightful caricature behind the first mask, the

suddenness of the change will not in this case be a source of merriment

to it, but will convert its surprise into an agony of consternation, and

will make it scream out for help, even though it may be convinced that

the whole is a trick at bottom.

The alternation of tears and laughter, in this little episode in common

life, depends almost entirely on the greater or less degree of interest

attached to the different changes of appearance. The mere suddenness of

the transition, the mere baulking our expectations, and turning them

abruptly into another channel, seems to give additional liveliness and

gaiety to the animal spirits; but the instant the change is not only

sudden, but threatens serious consequences, or calls up the shape of

danger, terror supersedes our disposition to mirth, and laughter gives

place to tears. It is usual to play with infants, and make them laugh by

clapping your hands suddenly before them; but if you clap your hands too

loud, or too near their sight, their countenances immediately change,

and they hide them in the nurse’s arms. Or suppose the same child, grown

up a little older, comes to a place, expecting to meet a person it is

particularly fond of, and does not find that person there, its

countenance suddenly falls, its lips begin to quiver, its cheek turns

pale, its eye glistens, and it vents its little sorrow (grown too big to

be concealed) in a flood of tears. Again, if the child meets the same

person unexpectedly after long absence, the same effect will be produced

by an excess of joy, with different accompaniments; that is, the

surprise and the emotion excited will make the blood come into his face,

his eyes sparkle, his tongue falter or be mute, but in either case the

tears will gush to his relief, and lighten the pressure about his heart.

On the other hand, if a child is playing at hide-and-seek, or

blindman’s-buff, with persons it is ever so fond of, and either misses

them where it had made sure of finding them, or suddenly runs up against

them where it had least expected it, the shock or additional impetus

given to the imagination by the disappointment or the discovery, in a

matter of this indifference, will only vent itself in a fit of

laughter.[1] The transition here is not from one thing of importance to

another, or from a state of indifference to a state of strong

excitement; but merely from one impression to another that we did not at

all expect, and when we had expected just the contrary. The mind having

been led to form a certain conclusion, and the result producing an

immediate solution of continuity in the chain of our ideas, this

alternate excitement and relaxation of the imagination, the object also

striking upon the mind more vividly in its loose unsettled state, and

before it has had time to recover and collect itself, causes that

alternate excitement and relaxation, or irregular convulsive movement of

the muscular and nervous system, which constitutes physical laughter.

The _discontinuous_ in our sensations produces a correspondent jar and

discord in the frame. The steadiness of our faith and of our features

begins to give way at the same time. We turn with an incredulous smile

from a story that staggers our belief: and we are ready to split our

sides with laughing at an extravagance that sets all common sense and

serious concern at defiance.

To understand or define the ludicrous, we must first know what the

serious is. Now the serious is the habitual stress which the mind lays

upon the expectation of a given order of events, following one another

with a certain regularity and weight of interest attached to them. When

this stress is increased beyond its usual pitch of intensity, so as to

overstrain the feelings by the violent opposition of good to bad, or of

objects to our desires, it becomes the pathetic or tragical. The

ludicrous, or comic, is the unexpected loosening or relaxing this stress

below its usual pitch of intensity, by such an abrupt transposition of

the order of our ideas, as taking the mind unawares, throws it off its

guard, startles it into a lively sense of pleasure, and leaves no time

nor inclination for painful reflections.

The essence of the laughable then is the incongruous, the disconnecting

one idea from another, or the jostling of one feeling against another.

The first and most obvious cause of laughter is to be found in the

simple succession of events, as in the sudden shifting of a disguise, or

some unlooked-for accident, without any absurdity of character or

situation. The accidental contradiction between our expectations and the

event can hardly be said, however, to amount to the ludicrous: it is

merely laughable. The ludicrous is where there is the same contradiction

between the object and our expectations, heightened by some deformity or

inconvenience, that is, by its being contrary to what is customary or

desirable; as the ridiculous, which is the highest degree of the

laughable, is that which is contrary not only to custom but to sense and

reason, or is a voluntary departure from what we have a right to expect

from those who are conscious of absurdity and propriety in words, looks,

and actions.

Of these different kinds or degrees of the laughable, the first is the

most shallow and short-lived; for the instant the immediate surprise of

a thing’s merely happening one way or another is over, there is nothing

to throw us back upon our former expectation, and renew our wonder at

the event a second time. The second sort, that is, the ludicrous arising

out of the improbable or distressing, is more deep and lasting, either

because the painful catastrophe excites a greater curiosity, or because

the old impression, from its habitual hold on the imagination, still

recurs mechanically, so that it is longer before we can seriously make

up our minds to the unaccountable deviation from it. The third sort, or

the ridiculous arising out of absurdity as well as improbability, that

is, where the defect or weakness is of a man’s own seeking, is the most

refined of all, but not always so pleasant as the last, because the same

contempt and disapprobation which sharpens and subtilises our sense of

the impropriety, adds a severity to it inconsistent with perfect ease

and enjoyment. This last species is properly the province of satire. The

principle of contrast is, however, the same in all the stages, in the

simply laughable, the ludicrous, the ridiculous; and the effect is only

the more complete, the more durably and pointedly this principle

operates.

To give some examples in these different kinds. We laugh, when children,

at the sudden removing of a pasteboard mask: we laugh, when grown up,

more gravely at the tearing off the mask of deceit. We laugh at

absurdity; we laugh at deformity. We laugh at a bottle-nose in a

caricature; at a stuffed figure of an alderman in a pantomime, and at

the tale of Slaukenbergius. A giant standing by a dwarf makes a

contemptible figure enough. Rosinante and Dapple are laughable from

contrast, as their masters from the same principle make two for a pair.

We laugh at the dress of foreigners, and they at ours. Three

chimney-sweepers meeting three Chinese in Lincoln’s-inn Fields, they

laughed at one another till they were ready to drop down. Country people

laugh at a person because they never saw him before. Any one dressed in

the height of the fashion, or quite out of it, is equally an object of

ridicule. One rich source of the ludicrous is distress with which we

cannot sympathise from its absurdity or insignificance. Women laugh at

their lovers. We laugh at a damned author, in spite of our teeth, and

though he may be our friend. ‘There is something in the misfortunes of

our best friends that pleases us.’ We laugh at people on the top of a

stage-coach, or in it, if they seem in great extremity. It is hard to

hinder children from laughing at a stammerer, at a negro, at a drunken

man, or even at a madman. We laugh at mischief. We laugh at what we do

not believe. We say that an argument or an assertion that is very

absurd, is quite ludicrous. We laugh to shew our satisfaction with

ourselves, or our contempt for those about us, or to conceal our envy or

our ignorance. We laugh at fools, and at those who pretend to be wise—at

extreme simplicity, awkwardness, hypocrisy, and affectation. ‘They were

talking of me,’ says Scrub, ‘for they laughed _consumedly_.’ Lord

Foppington’s insensibility to ridicule, and airs of ineffable

self-conceit, are no less admirable; and Joseph Surface’s cant maxims of

morality, when once disarmed of their power to do hurt, become

sufficiently ludicrous.—We laugh at that in others which is a serious

matter to ourselves; because our self-love is stronger than our

sympathy, sooner takes the alarm, and instantly turns our heedless mirth

into gravity, which only enhances the jest to others. Some one is

generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke. What is sport to one, is

death to another. It is only very sensible or very honest people, who

laugh as freely at their own absurdities as at those of their

neighbours. In general the contrary rule holds, and we only laugh at

those misfortunes in which we are spectators, not sharers. The injury,

the disappointment, shame, and vexation that we feel, put a stop to our

mirth; while the disasters that come home to us, and excite our

repugnance and dismay, are an amusing spectacle to others. The greater

resistance we make, and the greater the perplexity into which we are

thrown, the more lively and _piquant_ is the intellectual display of

cross-purposes to the by-standers. Our humiliation is their triumph. We

are occupied with the disagreeableness of the result instead of its

oddity or unexpectedness. Others see only the conflict of motives, and

the sudden alternation of events; we feel the pain as well, which more

than counterbalances the speculative entertainment we might receive from

the contemplation of our abstract situation.

You cannot force people to laugh: you cannot give a reason why they

should laugh: they must laugh of themselves, or not at all. As we laugh

from a spontaneous impulse, we laugh the more at any restraint upon this

impulse. We laugh at a thing merely because we ought not. If we think we

must not laugh, this perverse impediment makes our temptation to laugh

the greater; for by endeavouring to keep the obnoxious image out of

sight, it comes upon us more irresistibly and repeatedly; and the

inclination to indulge our mirth, the longer it is held back, collects

its force, and breaks out the more violently in peals of laughter. In

like manner, any thing we must not think of makes us laugh, by its

coming upon us by stealth and unawares, and from the very efforts we

make to exclude it. A secret, a loose word, a wanton jest, make people

laugh. Aretine laughed himself to death at hearing a lascivious story.

Wickedness is often made a substitute for wit; and in most of our good

old comedies, the intrigue of the plot and the double meaning of the

dialogue go hand-in-hand, and keep up the ball with wonderful spirit

between them. The consciousness, however it may arise, that there is

something that we ought to look grave at, is almost always a signal for

laughing outright: we can hardly keep our countenance at a sermon, a

funeral, or a wedding. What an excellent old custom was that of throwing

the stocking! What a deal of innocent mirth has been spoiled by the

disuse of it!—It is not an easy matter to preserve decorum in courts of

justice. The smallest circumstance that interferes with the solemnity of

the proceedings, throws the whole place into an uproar of laughter.

People at the point of death often say smart things. Sir Thomas More

jested with his executioner. Rabelais and Wycherley both died with a

_bon-mot_ in their mouths.

Misunderstandings, (_malentendus_) where one person means one thing, and

another is aiming at something else, are another great source of comic

humour, on the same principle of ambiguity and contrast. There is a

high-wrought instance of this in the dialogue between Aimwell and

Gibbet, in the Beaux’ Stratagem, where Aimwell mistakes his companion

for an officer in a marching regiment, and Gibbet takes it for granted

that the gentleman is a highwayman. The alarm and consternation

occasioned by some one saying to him, in the course of common

conversation, ‘I apprehend you,’ is the most ludicrous thing in that

admirably natural and powerful performance, Mr. Emery’s Robert Tyke.

Again, unconsciousness in the person himself of what he is about, or of

what others think of him, is also a great heightener of the sense of

absurdity. It makes it come the fuller home upon us from his

insensibility to it. His simplicity sets off the satire, and gives it a

finer edge. It is a more extreme case still where the person is aware of

being the object of ridicule, and yet seems perfectly reconciled to it

as a matter of course. So wit is often the more forcible and pointed for

being dry and serious, for it then seems as if the speaker himself had

no intention in it, and we were the first to find it out. Irony, as a

species of wit, owes its force to the same principle. In such cases it

is the contrast between the appearance and the reality, the suspense of

belief, and the seeming incongruity, that gives point to the ridicule,

and makes it enter the deeper when the first impression is overcome.

Excessive impudence, as in the Liar; or excessive modesty, as in the

hero of She Stoops to Conquer; or a mixture of the two, as in the Busy

Body, are equally amusing. Lying is a species of wit and humour. To lay

any thing to a person’s charge from which he is perfectly free, shews

spirit and invention; and the more incredible the effrontery, the

greater is the joke.

There is nothing more powerfully humorous than what is called _keeping_

in comic character, as we see it very finely exemplified in Sancho Panza

and Don Quixote. The proverbial phlegm and the romantic gravity of these

two celebrated persons may be regarded as the height of this kind of

excellence. The deep feeling of character strengthens the sense of the

ludicrous. Keeping in comic character is consistency in absurdity; a

determined and laudable attachment to the incongruous and singular. The

regularity completes the contradiction; for the number of instances of

deviation from the right line, branching out in all directions, shews

the inveteracy of the original bias to any extravagance or folly, the

natural improbability, as it were, increasing every time with the

multiplication of chances for a return to common sense, and in the end

mounting up to an incredible and unaccountably ridiculous height, when

we find our expectations as invariably baffled. The most curious problem

of all, is this truth of absurdity to itself. That reason and good sense

should be consistent, is not wonderful: but that caprice, and whim, and

fantastical prejudice, should be uniform and infallible in their

results, is the surprising thing. But while this characteristic clue to

absurdity helps on the ridicule, it also softens and harmonises its

excesses; and the ludicrous is here blended with a certain beauty and

decorum, from this very truth of habit and sentiment, or from the

principle of similitude in dissimilitude. The devotion to nonsense, and

enthusiasm about trifles, is highly affecting as a moral lesson: it is

one of the striking weaknesses and greatest happinesses of our nature.

That which excites so lively and lasting an interest in itself, even

though it should not be wisdom, is not despicable in the sight of reason

and humanity. We cannot suppress the smile on the lip; but the tear

should also stand ready to start from the eye. The history of

hobbyhorses is equally instructive and delightful; and after the pair I

have just alluded to, My Uncle Toby’s is one of the best and gentlest

that ‘ever lifted leg!’ The inconveniences, odd accidents, falls, and

bruises, to which they expose their riders, contribute their share to

the amusement of the spectators; and the blows and wounds that the

Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance received in his many perilous

adventures, have applied their healing influence to many a hurt mind.—In

what relates to the laughable, as it arises from unforeseen accidents or

self-willed scrapes, the pain, the shame, the mortification, and utter

helplessness of situation, add to the joke, provided they are momentary,

or overwhelming only to the imagination of the sufferer. Malvolio’s

punishment and apprehensions are as comic, from our knowing that they

are not real, as Christopher Sly’s drunken transformation and

short-lived dream of happiness are for the like reason. Parson Adams’s

fall into the tub at the ‘Squire’s, or his being discovered in bed with

Mrs. Slipslop, though pitiable, are laughable accidents: nor do we read

with much gravity of the loss of his Æschylus, serious as it was to him

at the time.—A Scotch clergyman, as he was going to church, seeing a

spruce conceited mechanic who was walking before him, suddenly covered

all over with dirt, either by falling into the kennel, or by some other

calamity befalling him, smiled and passed on: but afterwards seeing the

same person, who had stopped to refit, seated directly facing him in the

gallery, with a look of perfect satisfaction and composure, as if

nothing of the sort had happened to him, the idea of his late disaster

and present self-complacency struck him so powerfully, that, unable to

resist the impulse, he flung himself back in the pulpit, and laughed

till he could laugh no longer. I remember reading a story in an odd

number of the European Magazine, of an old gentleman who used to walk

out every afternoon, with a gold-headed cane, in the fields opposite

Baltimore House, which were then open, only with foot-paths crossing

them. He was frequently accosted by a beggar with a wooden leg, to whom

he gave money, which only made him more importunate. One day, when he

was more troublesome than usual, a well-dressed person happening to come

up, and observing how saucy the fellow was, said to the gentleman, ‘Sir,

if you will lend me your cane for a moment, I’ll give him a good

threshing for his impertinence.’ The old gentleman, smiling at the

proposal, handed him his cane, which the other no sooner was going to

apply to the shoulders of the culprit, than he immediately whipped off

his wooden leg, and scampered off with great alacrity, and his chastiser

after him as hard as he could go. The faster the one ran, the faster the

other followed him, brandishing the cane, to the great astonishment of

the gentleman who owned it, till having fairly crossed the fields, they

suddenly turned a corner, and nothing more was seen of either of them.

In the way of mischievous adventure, and a wanton exhibition of

ludicrous weakness in character, nothing is superior to the comic parts

of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. To take only the set of stories

of the Little Hunchback, who was choked with a bone, and the Barber of

Bagdad and his seven brothers,—there is that of the tailor who was

persecuted by the miller’s wife, and who, after toiling all night in the

mill, got nothing for his pains:—of another who fell in love with a fine

lady who pretended to return his passion, and inviting him to her house,

as the preliminary condition of her favour, had his eyebrows shaved, his

clothes stripped off, and being turned loose into a winding gallery, he

was to follow her, and by overtaking obtain all his wishes, but, after a

turn or two, stumbled on a trap-door, and fell plump into the street, to

the great astonishment of the spectators and his own, shorn of his

eyebrows, naked, and without a ray of hope left:—that of the

castle-building pedlar, who, in kicking his wife, the supposed daughter

of an emperor, kicks down his basket of glass, the brittle foundation of

his ideal wealth, his good fortune, and his arrogance:—that, again, of

the beggar who dined with the Barmecide, and feasted with him on the

names of wines and dishes: and, last and best of all, the inimitable

story of the Impertinent Barber himself, one of the seven, and worthy to

be so; his pertinacious, incredible, teasing, deliberate, yet unmeaning

folly, his wearing out the patience of the young gentleman whom he is

sent for to shave, his preparations and his professions of speed, his

taking out an astrolabe to measure the height of the sun while his

razors are getting ready, his dancing the dance of Zimri and singing the

song of Zamtout, his disappointing the young man of an assignation,

following him to the place of rendezvous, and alarming the master of the

house in his anxiety for his safety, by which his unfortunate patron

loses his hand in the affray, and this is felt as an awkward accident.

The danger which the same loquacious person is afterwards in, of losing

his head for want of saying who he was, because he would not forfeit his

character of being ‘justly called the Silent,’ is a consummation of the

jest, though, if it had really taken place, it would have been carrying

the joke too far. There are a thousand instances of the same sort in the

Thousand and One Nights, which are an inexhaustible mine of comic humour

and invention, and which, from the manners of the East which they

describe, carry the principle of callous indifference in a jest as far

as it can go. The serious and marvellous stories in that work, which

have been so much admired and so greedily read, appear to me monstrous

and abortive fictions, like disjointed dreams, dictated by a

preternatural dread of arbitrary and despotic power, as the comic and

familiar stories are rendered proportionably amusing and interesting

from the same principle operating in a different direction, and

producing endless uncertainty and vicissitude, and an heroic contempt

for the untoward accidents and petty vexations of human life. It is the

gaiety of despair, the mirth and laughter of a respite during pleasure

from death. The strongest instances of effectual and harrowing

imagination, are in the story of Amine and her three sisters, whom she

led by her side as a leash of hounds, and of the _goul_ who nibbled

grains of rice for her dinner, and preyed on human carcasses. In this

condemnation of the serious parts of the Arabian Nights, I have nearly

all the world, and in particular the author of the Ancient Mariner,

against me, who must be allowed to be a judge of such matters, and who

said, with a subtlety of philosophical conjecture which he alone

possesses, ‘That if I did not like them, it was because I did not

dream.’ On the other hand, I have Bishop Atterbury on my side, who, in a

letter to Pope, fairly confesses that ‘he could not read them in his old

age.’

There is another source of comic humour which has been but little

touched on or attended to by the critics—not the infliction of casual

pain, but the pursuit of uncertain pleasure and idle gallantry. Half the

business and gaiety of comedy turns upon this. Most of the adventures,

difficulties, demurs, hair-breadth ‘scapes, disguises, deceptions,

blunders, disappointments, successes, excuses, all the dextrous

manœuvres, artful inuendos, assignations, billets-doux, _double

entendres_, sly allusions, and elegant flattery, have an eye to this—to

the obtaining of those ‘favours secret, sweet, and precious,’ in which

love and pleasure consist, and which when attained, and the _equivoque_

is at an end, the curtain drops, and the play is over. All the

attractions of a subject that can only be glanced at indirectly, that is

a sort of forbidden ground to the imagination, except under severe

restrictions, which are constantly broken through; all the resources it

supplies for intrigue and invention; the bashfulness of the clownish

lover, his looks of alarm and petrified astonishment; the foppish

affectation and easy confidence of the happy man; the dress, the airs,

the languor, the scorn, and indifference of the fine lady; the bustle,

pertness, loquaciousness, and tricks of the chambermaid; the impudence,

lies, and roguery of the valet; the match-making and unmaking; the

wisdom of the wise; the sayings of the witty, the folly of the fool;

‘the soldier’s, scholar’s, courtier’s eye, tongue, sword, the glass of

fashion and the mould of form,’ have all a view to this. It is the

closet in Blue-Beard. It is the life and soul of Wycherley, Congreve,

Vanbrugh, and Farquhar’s plays. It is the salt of comedy, without which

it would be worthless and insipid. It makes Horner decent, and Millamant

divine. It is the jest between Tattle and Miss Prue. It is the bait with

which Olivia, in the Plain Dealer, plays with honest Manly. It lurks at

the bottom of the catechism which Archer teaches Cherry, and which she

learns by heart. It gives the finishing grace to Mrs. Amlet’s

confession—‘Though I’m old, I’m chaste.’ Valentine and his Angelica

would be nothing without it; Miss Peggy would not be worth a gallant;

and Slender’s ‘sweet Ann Page’ would be no more! ‘The age of comedy

would be gone, and the glory of our play-houses extinguished for ever.’

Our old comedies would be invaluable, were it only for this, that they

keep alive this sentiment, which still survives in all its fluttering

grace and breathless palpitations on the stage.

Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself; wit is the

exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humour

is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident; wit is the product of

art and fancy. Humour, as it is shewn in books, is an imitation of the

natural or acquired absurdities of mankind, or of the ludicrous in

accident, situation, and character: wit is the illustrating and

heightening the sense of that absurdity by some sudden and unexpected

likeness or opposition of one thing to another, which sets off the

quality we laugh at or despise in a still more contemptible or striking

point of view. Wit, as distinguished from poetry, is the imagination or

fancy inverted, and so applied to given objects, as to make the little

look less, the mean more light and worthless; or to divert our

admiration or wean our affections from that which is lofty and

impressive, instead of producing a more intense admiration and exalted

passion, as poetry does. Wit may sometimes, indeed, be shewn in

compliments as well as satire; as in the common epigram—

‘Accept a miracle, instead of wit:

See two dull lines with Stanhope’s pencil writ.’

But then the mode of paying it is playful and ironical, and contradicts

itself in the very act of making its own performance an humble foil to

another’s. Wit hovers round the borders of the light and trifling,

whether in matters of pleasure or pain; for as soon as it describes the

serious seriously, it ceases to be wit, and passes into a different

form. Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference, or an ingenious

and striking exposition of those evanescent and glancing impressions of

objects which affect us more from surprise or contrast to the train of

our ordinary and literal preconceptions, than from anything in the

objects themselves exciting our necessary sympathy or lasting hatred.

The favourite employment of wit is to add littleness to littleness, and

heap contempt on insignificance by all the arts of petty and incessant

warfare; or if it ever affects to aggrandise, and use the language of

hyperbole, it is only to betray into derision by a fatal comparison, as

in the mock-heroic; or if it treats of serious passion, it must do it so

as to lower the tone of intense and high-wrought sentiment, by the

introduction of burlesque and familiar circumstances. To give an

instance or two. Butler, in his Hudibras, compares the change of night

into day, to the change of colour in a boiled lobster.

‘The sun had long since, in the lap

Of Thetis, taken out his nap;

And, like a lobster boil’d, the morn

From black to red, began to turn:

When Hudibras, whom thoughts and aching

’Twixt sleeping kept all night, and waking,

Began to rub his drowsy eyes,

And from his couch prepared to rise,

Resolving to dispatch the deed

He vow’d to do with trusty speed.’

Compare this with the following stanzas in Spenser, treating of the same

subject:—

‘By this the Northern Waggoner had set

His seven-fold team behind the stedfast star,

That was in Ocean waves yet never wet,

But firm is fix’d and sendeth light from far

To all that in the wide deep wand’ring are:

And cheerful chanticleer with his note shrill,

Had warned once that Phœbus’ fiery car

In haste was climbing up the eastern hill,

Full envious that night so long his room did fill.

At last the golden oriental gate

Of greatest heaven ’gan to open fair,

And Phœbus, fresh as bridegroom to his mate,

Came dancing forth, shaking his dewy hair,

And hurl’d his glist’ring beams through gloomy air:

Which when the wakeful elf perceiv’d, straitway

He started up and did himself prepare

In sun-bright arms and battailous array,

For with that pagan proud he combat will that day.’

In this last passage, every image is brought forward that can give

effect to our natural impression of the beauty, the splendour, and

solemn grandeur of the rising sun; pleasure and power wait on every line

and word: whereas, in the other, the only memorable thing is a grotesque

and ludicrous illustration of the alteration which takes place from

darkness to gorgeous light, and that brought from the lowest instance,

and with associations that can only disturb and perplex the imagination

in its conception of the real object it describes. There cannot be a

more witty, and at the same time degrading comparison, than that in the

same author, of the Bear turning round the pole-star to a bear tied to a

stake:—

‘But now a sport more formidable

Had raked together village rabble;

’Twas an old way of recreating

Which learned butchers call bear-baiting,

A bold adventurous exercise

With ancient heroes in high prize,

For authors do affirm it came

From Isthmian or Nemæan game;

Others derive it from the Bear

That’s fixed in Northern hemisphere,

And round about his pole does make

A circle like a bear at stake,

That at the chain’s end wheels about

And overturns the rabble rout.’

I need not multiply examples of this sort.—Wit or ludicrous invention

produces its effect oftenest by comparison, but not always. It

frequently effects its purposes by unexpected and subtle distinctions.

For instance, in the first kind, Mr. Sheridan’s description of Mr.

Addington’s administration as the fag-end of Mr. Pitt’s, who had

remained so long on the treasury bench that, like Nicias in the fable,

‘he left the sitting part of the man behind him,’ is as fine an example

of metaphorical wit as any on record. The same idea seems, however, to

have been included in the old well-known nickname of the _Rump_

Parliament. Almost as happy an instance of the other kind of wit, which

consists in sudden retorts, in turns upon an idea, and diverting the

train of your adversary’s argument abruptly and adroitly into another

channel, may be seen in the sarcastic reply of Porson, who hearing some

one observe that ‘certain modern poets would be read and admired when

Homer and Virgil were forgotten,’ made answer—‘And not till then!’ Sir

Robert Walpole’s definition of the gratitude of place-expectants, ‘That

it is a lively sense of _future_ favours,’ is no doubt wit, but it does

not consist in the finding out any coincidence or likeness, but in

suddenly transposing the order of time in the common account of this

feeling, so as to make the professions of those who pretend to it

correspond more with their practice. It is filling up a blank in the

human heart with a word that explains its hollowness at once. Voltaire’s

saying, in answer to a stranger who was observing how tall his trees

grew—‘That they had nothing else to do’—was a quaint mixture of wit and

humour, making it out as if they really led a lazy, laborious life; but

there was here neither allusion or metaphor. Again, that master-stroke

in Hudibras is sterling wit and profound satire, where speaking of

certain religious hypocrites he says, that they

‘Compound for sins they are inclin’d to,

By damning those they have no mind to;’

but the wit consists in the truth of the character, and in the happy

exposure of the ludicrous contradiction between the pretext and the

practice; between their lenity towards their own vices, and their

severity to those of others. The same principle of nice distinction must

be allowed to prevail in those lines of the same author, where he is

professing to expound the dreams of judicial astrology.

‘There’s but the twinkling of a star

Betwixt a man of peace and war,

A thief and justice, fool and knave,

A huffing officer and a slave;

A crafty lawyer and pickpocket;

A great philosopher and a blockhead;

A formal preacher and a player;

A learn’d physician and man slayer.’

The finest piece of wit I know of, is in the lines of Pope on the Lord

Mayor’s show—

‘Now night descending, the proud scene is o’er,

But lives in Settle’s numbers one day more.’

This is certainly as mortifying an inversion of the idea of poetical

immortality as could be thought of; it fixes the _maximum_ of littleness

and insignificance: but it is not by likeness to any thing else that it

does this, but by literally taking the lowest possible duration of

ephemeral reputation, marking it (as with a slider) on the scale of

endless renown, and giving a rival credit for it as his loftiest praise.

In a word, the shrewd separation or disentangling of ideas that seem the

same, or where the secret contradiction is not sufficiently suspected,

and is of a ludicrous and whimsical nature, is wit just as much as the

bringing together those that appear at first sight totally different.

There is then no sufficient ground for admitting Mr. Locke’s celebrated

definition of wit, which he makes to consist in the finding out striking

and unexpected resemblances in things so as to make pleasant pictures in

the fancy, while judgment and reason, according to him, lie the clean

contrary way, in separating and nicely distinguishing those wherein the

smallest difference is to be found.[2]

On this definition Harris, the author of Hermes, has very well observed

that the demonstrating the equality of the three angles of a

right-angled triangle to two right ones, would, upon the principle here

stated, be a piece of wit instead of an act of the judgment, or

understanding, and Euclid’s Elements a collection of epigrams. On the

contrary it has appeared, that the detection and exposure of difference,

particularly where this implies nice and subtle observation, as in

discriminating between pretence and practice, between appearance and

reality, is common to wit and satire with judgment and reasoning, and

certainly the comparing and connecting our ideas together is an

essential part of reason and judgment, as well as of wit and fancy.—Mere

wit, as opposed to reason or argument, consists in striking out some

casual and partial coincidence which has nothing to do, or at least

implies no necessary connection with the nature of the things, which are

forced into a seeming analogy by a play upon words, or some irrelevant

conceit, as in puns, riddles, alliteration, &c. The jest, in all such

cases, lies in the sort of mock-identity, or nominal resemblance,

established by the intervention of the same words expressing different

ideas, and countenancing as it were, by a fatality of language, the

mischievous insinuation which the person who has the wit to take

advantage of it wishes to convey. So when the disaffected French wits

applied to the new order of the _Fleur du lys_ the _double entendre_ of

_Compagnons d’Ulysse_, or companions of Ulysses, meaning the animal into

which the fellow-travellers of the hero of the Odyssey were transformed,

this was a shrewd and biting intimation of a galling truth (if truth it

were) by a fortuitous concourse of letters of the alphabet, jumping in

‘a foregone conclusion,’ but there was no proof of the thing, unless it

was self-evident. And, indeed, this may be considered as the best

defence of the contested maxim—_That ridicule is the test of truth_;

viz. that it does not contain or attempt a formal proof of it, but owes

its power of conviction to the bare suggestion of it, so that if the

thing when once hinted is not clear in itself, the satire fails of its

effect and falls to the ground. The sarcasm here glanced at the

character of the new or old French noblesse may not be well founded; but

it is so like truth, and ‘comes in such a questionable shape,’ backed

with the appearance of an identical proposition, that it would require a

long train of facts and laboured arguments to do away the impression,

even if we were sure of the honesty and wisdom of the person who

undertook to refute it. A flippant jest is as good a test of truth as a

solid bribe; and there are serious sophistries,

‘Soul-killing lies, and truths that work small good,’

as well as idle pleasantries. Of this we may be sure, that ridicule

fastens on the vulnerable points of a cause, and finds out the weak

sides of an argument; if those who resort to it sometimes rely too much

on its success, those who are chiefly annoyed by it almost always are so

with reason, and cannot be too much on their guard against deserving it.

Before we can laugh at a thing, its absurdity must at least be open and

palpable to common apprehension. Ridicule is necessarily built on

certain supposed facts, whether true or false, and on their

inconsistency with certain acknowledged maxims, whether right or wrong.

It is, therefore, a fair test, if not of philosophical or abstract

truth, at least of what is truth according to public opinion and common

sense; for it can only expose to instantaneous contempt that which is

condemned by public opinion, and is hostile to the common sense of

mankind. Or to put it differently, it is the test of the quantity of

truth that there is in our favourite prejudices.—To shew how nearly

allied wit is thought to be to truth, it is not unusual to say of any

person—‘Such a one is a man of sense, for though he said nothing, he

laughed in the right place.’—Alliteration comes in here under the head

of a certain sort of verbal wit; or, by pointing the expression,

sometimes points the sense. Mr. Grattan’s wit or eloquence (I don’t know

by what name to call it) would be nothing without this accompaniment.

Speaking of some ministers whom he did not like, he said, ‘Their only

means of government are the guinea and the gallows.’ There can scarcely,

it must be confessed, be a more effectual mode of political conversion

than one of these applied to a man’s friends, and the other to himself.

The fine sarcasm of Junius on the effect of the supposed ingratitude of

the Duke of Grafton at court—‘The instance might be painful, but the

principle would please’—notwithstanding the profound insight into human

nature it implies, would hardly pass for wit without the alliteration,

as some poetry would hardly be acknowledged as such without the rhyme to

clench it. A quotation or a hackneyed phrase dextrously turned or

wrested to another purpose, has often the effect of the liveliest wit.

An idle fellow who had only fourpence left in the world, which had been

put by to pay for the baking some meat for his dinner, went and laid it

out to buy a new string for a guitar. An old acquaintance on hearing

this story, repeated those lines out of the Allegro—

‘And ever against _eating_ cares

Lap me in soft Lydian airs.’

The reply of the author of the periodical paper called the World to a

lady at church, who seeing him look thoughtful, asked what he was

thinking of—‘The next World,’—is a perversion of an established formula

of language, something of the same kind.—Rhymes are sometimes a species

of wit, where there is an alternate combination and resolution or

decomposition of the elements of sound, contrary to our usual division

and classification of them in ordinary speech, not unlike the sudden

separation and re-union of the component parts of the machinery in a

pantomime. The author who excels infinitely the most in this way is the

writer of Hudibras. He also excels in the invention of single words and

names which have the effect of wit by sounding big, and meaning

nothing:—‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ But of the

artifices of this author’s burlesque style I shall have occasion to

speak hereafter.—It is not always easy to distinguish between the wit of

words and that of things. ‘For thin partitions do their bounds divide.’

Some of the late Mr. Curran’s _bon mots_ or _jeux d’esprit_, might be

said to owe their birth to this sort of equivocal generation; or were a

happy mixture of verbal wit and a lively and picturesque fancy, of legal

acuteness in detecting the variable application of words, and of a mind

apt at perceiving the ludicrous in external objects. ‘Do you see any

thing ridiculous in this wig?’ said one of his brother judges to him.

‘Nothing but the head,’ was the answer. Now here instantaneous advantage

was taken of the slight technical ambiguity in the construction of

language, and the matter-of-fact is flung into the scale as a thumping

makeweight. After all, verbal and accidental strokes of wit, though the

most surprising and laughable, are not the best and most lasting. That

wit is the most refined and effectual, which is founded on the detection

of unexpected likeness or distinction in things, rather than in words.

It is more severe and galling, that is, it is more unpardonable though

less surprising, in proportion as the thought suggested is more complete

and satisfactory, from its being inherent in the nature of the things

themselves. _Hæret lateri lethalis arundo._ Truth makes the greatest

libel; and it is that which barbs the darts of wit. The Duke of

Buckingham’s saying, ‘Laws are not, like women, the worse for being

old,’ is an instance of a harmless truism and the utmost malice of wit

united. This is, perhaps, what has been meant by the distinction between

true and false wit. Mr. Addison, indeed, goes so far as to make it the

exclusive test of true wit that it will bear translation into another

language, that is to say, that it does not depend at all on the form of

expression. But this is by no means the case. Swift would hardly have

allowed of such a strait-laced theory, to make havoc with his darling

conundrums; though there is no one whose serious wit is more that of

things, as opposed to a mere play either of words or fancy. I ought, I

believe, to have noticed before, in speaking of the difference between

wit and humour, that wit is often pretended absurdity, where the person

overacts or exaggerates a certain part with a conscious design to expose

it as if it were another person, as when Mandrake in the Twin Rivals

says, ‘This glass is too big, carry it away, I’ll drink out of the

bottle.’ On the contrary, when Sir Hugh Evans says very innocently,

‘’Od’s plessed will, I will not be absence at the grace,’ though there

is here a great deal of humour, there is no wit. This kind of wit of the

humorist, where the person makes a butt of himself, and exhibits his own

absurdities or foibles purposely in the most pointed and glaring lights,

runs through the whole of the character of Falstaff, and is, in truth,

the principle on which it is founded. It is an irony directed against

one’s-self. Wit is, in fact, a voluntary act of the mind, or exercise of

the invention, shewing the absurd and ludicrous consciously, whether in

ourselves or another. Cross-readings, where the blunders are designed,

are wit: but if any one were to light upon them through ignorance or

accident, they would be merely ludicrous.

It might be made an argument of the intrinsic superiority of poetry or

imagination to wit, that the former does not admit of mere verbal

combinations. Whenever they do occur, they are uniformly blemishes. It

requires something more solid and substantial to raise admiration or

passion. The general forms and aggregate masses of our ideas must be

brought more into play, to give weight and magnitude. Imagination may be

said to be the finding out something similar in things generally alike,

or with like feelings attached to them; while wit principally aims at

finding out something that seems the same, or amounts to a momentary

deception where you least expected it, viz. in things totally opposite.

The reason why more slight and partial, or merely accidental and nominal

resemblances serve the purposes of wit, and indeed characterise its

essence as a distinct operation and faculty of the mind, is, that the

object of ludicrous poetry is naturally to let down and lessen; and it

is easier to let down than to raise up, to weaken than to strengthen, to

disconnect our sympathy from passion and power, than to attach and rivet

it to any object of grandeur or interest, to startle and shock our

preconceptions by incongruous and equivocal combinations, than to

confirm, enforce, and expand them by powerful and lasting associations

of ideas, or striking and true analogies. A slight cause is sufficient

to produce a slight effect. To be indifferent or sceptical, requires no

effort; to be enthusiastic and in earnest, requires a strong impulse,

and collective power. Wit and humour (comparatively speaking, or taking

the extremes to judge of the gradations by) appeal to our indolence, our

vanity, our weakness, and insensibility; serious and impassioned poetry

appeals to our strength, our magnanimity, our virtue, and humanity. Any

thing is sufficient to heap contempt upon an object; even the bare

suggestion of a mischievous allusion to what is improper, dissolves the

whole charm, and puts an end to our admiration of the sublime or

beautiful. Reading the finest passage in Milton’s Paradise Lost in a

false tone, will make it seem insipid and absurd. The cavilling at, or

invidiously pointing out, a few slips of the pen, will embitter the

pleasure, or alter our opinion of a whole work, and make us throw it

down in disgust. The critics are aware of this vice and infirmity in our

nature, and play upon it with periodical success. The meanest weapons

are strong enough for this kind of warfare, and the meanest hands can

wield them. Spleen can subsist on any kind of food. The shadow of a

doubt, the hint of an inconsistency, a word, a look, a syllable, will

destroy our best-formed convictions. What puts this argument in as

striking a point of view as any thing, is the nature of parody or

burlesque, the secret of which lies merely in transposing or applying at

a venture to any thing, or to the lowest objects, that which is

applicable only to certain given things, or to the highest matters.

‘From the sublime to the ridiculous, there is but one step.’ The

slightest want of unity of impression destroys the sublime; the

detection of the smallest incongruity is an infallible ground to rest

the ludicrous upon. But in serious poetry, which aims at rivetting our

affections, every blow must tell home. The missing a single time is

fatal, and undoes the spell. We see how difficult it is to sustain a

continued flight of impressive sentiment: how easy it must be then to

travestie or burlesque it, to flounder into nonsense, and be witty by

playing the fool. It is a common mistake, however, to suppose that

parodies degrade, or imply a stigma on the subject: on the contrary,

they in general imply something serious or sacred in the originals.

Without this, they would be good for nothing; for the immediate contrast

would be wanting, and with this they are sure to tell. The best parodies

are, accordingly, the best and most striking things reversed. Witness

the common travesties of Homer and Virgil. Mr. Canning’s court parodies

on Mr. Southey’s popular odes, are also an instance in point (I do not

know which were the cleverest); and the best of the Rejected Addresses

is the parody on Crabbe, though I do not certainly think that Crabbe is

the most ridiculous poet now living.

Lear and the Fool are the sublimest instance I know of passion and wit

united, or of imagination unfolding the most tremendous sufferings, and

of burlesque on passion playing with it, aiding and relieving its

intensity by the most pointed, but familiar and indifferent

illustrations of the same thing in different objects, and on a meaner

scale. The Fool’s reproaching Lear with ‘making his daughters his

mothers,’ his snatches of proverbs and old ballads, ‘The hedge-sparrow

fed the cuckoo so long, that it had its head bit off by its young,’ and

‘Whoop jug, I know when the horse follows the cart,’ are a running

commentary of trite truisms, pointing out the extreme folly of the

infatuated old monarch, and in a manner reconciling us to its inevitable

consequences.

Lastly, there is a wit of sense and observation, which consists in the

acute illustration of good sense and practical wisdom, by means of some

far-fetched conceit or quaint imagery. The matter is sense, but the form

is wit. Thus the lines in Pope—

‘’Tis with our judgments as our watches, none

Go just alike; yet each believes his own——’

are witty, rather than poetical; because the truth they convey is a mere

dry observation on human life, without elevation or enthusiasm, and the

illustration of it is of that quaint and familiar kind that is merely

curious and fanciful. Cowley is an instance of the same kind in almost

all his writings. Many of the jests and witticisms in the best comedies

are moral aphorisms and rules for the conduct of life, sparkling with

wit and fancy in the mode of expression. The ancient philosophers also

abounded in the same kind of wit, in telling home truths in the most

unexpected manner.—In this sense Æsop was the greatest wit and moralist

that ever lived. Ape and slave, he looked askance at human nature, and

beheld its weaknesses and errors transferred to another species. Vice

and virtue were to him as plain as any objects of sense. He saw in man a

talking, absurd, obstinate, proud, angry animal; and clothed these

abstractions with wings, or a beak, or tail, or claws, or long ears, as

they appeared embodied in these hieroglyphics in the brute creation. His

moral philosophy is natural history. He makes an ass bray wisdom, and a

frog croak humanity. The store of moral truth, and the fund of invention

in exhibiting it in eternal forms, palpable and intelligible, and

delightful to children and grown persons, and to all ages and nations,

are almost miraculous. The invention of a fable is to me the most

enviable exertion of human genius: it is the discovering a truth to

which there is no clue, and which, when once found out, can never be

forgotten. I would rather have been the author of Æsop’s Fables, than of

Euclid’s Elements!—That popular entertainment, Punch and the

Puppet-show, owes part of its irresistible and universal attraction to

nearly the same principle of inspiring inanimate and mechanical agents

with sense and consciousness. The drollery and wit of a piece of wood is

doubly droll and farcical. Punch is not merry in himself, but ‘he is the

cause of heartfelt mirth in other men.’ The wires and pulleys that

govern his motions are conductors to carry off the spleen, and all ‘that

perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart.’ If we see a number of people

turning the corner of a street, ready to burst with secret satisfaction,

and with their faces bathed in laughter, we know what is the matter—that

they are just come from a puppet-show. Who can see three little painted,

patched-up figures, no bigger than one’s thumb, strut, squeak and

gibber, sing, dance, chatter, scold, knock one another about the head,

give themselves airs of importance, and ‘imitate humanity most

abominably,’ without laughing immoderately? We overlook the farce and

mummery of human life in little, and for nothing; and what is still

better, it costs them who have to play in it nothing. We place the

mirth, and glee, and triumph, to our own account; and we know that the

bangs and blows they have received go for nothing, as soon as the

showman puts them up in his box and marches off quietly with them, as

jugglers of a less amusing description sometimes march off with the

wrongs and rights of mankind in their pockets!—I have heard no bad judge

of such matters say, that ‘he liked a comedy better than a tragedy, a

farce better than a comedy, a pantomime better than a farce, but a

puppet-show best of all.’ I look upon it, that he who invented

puppet-shows was a greater benefactor to his species, than he who

invented Operas!

I shall conclude this imperfect and desultory sketch of wit and humour

with Barrow’s celebrated description of the same subject. He says, ‘—But

first it may be demanded, what the thing we speak of is, or what this

facetiousness doth import; to which question I might reply, as

Democritus did to him that asked the definition of a man—_’tis that

which we all see and know_; and one better apprehends what it is by

acquaintance, than I can inform him by description. It is, indeed, a

thing so versatile and multiform, appearing in so many shapes, so many

postures, so many garbs, so variously apprehended by several eyes and

judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a clear and certain

notice thereof, than to make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the

figure of fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion to a known

story, or in seasonable application of a trivial saying, or in forging

an apposite tale: sometimes it playeth in words and phrases, taking

advantage from the ambiguity of their sense, or the affinity of their

sound: sometimes it is wrapped in a dress of luminous expression;

sometimes it lurketh under an odd similitude. Sometimes it is lodged in

a sly question, in a smart answer; in a quirkish reason; in a shrewd

intimation; in cunningly diverting or cleverly restoring an objection:

sometimes it is couched in a bold scheme of speech; in a tart irony; in

a lusty hyperbole; in a startling metaphor; in a plausible reconciling

of contradictions, or in acute nonsense: sometimes a scenical

representation of persons or things, a counterfeit speech, a mimical

look or gesture passeth for it; sometimes an affected simplicity,

sometimes a presumptuous bluntness giveth it being: sometimes it riseth

only from a lucky hitting upon what is strange: sometimes from a crafty

wresting obvious matter to the purpose: often it consisteth in one knows

not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are

unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable to the numberless

rovings of fancy and windings of language. It is, in short, a manner of

speaking out of the simple and plain way (such as reason teacheth and

knoweth things by), which by a pretty surprising uncouthness in conceit

or expression doth affect and amuse the fancy, shewing in it some

wonder, and breathing some delight thereto. It raiseth admiration, as

signifying a nimble sagacity of apprehension, a special felicity of

invention, a vivacity of spirit, and reach of wit more than vulgar: it

seeming to argue a rare quickness of parts, that one can fetch in remote

conceits applicable; a notable skill that he can dextrously accommodate

them to a purpose before him, together with a lively briskness of

humour, not apt to damp those sportful flashes of imagination. (Whence

in Aristotle such persons are termed ἐπιδεξιοι, dexterous men and

εὐτροποι, men of facile or versatile manners, who can easily turn

themselves to all things, or turn all things to themselves.) It also

procureth delight by gratifying curiosity with its rareness or semblance

of difficulty (as monsters, not for their beauty but their rarity; as

juggling tricks, not for their use but their abstruseness, are beheld

with pleasure;) by diverting the mind from its road of serious thoughts;

by instilling gaiety and airiness of spirit; by provoking to such

dispositions of spirit, in way of emulation or complaisance, and by

seasoning matter, otherwise distasteful or insipid, with an unusual and

thence grateful tang.’—_Barrow’s Works, Serm. 14._

I will only add by way of general caution, that there is nothing more

ridiculous than laughter without a cause, nor any thing more troublesome

than what are called laughing people. A professed laugher is as

contemptible and tiresome a character as a professed wit: the one is

always contriving something to laugh at, the other is always laughing at

nothing. An excess of levity is as impertinent as an excess of gravity.

A character of this sort is well personified by Spenser, in the Damsel

of the Idle Lake—

‘——Who did essay

To laugh at shaking of the leavés light.’

Any one must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at

every thing he sees; or wonderfully conceited, who expects every thing

to conform to his standard of propriety. Clowns and idiots laugh on all

occasions; and the common failing of wishing to be thought satirical

often runs through whole families in country places, to the great

annoyance of their neighbours. To be struck with incongruity in whatever

comes before us, does not argue great comprehension or refinement of

perception, but rather a looseness and flippancy of mind and temper,

which prevents the individual from connecting any two ideas steadily or

consistently together. It is owing to a natural crudity and

precipitateness of the imagination, which assimilates nothing properly

to itself. People who are always laughing, at length laugh on the wrong

side of their faces; for they cannot get others to laugh with them. In

like manner, an affectation of wit by degrees hardens the heart, and

spoils good company and good manners. A perpetual succession of good

things puts an end to common conversation. There is no answer to a jest,

but another; and even where the ball can be kept up in this way without

ceasing, it tires the patience of the by-standers, and runs the speakers

out of breath. Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

The four chief names for comic humour out of our own language are

Aristophanes and Lucian among the ancients, Moliere and Rabelais among

the moderns. Of the two first I shall say, for I know but little. I

should have liked Aristophanes better, if he had treated Socrates less

scurvily, for he has treated him most scurvily both as to wit and

argument. His Plutus and his Birds are striking instances, the one of

dry humour, the other of airy fancy.—Lucian is a writer who appears to

deserve his full fame: he has the licentious and extravagant wit of

Rabelais, but directed more uniformly to a purpose; and his comic

productions are interspersed with beautiful and eloquent descriptions,

full of sentiment, such as the exquisite account of the fable of the

halcyon put into the mouth of Socrates, and the heroic eulogy on

Bacchus, which is conceived in the highest strain of glowing panegyric.

The two other authors I proposed to mention are modern, and French.

Moliere, however, in the spirit of his writings, is almost as much an

English as a French author—quite a _barbare_ in all in which he really

excelled. He was unquestionably one of the greatest comic geniuses that

ever lived; a man of infinite wit, gaiety, and invention—full of life,

laughter, and whim. But it cannot be denied, that his plays are in

general mere farces, without scrupulous adherence to nature, refinement

of character, or common probability. The plots of several of them could

not be carried on for a moment without a perfect collusion between the

parties to wink at contradictions, and act in defiance of the evidence

of their senses. For instance, take the _Médecin malgré lui_ (the Mock

Doctor), in which a common wood-cutter takes upon himself, and is made

successfully to support through a whole play, the character of a learned

physician, without exciting the least suspicion; and yet,

notwithstanding the absurdity of the plot, it is one of the most

laughable and truly comic productions that can well be imagined. The

rest of his lighter pieces, the _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, _Monsieur

Pourceaugnac_, _George Dandin_, (or Barnaby Brittle,) &c. are of the

same description—gratuitous assumptions of character, and fanciful and

outrageous caricatures of nature. He indulges at his peril in the utmost

license of burlesque exaggeration; and gives a loose to the intoxication

of his animal spirits. With respect to his two most laboured comedies,

the Tartuffe and Misanthrope, I confess that I find them rather hard to

get through: they have much of the improbability and extravagance of the

others, united with the endless common-place prosing of French

declamation. What can exceed, for example, the absurdity of the

Misanthrope, who leaves his mistress, after every proof of her

attachment and constancy, for no other reason than that she will not

submit to the _technical formality_ of going to live with him in a

wilderness? The characters, again, which Celimene gives of her female

friends, near the opening of the play, are admirable satires, (as good

as Pope’s characters of women,) but not exactly in the spirit of comic

dialogue. The strictures of Rousseau on this play, in his Letter to

D’Alembert, are a fine specimen of the best philosophical criticism.—The

same remarks apply in a greater degree to the Tartuffe. The long

speeches and reasonings in this play tire one almost to death: they may

be very good logic, or rhetoric, or philosophy, or any thing but comedy.

If each of the parties had retained a special pleader to speak his

sentiments, they could have appeared more verbose or intricate. The

improbability of the character of Orgon is wonderful. This play is in

one point of view invaluable, as a lasting monument of the credulity of

the French to all verbal professions of wisdom or virtue; and its

existence can only be accounted for from that astonishing and tyrannical

predominance which words exercise over things in the mind of every

Frenchman. The _Ecole des Femmes_, from which Wycherley has borrowed his

Country Wife, with the true spirit of original genius, is, in my

judgment, the masterpiece of Moliere. The set speeches in the original

play, it is true, would not be borne on the English stage, nor indeed on

the French, but that they are carried off by the verse. The _Critique de

l’Ecole des Femmes_, the dialogue of which is prose, is written in a

very different style. Among other things, this little piece contains an

exquisite, and almost unanswerable defence of the superiority of comedy

over tragedy. Moliere was to be excused for taking this side of the

question.

A writer of some pretensions among ourselves has reproached the French

with ‘an equal want of books and men.’ There is a common French print,

in which Moliere is represented reading one of his plays in the presence

of the celebrated Ninon de l’Enclos, to a circle of the wits and first

men of his own time. Among these are the great Corneille; the tender,

faultless Racine; Fontaine, the artless old man, unconscious of

immortality; the accomplished St. Evremond; the Duke de La

Rochefoucault, the severe anatomiser of the human breast; Boileau, the

flatterer of courts and judge of men! Were these men nothing? They have

passed for men (and great ones) hitherto, and though the prejudice is an

old one, I should hope it may still last our time.

Rabelais is another name that might have saved this unjust censure. The

wise sayings and heroic deeds of Gargantua and Pantagruel ought not to

be set down as nothing. I have already spoken my mind at large of this

author; but I cannot help thinking of him here, sitting in his easy

chair, with an eye languid with excess of mirth, his lip quivering with

a new-born conceit, and wiping his beard after a well-seasoned jest,

with his pen held carelessly in his hand, his wine-flagons, and his

books of law, of school divinity, and physic before him, which were his

jest-books, whence he drew endless stores of absurdity; laughing at the

world and enjoying it by turns, and making the world laugh with him

again, for the last three hundred years, at his teeming wit and its own

prolific follies. Even to those who have never read his works, the name

of Rabelais is a cordial to the spirits, and the mention of it cannot

consist with gravity or spleen!

LECTURE II

ON SHAKSPEARE AND BEN JONSON

Dr. Johnson thought Shakspeare’s comedies better than his tragedies, and

gives as a reason, that he was more at home in the one than in the

other. That comedies should be written in a more easy and careless vein

than tragedies, is but natural. This is only saying that a comedy is not

so serious a thing as a tragedy. But that he shewed a greater mastery in

the one than the other, I cannot allow, nor is it generally felt. The

labour which the Doctor thought it cost Shakspeare to write his

tragedies, only shewed the labour which it cost the critic in reading

them, that is, his general indisposition to sympathise heartily and

spontaneously with works of high-wrought passion or imagination. There

is not in any part of this author’s writings the slightest trace of his

having ever been ‘smit with the love of sacred song,’ except some

passages in Pope. His habitually morbid temperament and saturnine turn

of thought required that the string should rather be relaxed than

tightened, that the weight upon the mind should rather be taken off than

have any thing added to it. There was a sluggish moroseness about his

moral constitution that refused to be roused to any keen agony of

thought, and that was not very safely to be trifled with in lighter

matters, though this last was allowed to pass off as the most pardonable

offence against the gravity of his pretensions. It is in fact the

established rule at present, in these cases, to speak highly of the

Doctor’s authority, and to dissent from almost every one of his critical

decisions. For my own part, I so far consider this preference given to

the comic genius of the poet as erroneous and unfounded, that I should

say that he is the only tragic poet in the world in the highest sense,

as being on a par with, and the same as Nature, in her greatest heights

and depths of action and suffering. There is but one who durst walk

within that mighty circle, treading the utmost bound of nature and

passion, shewing us the dread abyss of woe in all its ghastly shapes and

colours, and laying open all the faculties of the human soul to act, to

think, and suffer, in direst extremities; whereas I think, on the other

hand, that in comedy, though his talents there too were as wonderful as

they were delightful, yet that there were some before him, others on a

level with him, and many close behind him. I cannot help thinking, for

instance, that Moliere was as great, or a greater comic genius than

Shakspeare, though assuredly I do not think that Racine was as great, or

a greater tragic genius. I think that both Rabelais and Cervantes, the

one in the power of ludicrous description, the other in the invention

and perfect keeping of comic character, excelled Shakspeare; that is,

they would have been greater men, if they had had equal power with him

over the stronger passions. For my own reading, I like Vanbrugh’s City

Wives’ Confederacy as well, or (‘not to speak it profanely’) better than

the Merry Wives of Windsor, and Congreve’s Way of the World as well as

the Comedy of Errors or Love’s Labour Lost. But I cannot say that I know

of any tragedies in the world that make even a tolerable approach to

Hamlet, or Lear, or Othello, or some others, either in the sum total of

their effect, or in their complete distinctness from every thing else,

by which they take not only unquestioned, but undivided possession of

the mind, and form a class, a world by themselves, mingling with all our

thoughts like a second being. Other tragedies tell for more or less, are

good, bad, or indifferent, as they have more or less excellence of a

kind common to them with others: but these stand alone by themselves;

they have nothing common-place in them; they are a new power in the

imagination, they tell for their whole amount, they measure from the

ground. There is not only nothing so good (in my judgment) as Hamlet, or

Lear, or Othello, or Macbeth, but there is nothing like Hamlet, or Lear,

or Othello, or Macbeth. There is nothing, I believe, in the majestic

Corneille, equal to the stern pride of Coriolanus, or which gives such

an idea of the crumbling in pieces of the Roman grandeur, ‘like an

unsubstantial pageant faded,’ as the Antony and Cleopatra. But to match

the best serious comedies, such as Moliere’s Misanthrope and his

Tartuffe, we must go to Shakspeare’s tragic characters, the Timon of

Athens or honest Iago, when we shall more than succeed. He put his

strength into his tragedies, and played with comedy. He was greatest in

what was greatest; and his _forte_ was not trifling, according to the

opinion here combated, even though he might do that as well as any body

else, unless he could do it better than any body else.—I would not be

understood to say that there are not scenes or whole characters in

Shakspeare equal in wit and drollery to any thing upon record. Falstaff

alone is an instance which, if I would, I could not get over. ‘He is the

leviathan of all the creatures of the author’s comic genius, and tumbles

about his unwieldy bulk in an ocean of wit and humour.’ But in general

it will be found (if I am not mistaken) that even in the very best of

these, the spirit of humanity and the fancy of the poet greatly prevail

over the mere wit and satire, and that we sympathise with his characters

oftener than we laugh at them. His ridicule wants the sting of

ill-nature. He had hardly such a thing as spleen in his composition.

Falstaff himself is so great a joke, rather from his being so huge a

mass of enjoyment than of absurdity. His re-appearance in the Merry

Wives of Windsor is not ‘a consummation devoutly to be wished,’ for we

do not take pleasure in the repeated triumphs over him.—Mercutio’s quips

and banter upon his friends shew amazing gaiety, frankness, and

volubility of tongue, but we think no more of them when the poet takes

the words out of his mouth, and gives the description of Queen Mab.

Touchstone, again, is a shrewd biting fellow, a lively mischievous wag:

but still what are his gibing sentences and chopped logic to the fine

moralising vein of the fantastical Jacques, stretched beneath ‘the shade

of melancholy boughs?’ Nothing. That is, Shakspeare was a greater poet

than wit: his imagination was the leading and master-quality of his

mind, which was always ready to soar into its native element: the

ludicrous was only secondary and subordinate. In the comedies of

gallantry and intrigue, with what freshness and delight we come to the

serious and romantic parts! What a relief they are to the mind, after

those of mere ribaldry or mirth! Those in Twelfth Night, for instance,

and Much Ado about Nothing, where Olivia and Hero are concerned, throw

even Malvolio and Sir Toby, and Benedick and Beatrice, into the shade.

They ‘give a very echo to the seat where love is throned.’ What he has

said of music might be said of his own poetry—

‘Oh! it came o’er the ear like the sweet south

Breathing upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odour.’

How poor, in general, what a falling-off, these parts seem in mere comic

authors; how ashamed we are of them; and how fast we hurry the blank

verse over, that we may get upon safe ground again, and recover our good

opinion of the author! A striking and lamentable instance of this may be

found (by any one who chooses) in the high-flown speeches in Sir Richard

Steele’s Conscious Lovers.—As good an example as any of this informing

and redeeming power in our author’s genius might be taken from the comic

scenes in both parts of Henry IV. Nothing can go much lower in intellect

or morals than many of the characters. Here are knaves and fools in

abundance, of the meanest order, and stripped stark-naked. But genius,

like charity, ‘covers a multitude of sins:’ we pity as much as we

despise them; in spite of our disgust we like them, because they like

themselves, and because we are made to sympathise with them; and the

ligament, fine as it is, which links them to humanity, is never broken.

Who would quarrel with Wart or Feeble, or Mouldy or Bull-calf, or even

with Pistol, Nym, or Bardolph? None but a hypocrite. The severe

censurers of the morals of imaginary characters can generally find a

hole for their own vices to creep out at; and yet do not perceive how it

is that the imperfect and even deformed characters in Shakspeare’s

plays, as done to the life, by forming a part of our personal

consciousness, claim our personal forgiveness, and suspend or evade our

moral judgment, by bribing our self-love to side with them. Not to do

so, is not morality, but affectation, stupidity, or ill-nature. I have

more sympathy with one of Shakspeare’s pick-purses, Gadshill or Peto,

than I can possibly have with any member of the Society for the

Suppression of Vice, and would by no means assist to deliver the one

into the hands of the other. Those who cannot be persuaded to draw a

veil over the foibles of ideal characters, may be suspected of wearing a

mask over their own! Again, in point of understanding and attainments,

Shallow sinks low enough; and yet his cousin Silence is a foil to him;

he is the shadow of a shade, glimmers on the very verge of downright

imbecility, and totters on the brink of nothing. ‘He has been merry

twice or once ere now,’ and is hardly persuaded to break his silence in

a song. Shallow has ‘heard the chimes at midnight,’ and roared out glees

and catches at taverns and inns of court, when he was young. So, at

least, he tells his cousin Silence, and Falstaff encourages the

loftiness of his pretensions. Shallow would be thought a great man among

his dependents and followers; Silence is nobody—not even in his own

opinion: yet he sits in the orchard, and eats his carraways and pippins

among the rest. Shakspeare takes up the meanest subjects with the same

tenderness that we do an insect’s wing, and would not kill a fly. To

give a more particular instance of what I mean, I will take the

inimitable and affecting, though most absurd and ludicrous dialogue,

between Shallow and Silence, on the death of old Double.

‘_Shallow._ Come on, come on, come on; give me your hand, Sir; give me

your hand, Sir; an early stirrer, by the rood. And how doth my good

cousin Silence?

_Silence._ Good morrow, good cousin Shallow.

_Shallow._ And how doth my cousin, your bedfellow? and your fairest

daughter, and mine, my god-daughter Ellen?

_Silence._ Alas, a black ouzel, cousin Shallow.

_Shallow._ By yea and nay, Sir; I dare say, my cousin William is become

a good scholar: he is at Oxford still, is he not?

_Silence._ Indeed, Sir, to my cost.

_Shallow._ He must then to the Inns of Court shortly. I was once of

Clement’s-Inn; where, I think, they will talk of mad Shallow yet.

_Silence._ You were called lusty Shallow then, cousin.

_Shallow._ I was called any thing, and I would have done any thing

indeed, and roundly too. There was I, and little John Doit of

Staffordshire, and black George Bare, and Francis Pickbone, and Will

Squele a Cotswold man, you had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the

Inns of Court again; and, I may say to you, we knew where the bona-robas

were, and had the best of them all at commandment. Then was Jack

Falstaff (now Sir John, a boy,) and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of

Norfolk.

_Silence._ This Sir John, cousin, that comes hither anon about soldiers?

_Shallow._ The same Sir John, the very same: I saw him break Schoggan’s

head at the court-gate, when he was a crack, not thus high; and the very

same day did I fight with one Sampson Stockfish, a fruiterer, behind

Gray’s-Inn. O, the mad days that I have spent! and to see how many of

mine old acquaintance are dead!

_Silence._ We shall all follow, cousin.

_Shallow._ Certain, ’tis certain, very sure, very sure: death (as the

Psalmist saith) is certain to all, all shall die.—How a good yoke of

bullocks at Stamford fair?

_Silence._ Truly, cousin, I was not there.

_Shallow._ Death is certain. Is old Double of your town living yet?

_Silence._ Dead, Sir.

_Shallow._ Dead! see, see! he drew a good bow: and dead? he shot a fine

shoot. John of Gaunt loved him well, and betted much money on his head.

Dead! he would have clapped i’th’ clout at twelve score; and carried you

a forehand shaft a fourteen and fourteen and a half, that it would have

done a man’s heart good to see.—How a score of ewes now?

_Silence._ Thereafter as they be: a score of good ewes may be worth ten

pounds.

_Shallow._ And is old Double dead?’

There is not any thing more characteristic than this in all Shakspeare.

A finer sermon on mortality was never preached. We see the frail

condition of human life, and the weakness of the human understanding in

Shallow’s reflections on it; who, while the past is sliding from beneath

his feet, still clings to the present. The meanest circumstances are

shewn through an atmosphere of abstraction that dignifies them: their

very insignificance makes them more affecting, for they instantly put a

check on our aspiring thoughts, and remind us that, seen through that

dim perspective, the difference between the great and little, the wise

and foolish, is not much. ‘One touch of nature makes the whole world

kin:’ and old Double, though his exploits had been greater, could but

have had his day. There is a pathetic _naiveté_ mixed up with Shallow’s

common-place reflections and impertinent digressions. The reader laughs

(as well he may) in reading the passage, but he lays down the book to

think. The wit, however diverting, is social and humane. But this is not

the distinguishing characteristic of wit, which is generally provoked by

folly, and spends its venom upon vice.

The fault, then, of Shakspeare’s comic Muse is, in my opinion, that it

is too good-natured and magnanimous. It mounts above its quarry. It is

‘apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable

shapes:’ but it does not take the highest pleasure in making human

nature look as mean, as ridiculous, and contemptible as possible. It is

in this respect, chiefly, that it differs from the comedy of a later,

and (what is called) a more refined period. Genteel comedy is the comedy

of fashionable life, and of artificial character and manners. The most

pungent ridicule, is that which is directed to mortify vanity, and to

expose affectation; but vanity and affectation, in their most exorbitant

and studied excesses, are the ruling principles of society, only in a

highly advanced state of civilisation and manners. Man can hardly be

said to be a truly contemptible animal, till, from the facilities of

general intercourse, and the progress of example and opinion, he becomes

the ape of the extravagances of other men. The keenest edge of satire is

required to distinguish between the true and false pretensions to taste

and elegance; its lash is laid on with the utmost severity, to drive

before it the common herd of knaves and fools, not to lacerate and

terrify the single stragglers. In a word, it is when folly is epidemic,

and vice worn as a mark of distinction, that all the malice of wit and

humour is called out and justified to detect the imposture, and prevent

the contagion from spreading. The fools in Wycherley and Congreve are of

their own, or one another’s making, and deserve to be well scourged into

common sense and decency: the fools in Shakspeare are of his own or

nature’s making; and it would be unfair to probe to the quick, or hold

up to unqualified derision, the faults which are involuntary and

incorrigible, or those which you yourself encourage and exaggerate, from

the pleasure you take in witnessing them. Our later comic writers

represent a state of manners, in which to be a man of wit and pleasure

about town was become the fashion, and in which the swarms of egregious

pretenders in both kinds openly kept one another in countenance, and

were become a public nuisance. Shakspeare, living in a state of greater

rudeness and simplicity, chiefly gave certain characters which were a

kind of _grotesques_, or solitary excrescences growing up out of their

native soil without affectation, and which he undertook kindly to pamper

for the public entertainment. For instance, Sir Andrew Aguecheek is

evidently a creature of the poet’s own fancy. The author lends occasion

to his absurdity to shew itself as much as he pleases, devises antics

for him which would not enter into his own head, makes him ‘go to church

in a galliard, and return home in a coranto;’ adds fuel to his folly, or

throws cold water on his courage; makes his puny extravagances venture

out or slink into corners without asking his leave; encourages them into

indiscreet luxuriance, or checks them in the bud, just as it suits him

for the jest’s sake. The gratification of the fancy, ‘and furnishing

matter for innocent mirth,’ are, therefore, the chief object of this and

other characters like it, rather than reforming the moral sense, or

indulging our personal spleen. But Tattle and Sparkish, who are fops

cast not in the mould of fancy, but of fashion, who have a tribe of

forerunners and followers, who catch certain diseases of the mind on

purpose to communicate the infection, and are screened in their

preposterous eccentricities by their own conceit and by the world’s

opinion, are entitled to no quarter, and receive none. They think

themselves objects of envy and admiration, and on that account are

doubly objects of our contempt and ridicule.—We find that the scenes of

Shakspeare’s comedies are mostly laid in the country, or are

transferable there at pleasure. The genteel comedy exists only in towns,

and crowds of borrowed characters, who copy others as the satirist

copies them, and who are only seen to be despised. ‘All beyond Hyde Park

is a desart to it:’ while there the pastoral and poetic comedy begins to

vegetate and flourish, unpruned, idle, and fantastic. It is hard to ‘lay

waste a country gentleman’ in a state of nature, whose humours may have

run a little wild or to seed, or to lay violent hands on a young booby

‘squire, whose absurdities have not yet arrived at years of discretion:

but my Lord Foppington, who is ‘the prince of coxcombs,’ and ‘proud of

being at the head of so prevailing a party,’ deserves his fate. I am not

for going so far as to pronounce Shakspeare’s ‘manners damnable, because

he had not seen the court;’ but I think that comedy does not find its

richest harvest till individual infirmities have passed into general

manners, and it is the example of courts, chiefly, that stamps folly

with credit and currency, or glosses over vice with meretricious lustre.

I conceive, therefore, that the golden period of our comedy was just

after the age of Charles ii. when the town first became tainted with the

affectation of the manners and conversation of fashionable life, and

before the distinction between rusticity and elegance, art and nature,

was lost (as it afterwards was) in a general diffusion of knowledge, and

the reciprocal advantages of civil intercourse. It is to be remarked,

that the union of the three gradations of artificial elegance and

courtly accomplishments in one class, of the affectation of them in

another, and of absolute rusticity in a third, forms the highest point

of perfection of the comedies of this period, as we may see in

Vanbrugh’s Lord Foppington, Sir Tunbelly Clumsy, and Miss Hoyden; Lady

Townly, Count Basset, and John Moody; in Congreve’s Millamant, Lady

Wishfort, Witwoud, Sir Wilful Witwoud, and the rest.

In another point of view, or with respect to that part of comedy which

relates to gallantry and intrigue, the difference between Shakspeare’s

comic heroines and those of a later period may be referred to the same

distinction between natural and artificial life, between the world of

fancy and the world of fashion. The refinements of romantic passion

arise out of the imagination brooding over ‘airy nothing,’ or over a

favourite object, where ‘love’s golden shaft hath killed the flock of

all affections else:’ whereas the refinements of this passion in genteel

comedy, or in every-day life, may be said to arise out of repeated

observation and experience, diverting and frittering away the first

impressions of things by a multiplicity of objects, and producing, not

enthusiasm, but fastidiousness or giddy dissipation. For the one a

comparatively rude age and strong feelings are best fitted; for ‘there

the mind must minister to itself:’ to the other, the progress of society

and a knowledge of the world are essential; for here the effect does not

depend on leaving the mind concentred in itself, but on the wear and

tear of the heart, amidst the complex and rapid movements of the

artificial machinery of society, and on the arbitrary subjection of the

natural course of the affections to every the slightest fluctuation of

fashion, caprice, or opinion. Thus Olivia, in Twelfth Night, has but one

admirer of equal rank with herself, and but one love, to whom she

innocently plights her hand and heart; or if she had a thousand lovers,

she would be the sole object of their adoration and burning vows,

without a rival. The heroine of romance and poetry sits secluded in the

bowers of fancy, sole queen and arbitress of all hearts; and as the

character is one of imagination, ‘of solitude and melancholy musing

born,’ so it may be best drawn from the imagination. Millamant, in the

Way of the World, on the contrary, who is the fine lady or heroine of

comedy, has so many lovers, that she surfeits on admiration, till it

becomes indifferent to her; so many rivals, that she is forced to put on

a thousand airs of languid affectation to mortify and vex them more; so

many offers, that she at last gives her hand to the man of her heart,

rather to escape the persecution of their addresses, and out of levity

and disdain, than from any serious choice of her own. This is a comic

character; its essence consists in making light of things from

familiarity and use, and as it is formed by habit and outward

circumstances, so it requires actual observation, and an acquaintance

with the modes of artificial life, to describe it with the utmost

possible grace and precision. Congreve, who had every other opportunity,

was but a young man when he wrote this character; and that makes the

miracle the greater.

I do not, in short, consider comedy as exactly an affair of the heart or

the imagination; and it is for this reason only that I think

Shakspeare’s comedies deficient. I do not, however, wish to give a

preference of any comedies over his; but I do perceive a difference

between his comedies and some others that are, notwithstanding,

excellent in their way, and I have endeavoured to point out in what this

difference consists, as well as I could. Finally, I will not say that he

had not as great a natural genius for comedy as any one; but I may

venture to say, that he had not the same artificial models and regulated

mass of fashionable absurdity or elegance to work upon.

The superiority of Shakspeare’s natural genius for comedy cannot be

better shewn than by a comparison between his comic characters and those

of Ben Jonson. The matter is the same: but how different is the manner!

The one gives fair-play to nature and his own genius, while the other

trusts almost entirely to imitation and custom. Shakspeare takes his

groundwork in individual character and the manners of his age, and

raises from them a fantastical and delightful superstructure of his own:

the other takes the same groundwork in matter-of-fact, but hardly ever

rises above it; and the more he strives, is but the more enveloped ‘in

the crust of formality’ and the crude circumstantials of his subject.

His genius (not to profane an old and still venerable name, but merely

to make myself understood) resembles the grub more than the butterfly,

plods and grovels on, wants wings to wanton in the idle summer’s air,

and catch the golden light of poetry. Ben Jonson is a great borrower

from the works of others, and a plagiarist even from nature; so little

freedom is there in his imitations of her, and he appears to receive her

bounty like an alms. His works read like translations, from a certain

cramp manner, and want of adaptation. Shakspeare, even when he takes

whole passages from books, does it with a spirit, felicity, and mastery

over his subject, that instantly makes them his own; and shews more

independence of mind and original thinking in what he plunders without

scruple, than Ben Jonson often did in his most studied passages, forced

from the sweat and labour of his brain. His style is as dry, as literal,

and meagre, as Shakspeare’s is exuberant, liberal, and unrestrained. The

one labours hard, lashes himself up, and produces little pleasure with

all his fidelity and tenaciousness of purpose: the other, without

putting himself to any trouble, or thinking about his success, performs

wonders,—

‘Does mad and fantastic execution,

Engaging and redeeming of himself,

With such a careless force and forceless[3] care,

As if that luck, in very spite of cunning,

Bade him win all.’

There are people who cannot taste olives—and I cannot much relish Ben

Jonson, though I have taken some pains to do it, and went to the task

with every sort of good will. I do not deny his power or his merit; far

from it: but it is to me of a repulsive and unamiable kind. He was a

great man in himself, but one cannot readily sympathise with him. His

works, as the characteristic productions of an individual mind, or as

records of the manners of a particular age, cannot be valued too highly;

but they have little charm for the mere general reader. Schlegel

observes, that whereas Shakspeare gives the springs of human nature,

which are always the same, or sufficiently so to be interesting and

intelligible; Jonson chiefly gives the _humours_ of men, as connected

with certain arbitrary or conventional modes of dress, action, and

expression, which are intelligible only while they last, and not very

interesting at any time. Shakspeare’s characters are men; Ben Jonson’s

are more like machines, governed by mere routine, or by the convenience

of the poet, whose property they are. In reading the one, we are let

into the minds of his characters, we see the play of their thoughts, how

their humours flow and work: the author takes a range over nature, and

has an eye to every object or occasion that presents itself to set off

and heighten the ludicrous character he is describing. His humour (so to

speak) bubbles, sparkles, and finds its way in all directions, like a

natural spring. In Ben Jonson it is, as it were, confined in a leaden

cistern, where it stagnates and corrupts; or directed only through

certain artificial pipes and conduits, to answer a given purpose. The

comedy of this author is far from being ‘lively, audible, and full of

vent:’ it is for the most part obtuse, obscure, forced, and tedious. He

wears out a jest to the last shred and coarsest grain. His imagination

fastens instinctively on some one mark or sign by which he designates

the individual, and never lets it go, for fear of not meeting with any

other means to express himself by. A cant phrase, an odd gesture, an

old-fashioned regimental uniform, a wooden leg, a tobacco-box, or a

hacked sword, are the standing topics by which he embodies his

characters to the imagination. They are cut and dried comedy; the

letter, not the spirit of wit and humour. Each of his characters has a

particular cue, a professional badge which he wears and is known by, and

by nothing else. Thus there is no end of Captain Otter, his Bull, his

Bear, and his Horse, which are no joke at first, and do not become so by

being repeated twenty times. It is a mere matter of fact, that some

landlord of his acquaintance called his drinking cups by these

ridiculous names; but why need we be told so more than once, or indeed

at all? There is almost a total want of variety, fancy, relief, and of

those delightful transitions which abound, for instance, in Shakspeare’s

tragi-comedy. In Ben Jonson, we find ourselves generally in low company,

and we see no hope of getting out of it. He is like a person who fastens

upon a disagreeable subject, and cannot be persuaded to leave it. His

comedy, in a word, has not what Shakspeare somewhere calls ‘bless’d

conditions.’ It is cross-grained, mean, and mechanical. It is handicraft

wit. Squalid poverty, sheer ignorance, bare-faced impudence, or idiot

imbecility, are his dramatic common-places—things that provoke pity or

disgust, instead of laughter. His portraits are caricatures by dint of

their very likeness, being extravagant tautologies of themselves; as his

plots are improbable by an excess of consistency; for he goes

thoroughstitch with whatever he takes in hand, makes one contrivance

answer all purposes, and every obstacle give way to a predetermined

theory. For instance, nothing can be more incredible than the mercenary

conduct of Corvino, in delivering up his wife to the palsied embraces of

Volpone; and yet the poet does not seem in the least to boggle at the

incongruity of it: but the more it is in keeping with the absurdity of

the rest of the fable, and the more it advances it to an incredible

catastrophe, the more he seems to dwell upon it with complacency and a

sort of wilful exaggeration, as if it were a logical discovery or

corollary from well-known premises. He would no more be baffled in the

working out a plot, than some people will be baffled in an argument. ‘If

to be wise were to be obstinate,’ our author might have laid signal

claim to this title. Old Ben was of a scholastic turn, and had dealt a

little in the occult sciences and controversial divinity. He was a man

of strong crabbed sense, retentive memory, acute observation, great

fidelity of description and keeping in character, a power of working out

an idea so as to make it painfully true and oppressive, and with great

honesty and manliness of feeling, as well as directness of

understanding: but with all this, he wanted, to my thinking, that genial

spirit of enjoyment and finer fancy, which constitute the essence of

poetry and of wit. The sense of reality exercised a despotic sway over

his mind, and equally weighed down and clogged his perception of the

beautiful or the ridiculous. He had a keen sense of what was true and

false, but not of the difference between the agreeable and disagreeable;

or if he had, it was by his understanding rather than his imagination,

by rule and method, not by sympathy, or intuitive perception of ‘the

gayest, happiest attitude of things.’ There was nothing spontaneous, no

impulse or ease about his genius: it was all forced, up-hill work,

making a toil of a pleasure. And hence his overweening admiration of his

own works, from the effort they had cost him, and the apprehension that

they were not proportionably admired by others, who knew nothing of the

pangs and throes of his Muse in child-bearing. In his satirical

descriptions he seldom stops short of the lowest and most offensive

point of meanness; and in his serious poetry he seems to repose with

complacency only on the pedantic and far-fetched, the _ultima Thule_ of

his knowledge. He has a conscience of letting nothing escape the reader

that he knows. _Aliquando sufflaminandus erat_, is as true of him as it

was of Shakspeare, but in a quite different sense. He is doggedly bent

upon fatiguing you with a favourite idea; whereas, Shakspeare overpowers

and distracts attention by the throng and indiscriminate variety of his.

His Sad Shepherd is a beautiful fragment. It was a favourite with the

late Mr. Horne Tooke: indeed it is no wonder, for there was a sort of

sympathy between the two men. Ben was like the modern wit and

philosopher, a grammarian and a hard-headed thinker.—There is an amusing

account of Ben Jonson’s private manners in Howel’s Letters, which is not

generally known, and which I shall here extract.

‘_From James Howel, Esq. to Sir Thomas Hawk, Kt._

_Westminster, 5th April, 1636._

‘Sir,

‘I was invited yesternight to a solemn supper by B. J. where you

were deeply remembered; there was good company, excellent cheer,

choice wines, and jovial welcome: one thing intervened, which almost

spoiled the relish of the rest, that B. began to engross all the

discourse, to vapour extremely of himself, and, by vilifying others,

to magnify his own Muse. T. Ca. (Tom Carew) buzzed me in the ear,

that though Ben had barrelled up a great deal of knowledge, yet it

seems he had not read the ethics, which, among other precepts of

morality, forbid self-commendation, declaring it to be an

ill-favoured solecism in good manners. It made me think upon the

lady (not very young) who having a good while given her guests neat

entertainment, a capon being brought upon the table, instead of a

spoon, she took a mouthful of claret, and spouted into the hollow

bird: such an accident happened in this entertainment: you

know—_Propria laus sordet in ore_: be a man’s breath ever so sweet,

yet it makes one’s praise stink, if he makes his own mouth the

conduit-pipe of it. But for my part I am content to dispense with

the Roman infirmity of Ben, now that time hath snowed upon his

pericranium. You know Ovid and (your) Horace were subject to this

humour, the first bursting out into—

_Jamque opus exegi, quod nec Jovis ira nec ignis, &c._

the other into—

_Exegi monumentum ære perennius, &c._

As also Cicero, while he forced himself into this hexameter: _O

fortunatam natam, me consule Romam!_ There is another reason that

excuseth B. which is, that if one be allowed to love the natural

issue of his body, why not that of the brain, which is of a

spiritual and more noble extraction?’

The concurring testimony of all his contemporaries agrees with his own

candid avowal, as to Ben Jonson’s personal character. He begins, for

instance, an epistle to Drayton in these words—

‘Michael, by some ’tis doubted if I be

A friend at all; or if a friend, to thee.’

Of Shakspeare’s comedies I have already given a detailed account, which

is before the public, and which I shall not repeat of course: but I

shall give a cursory sketch of the principal of Ben Jonson’s.—The Silent

Woman is built upon the supposition of an old citizen disliking noise,

who takes to wife Epicene (a supposed young lady) for the reputation of

her silence, and with a view to disinherit his nephew, who has laughed

at his infirmity; when the ceremony is no sooner over than the bride

turns out a very shrew, his house becomes a very Babel of noises, and he

offers his nephew his own terms to unloose the matrimonial knot, which

is done by proving that Epicene is no woman. There is some humour in the

leading character, but too much is made out of it, not in the way of

Moliere’s exaggerations, which, though extravagant, are fantastical and

ludicrous, but of serious, plodding, minute prolixity. The first meeting

between Morose and Epicene is well managed, and does not ‘o’erstep the

modesty of nature,’ from the very restraint imposed by the situation of

the parties—by the affected taciturnity of the one, and the other’s

singular dislike of noise. The whole story, from the beginning to the

end, is a gratuitous assumption, and the height of improbability. The

author, in sustaining the weight of his plot, seems like a

balance-master who supports a number of people, piled one upon another,

on his hands, his knees, his shoulders, but with a great effort on his

own part, and with a painful effect to the beholders. The scene between

Sir Amorous La Foole and Sir John Daw, in which they are frightened by a

feigned report of each other’s courage, into a submission to all sorts

of indignities, which they construe into flattering civilities, is the

same device as that in Twelfth Night between Sir Andrew Aguecheek and

Viola, carried to a paradoxical and revolting excess. Ben Jonson had no

idea of decorum in his dramatic fictions, which Milton says is the

principal thing, but went on caricaturing himself and others till he

could go no farther in extravagance, and sink no lower in meanness. The

titles of his _dramatis personæ_, such as Sir Amorous La Foole, Truewit,

Sir John Daw, Sir Politic Would-be, &c. &c. which are significant and

knowing, shew his determination to overdo every thing by thus letting

you into their characters beforehand, and afterwards proving their

pretensions by their names. Thus Peregrine, in Volpone, says, ‘Your

name, Sir? _Politick._ My name is Politick Would-be.’ To which Peregrine

replies, ‘Oh, that speaks him.’ How it should, if it was his real name,

and not a nick-name given him on purpose by the author, is hard to

conceive. This play was Dryden’s favourite. It is indeed full of sharp,

biting sentences against the women, of which he was fond. The following

may serve as a specimen. Truewit says, ‘Did I not tell thee, Dauphine?

Why, all their actions are governed by crude opinion, without reason or

cause: they know not why they do any thing; but, as they are informed,

believe, judge, praise, condemn, love, hate, and in emulation one of

another, do all these things alike. Only they have a natural inclination

sways ’em generally to the worst, when they are left to themselves.’

This is a cynical sentence; and we may say of the rest of his opinions,

that ‘even though we should hold them to be true, yet it is slander to

have them so set down.’ The women in this play indeed justify the

author’s severity; they are altogether abominable. They have an utter

want of principle and decency, and are equally without a sense of

pleasure, taste, or elegance. Madame Haughty, Madame Centaur, and Madame

Mavis, form the College, as it is here pedantically called. They are a

sort of candidates for being upon the town, but cannot find seducers,

and a sort of blue-stockings, before the invention of letters. Mistress

Epicene, the silent gentlewoman, turns out not to be a woman at all;

which is not a very pleasant _denouement_ of the plot, and is itself an

incident apparently taken from the blundering blindman’s-buff conclusion

of the Merry Wives of Windsor. What Shakspeare might introduce by an

accident, and as a mere passing jest, Ben Jonson would set about

building a whole play upon. The directions for making love given by

Truewit, the author’s favourite, discover great knowledge and shrewdness

of observation, mixed with the acuteness of malice, and approach to the

best style of comic dialogue. But I must refer to the play itself for

them.

The Fox, or Volpone, is his best play. It is prolix and improbable, but

intense and powerful. It is written _con amore_. It is made up of cheats

and dupes, and the author is at home among them. He shews his hatred of

the one and contempt for the other, and makes them set one another off

to great advantage. There are several striking dramatic contrasts in

this play, where the Fox lies _perdue_ to watch his prey, where Mosca is

the dextrous go-between outwitting his gulls, his employer, and himself,

and where each of the gaping legacy-hunters, the lawyer, the merchant,

and the miser, eagerly occupied with the ridiculousness of the other’s

pretensions, is blind only to the absurdity of his own: but the whole is

worked up too mechanically, and our credulity overstretched at last

revolts into scepticism, and our attention overtasked flags into

drowsiness. This play seems formed on the model of Plautus, in unity of

plot and interest; and old Ben, in emulating his classic model, appears

to have done his best. There is the same caustic unsparing severity in

it as in his other works. His patience is tried to the utmost. His words

drop gall.

‘Hood an ass with reverend purple,

So you can hide his too ambitious ears,

And he shall pass for a cathedral doctor.’

The scene between Volpone, Mosca, Voltore, Corvino, and Corbaccio, at

the outset, will shew the dramatic power in the conduct of this play,

and will be my justification in what I have said of the literal

tenaciousness (to a degree that is repulsive) of the author’s imaginary

descriptions.

Every Man in his Humour, is a play well-known to the public. This play

acts better than it reads. The pathos in the principal character,

Kitely, is ‘as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage.’ There is,

however, a certain good sense, discrimination, or logic of passion in

the part, which affords excellent hints for an able actor, and which, if

properly pointed, gives it considerable force on the stage. Bobadil is

the only actually striking character in the play, and the real hero of

the piece. His well-known proposal for the pacification of Europe, by

killing some twenty of them, each his man a day, is as good as any other

that has been suggested up to the present moment. His extravagant

affectation, his blustering and cowardice, are an entertaining medley;

and his final defeat and exposure, though exceedingly humorous, are the

most affecting part of the story. Brain-worm is a particularly dry and

abstruse character. We neither know his business nor his motives: his

plots are as intricate as they are useless, and as the ignorance of

those he imposes upon is wonderful. This is the impression in reading

it. Yet from the bustle and activity of this character on the stage, the

changes of dress, the variety of affected tones and gipsy jargon, and

the limping affected gestures, it is a very amusing theatrical

exhibition. The rest, Master Matthew, Master Stephen, Cob and Cob’s

wife, were living in the sixteenth century. That is all we all know of

them. But from the very oddity of their appearance and behaviour, they

have a very droll and even picturesque effect when acted. It seems a

revival of the dead. We believe in their existence when we see them. As

an example of the power of the stage in giving reality and interest to

what otherwise would be without it, I might mention the scene in which

Brain-worm praises Master Stephen’s leg. The folly here is insipid from

its being seemingly carried to an excess, till we see it; and then we

laugh the more at it, the more incredible we thought it before.

Bartholomew Fair is chiefly remarkable for the exhibition of odd humours

and tumbler’s tricks, and is on that account amusing to read once.—The

Alchymist is the most famous of this author’s comedies, though I think

it does not deserve its reputation. It contains all that is quaint,

dreary, obsolete, and hopeless in this once-famed art, but not the

golden dreams and splendid disappointments. We have the mere

circumstantials of the sublime science, pots and kettles, aprons and

bellows, crucibles and diagrams, all the refuse and rubbish, not the

essence, the true _elixir vitæ_. There is, however, one glorious scene

between Surly and Sir Epicure Mammon, which is the finest example I know

of dramatic sophistry, or of an attempt to prove the existence of a

thing by an imposing description of its effects; but compared with this,

the rest of the play is a _caput mortuum_. The scene I allude to is the

following:

‘_Mammon._ Come on, Sir. Now, you set your foot on shore,

In _Novo Orbe_; here’s the rich Peru:

And there within, Sir, are the golden mines,

Great Solomon’s Ophir! He was sailing to ‘t

Three years, but we have reached it in ten months.

This is the day wherein, to all my friends,

I will pronounce the happy word, BE RICH;

This day you shall be Spectatissimi.

You shall no more deal with the hollow dye,

Or the frail card. * * * * * * * *

You shall start up young viceroys,

And have your punks and punketees, my Surly,

And unto thee, I speak it first, BE RICH.

Where is my Subtle, there? Within, ho!

_Face._ [_within_] Sir, he’ll come to you, by and by.

_Mam._ That is his Firedrake,

His Lungs, his Zephyrus, he that puffs his coals,

Till he firk nature up in her own centre.

You are not faithful, Sir. This night I’ll change

All that is metal in my house to gold:

And early in the morning, will I send

To all the plumbers and the pewterers

And buy their tin and lead up; and to Lothbury,

For all the copper.

_Surly._ What, and turn that too?

_Mam._ Yes, and I’ll purchase Devonshire and Cornwall,

And make them perfect Indies! You admire now?

_Surly._ No, faith.

_Mam._ But when you see th’ effects of the great medicine,

Of which one part projected on a hundred

Of Mercury, or Venus, or the Moon,

Shall turn it to as many of the Sun;

Nay, to a thousand, so _ad infinitum_;

You will believe me.

_Surly._ Yes, when I see’t, I will—

_Mam._ Ha! why?

Do you think I fable with you? I assure you,

He that has once the flower of the Sun,

The perfect ruby, which we call Elixir,

Not only can do that, but, by its virtue,

Can confer honour, love, respect, long life;

Give safety, valour, yea, and victory,

To whom he will. In eight and twenty days,

I’ll make an old man of fourscore, a child.

_Surly._ No doubt; he’s that already.

_Mam._ Nay, I mean,

Restore his years, renew him, like an eagle,

To the fifth age; make him get sons and daughters,

Young giants; as our philosophers have done,

The ancient patriarchs, afore the flood,

But taking, once a week, on a knife’s point,

The quantity of a grain of mustard of it;

Become stout Marses, and beget young Cupids.

* * * * *

You are incredulous.

_Surly._ Faith, I have a humour,

I would not willingly be gull’d. Your stone

Cannot transmute me.

_Mam._ Pertinax Surly,

Will you believe antiquity? records?

I’ll shew you a book where Moses and his sister,

And Solomon have written of the art;

Ay, and a treatise penn’d by Adam—

_Surly._ How!

_Mam._ Of the philosopher’s stone, and in High Dutch.

_Surly._ Did Adam write, Sir, in High Dutch?

_Mam._ He did;

Which proves it was the primitive tongue.

* * * * *

[_Enter Face, as a servant._

How now!

Do we succeed? Is our day come, and holds it?

_Face._ The evening will set red upon you, Sir:

You have colour for it, crimson; the red ferment

Has done his office: three hours hence prepare you

To see projection.

_Mam._ Pertinax, my Surly,

Again I say to thee, aloud, Be rich.

This day thou shalt have ingots; and to-morrow

Give lords the affront. * * * * Where’s thy master?

_Face._ At his prayers, Sir, he;

Good man, he’s doing his devotions

For the success.

_Mam._ Lungs, I will set a period

To all thy labours; thou shalt be the master

Of my seraglio ...

For I do mean

To have a list of wives and concubines

Equal with Solomon: * * * *

I will have all my beds blown up, not stuft:

Down is too hard; and then, mine oval room

Fill’d with such pictures as Tiberius took

From Elephantis, and dull Aretine

But coldly imitated. Then, my glasses

Cut in more subtle angles, to disperse

And multiply the figures, as I walk. * * * My mists

I’ll have of perfume, vapoured about the room

To lose ourselves in; and my baths, like pits

To fall into: from whence we will come forth,

And roll us dry in gossamer and roses.

Is it arriv’d at ruby? Where I spy

A wealthy citizen, or a rich lawyer,

Have a sublimed pure wife, unto that fellow

I’ll send a thousand pound to be my cuckold.

_Face._ And I shall carry it?

_Mam._ No. I’ll have no bawds.

But fathers and mothers. They will do it best,

Best of all others. And my flatterers

Shall be the pure and gravest of divines

That I can get for money.

We will be brave, Puffe, now we have the medicine.

My meat shall all come in, in Indian shells,

Dishes of agat set in gold, and studded

With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies.

The tongues of carps, dormice, and camel’s heels

Boil’d in the spirit of Sol, and dissolv’d pearl,

Apicius’ diet, ’gainst the epilepsy;

And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber,

Headed with diamond and carbuncle.

My footboys shall eat pheasants, calver’d salmons,

Knots, godwits, lampreys; I myself will have

The beards of barbels serv’d instead of salads;

Oil’d mushrooms; and the swelling unctuous paps

Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off,

Drest with an exquisite and poignant sauce;

For which I’ll say unto my cook, _There’s gold,

Go forth, and be a knight_.

_Face._ Sir, I’ll go look

A little, how it heightens.

_Mam._ Do. My shirts

I’ll have of taffeta-sarsnet, soft and light,

As cobwebs; and for all my other raiment,

It shall be such as might provoke the Persian,

Were he to teach the world riot anew.

My gloves of fishes and birds’ skins, perfum’d

With gums of Paradise and eastern air.

_Surly._ And do you think to have the stone with this?

_Mam._ No, I do think t’ have all this with the stone.

_Surly._ Why, I have heard, he must be _homo frugi_,

A pious, holy, and religious man,

One free from mortal sin, a very virgin.

_Mam._ That makes it, Sir, he is so; but I buy it.

My venture brings it me. He, honest wretch,

A notable, superstitious, good soul,

Has worn his knees bare, and his slippers bald,

With prayer and fasting for it, and, Sir, let him

Do it alone, for me, still; here he comes;

Not a profane word afore him: ’tis poison.’

_Act II. scene I._

I have only to add a few words on Beaumont and Fletcher. Rule a Wife and

Have a Wife, the Chances, and the Wild Goose Chase, the original of the

Inconstant, are superior in style and execution to any thing of Ben

Jonson’s. They are, indeed, some of the best comedies on the stage; and

one proof that they are so, is, that they still hold possession of it.

They shew the utmost alacrity of invention in contriving ludicrous

distresses, and the utmost spirit in bearing up against, or impatience

and irritation under them. Don John, in the Chances, is the heroic in

comedy. Leon, in Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, is a fine exhibition of

the born gentleman and natural fool: the Copper Captain is sterling to

this hour: his mistress, Estifania, only died the other day with Mrs.

Jordan: and the two grotesque females, in the same play, act better than

the Witches in Macbeth.

LECTURE III

ON COWLEY, BUTLER, SUCKLING, ETHEREGE, &C.

The metaphysical poets or wits of the age of James and Charles I. whose

style was adopted and carried to a more dazzling and fantastic excess by

Cowley in the following reign, after which it declined, and gave place

almost entirely to the poetry of observation and reasoning, are thus

happily characterised by Dr. Johnson.

‘The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning

was their whole endeavour: but unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme,

instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses, and very often such

verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the

modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by

counting the syllables.

‘If the father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry τέχνη

μιμητικὴ, _an imitative art_, these writers will, without great wrong,

lose their right to the name of poets, for they cannot be said to have

imitated any thing; they neither copied nature nor life; neither painted

the forms of matter, nor represented the operations of intellect.’

The whole of the account is well worth reading: it was a subject for

which Dr. Johnson’s powers both of thought and expression were better

fitted than any other man’s. If he had had the same capacity for

following the flights of a truly poetic imagination, or for feeling the

finer touches of nature, that he had felicity and force in detecting and

exposing the aberrations from the broad and beaten path of propriety and

common sense, he would have amply deserved the reputation he has

acquired as a philosophical critic.

The writers here referred to (such as Donne, Davies, Crashaw, and

others) not merely mistook learning for poetry—they thought any thing

was poetry that differed from ordinary prose and the natural impression

of things, by being intricate, far-fetched, and improbable. Their style

was not so properly learned as metaphysical; that is to say, whenever,

by any violence done to their ideas, they could make out an abstract

likeness or possible ground of comparison, they forced the image,

whether learned or vulgar, into the service of the Muses. Any thing

would do to ‘hitch into a rhyme,’ no matter whether striking or

agreeable, or not, so that it would puzzle the reader to discover the

meaning, and if there was the most remote circumstance, however trifling

or vague, for the pretended comparison to hinge upon. They brought ideas

together not the most, but the least like; and of which the collision

produced not light, but obscurity—served not to strengthen, but to

confound. Their mystical verses read like riddles or an allegory. They

neither belong to the class of lively or severe poetry. They have not

the force of the one, nor the gaiety of the other; but are an

ill-assorted, unprofitable union of the two together, applying to

serious subjects that quaint and partial style of allusion which fits

only what is light and ludicrous, and building the most laboured

conclusions on the most fantastical and slender premises. The object of

the poetry of imagination is to raise or adorn one idea by another more

striking or more beautiful: the object of these writers was to match any

one idea with any other idea, _for better for worse_, as we say, and

whether any thing was gained by the change of condition or not. The

object of the poetry of the passions again is to illustrate any strong

feeling, by shewing the same feeling as connected with objects or

circumstances more palpable and touching; but here the object was to

strain and distort the immediate feeling into some barely possible

consequence or recondite analogy, in which it required the utmost

stretch of misapplied ingenuity to trace the smallest connection with

the original impression. In short, the poetry of this period was

strictly the poetry not of ideas, but of _definitions_: it proceeded in

mode and figure, by _genus_ and specific difference; and was the logic

of the schools, or an oblique and forced construction of dry, literal

matter-of-fact, decked out in a robe of glittering conceits, and clogged

with the halting shackles of verse. The imagination of the writers,

instead of being conversant with the face of nature, or the secrets of

the heart, was lost in the labyrinths of intellectual abstraction, or

entangled in the technical quibbles and impertinent intricacies of

language. The complaint so often made, and here repeated, is not of the

want of power in these men, but of the waste of it; not of the absence

of genius, but the abuse of it. They had (many of them) great talents

committed to their trust, richness of thought, and depth of feeling; but

they chose to hide them (as much as they possibly could) under a false

shew of learning and unmeaning subtlety. From the style which they had

systematically adopted, they thought nothing done till they had

perverted simplicity into affectation, and spoiled nature by art. They

seemed to think there was an irreconcileable opposition between genius,

as well as grace, and nature; tried to do without, or else constantly to

thwart her; left nothing to her outward ‘impress,’ or spontaneous

impulses, but made a point of twisting and torturing almost every

subject they took in hand, till they had fitted it to the mould of their

self-opinion and the previous fabrications of their own fancy, like

those who pen acrostics in the shape of pyramids, and cut out trees into

the shape of peacocks. Their chief aim is to make you wonder at the

writer, not to interest you in the subject; and by an incessant craving

after admiration, they have lost what they might have gained with less

extravagance and affectation. So Cowper, who was of a quite opposite

school, speaks feelingly of the misapplication of Cowley’s poetical

genius.

‘And though reclaim’d by modern lights

From an erroneous taste,

I cannot but lament thy splendid wit

Entangled in the cobwebs of the schools.’

Donne, who was considerably before Cowley, is without his fancy, but was

more recondite in his logic, and rigid in his descriptions. He is hence

led, particularly in his satires, to tell disagreeable truths in as

disagreeable a way as possible, or to convey a pleasing and affecting

thought (of which there are many to be found in his other writings) by

the harshest means, and with the most painful effort. His Muse suffers

continual pangs and throes. His thoughts are delivered by the Cæsarean

operation. The sentiments, profound and tender as they often are, are

stifled in the expression; and ‘heaved pantingly forth,’ are ‘buried

quick again’ under the ruins and rubbish of analytical distinctions. It

is like poetry waking from a trance: with an eye bent idly on the

outward world, and half-forgotten feelings crowding about the heart;

with vivid impressions, dim notions, and disjointed words. The following

may serve as instances of beautiful or impassioned reflections losing

themselves in obscure and difficult applications. He has some lines to a

Blossom, which begin thus:

‘Little think’st thou, poor flow’r,

Whom I have watched six or seven days,

And seen thy birth, and seen what every hour

Gave to thy growth, thee to this height to raise,

And now dost laugh and triumph on this bough.

Little think’st thou

That it will freeze anon, and that I shall

To-morrow find thee fall’n, or not at all.’

This simple and delicate description is only introduced as a foundation

for an elaborate metaphysical conceit as a parallel to it, in the next

stanza.

‘Little think’st thou (poor heart

That labour’st yet to nestle thee,

And think’st by hovering here to get a part

In a forbidden or forbidding tree,

And hop’st her stiffness by long siege to bow:)

Little think’st thou,

That thou to-morrow, ere the sun doth wake,

Must with this sun and me a journey take.’

This is but a lame and impotent conclusion from so delightful a

beginning.—He thus notices the circumstance of his wearing his late

wife’s hair about his arm, in a little poem which is called the Funeral:

‘Whoever comes to shroud me, do not harm

Nor question much

That subtle wreath of hair, about mine arm;

The mystery, the sign you must not touch.’

The scholastic reason he gives quite dissolves the charm of tender and

touching grace in the sentiment itself—

‘For ’tis my outward soul,

Viceroy to that, which unto heaven being gone,

Will leave this to control,

And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolution.’

Again, the following lines, the title of which is Love’s Deity, are

highly characteristic of this author’s manner, in which the thoughts are

inlaid in a costly but imperfect mosaic-work.

‘_I long to talk with some old lover’s ghost,

Who died before the God of Love was born_:

I cannot think that he, who then lov’d most,

Sunk so low, as to love one which did scorn.

But since this God produc’d a destiny,

And that vice-nature, custom, lets it be;

I must love her that loves not me.’

The stanza in the Epithalamion on a Count Palatine of the Rhine, has

been often quoted against him, and is an almost irresistible

illustration of the extravagances to which this kind of writing, which

turns upon a pivot of words and possible allusions, is liable. Speaking

of the bride and bridegroom he says, by way of serious compliment—

‘Here lies a she-Sun, and a he-Moon there,

She gives the best light to his sphere;

Or each is both and all, and so

They unto one another nothing owe.’

His love-verses and epistles to his friends give the most favourable

idea of Donne. His satires are too clerical. He shews, if I may so

speak, too much disgust, and, at the same time, too much contempt for

vice. His dogmatical invectives hardly redeem the nauseousness of his

descriptions, and compromise the imagination of his readers more than

they assist their reason. The satirist does not write with the same

authority as the divine, and should use his poetical privileges more

sparingly. ‘To the pure all things are pure,’ is a maxim which a man

like Dr. Donne may be justified in applying to himself; but he might

have recollected that it could not be construed to extend to the

generality of his readers, _without benefit of clergy_.

Bishop Hall’s Satires are coarse railing in verse, and hardly that. Pope

has, however, contrived to avail himself of them in some of his

imitations.

Sir John Davies is the author of a poem on the Soul, and of one on

Dancing. In both he shews great ingenuity, and sometimes terseness and

vigour. In the last of these two poems his fancy _pirouettes_ in a very

lively and agreeable manner, but something too much in the style of a

French opera-dancer, with sharp angular turns, and repeated deviations

from the faultless line of simplicity and nature.

Crashaw was a writer of the same ambitious stamp, whose imagination was

rendered still more inflammable by the fervors of fanaticism, and who

having been converted from Protestantism to Popery (a weakness to which

the ‘seething brains’ of the poets of this period were prone) by some

visionary appearance of the Virgin Mary, poured out his devout raptures

and zealous enthusiasm in a torrent of poetical hyperboles. The

celebrated Latin Epigram on the miracle of our Saviour, ‘The water

blushed into wine,’ is in his usual _hectic_ manner. His translation of

the contest between the Musician and the Nightingale is the best

specimen of his powers.

Davenant’s Gondibert is a tissue of stanzas, all aiming to be wise and

witty, each containing something in itself, and the whole together

amounting to nothing. The thoughts separately require so much attention

to understand them, and arise so little out of the narrative, that they

with difficulty sink into the mind, and have no common feeling of

interest to recal or link them together afterwards. The general style

may be judged of by these two memorable lines in the description of the

skeleton-chamber.

‘Yet on that wall hangs he too, who so thought,

And she dried by him whom that he obeyed.’

Mr. Hobbes, in a prefatory discourse, has thrown away a good deal of

powerful logic and criticism in recommendation of the plan of his

friend’s poem. Davenant, who was poet-laureate to Charles II. wrote

several masques and plays which were well received in his time, but have

not come down with equal applause to us.

Marvel (on whom I have already bestowed such praise as I could, for

elegance and tenderness in his descriptive poems) in his satires and

witty pieces was addicted to the affected and involved style here

reprobated, as in his Flecknoe (the origin of Dryden’s Macflecknoe) and

in his satire on the Dutch. As an instance of this forced, far-fetched

method of treating his subject, he says, in ridicule of the Hollanders,

that when their dykes overflowed, the fish used to come to table with

them,

‘And sat not as a meat, but as a guest.’

There is a poem of Marvel’s on the death of King Charles I. which I have

not seen, but which I have heard praised by one whose praise is never

high but of the highest things, for the beauty and pathos, as well as

generous frankness of the sentiments, coming, as they did, from a

determined and incorruptible political foe.

Shadwell was a successful and voluminous dramatic writer of much the

same period. His Libertine (taken from the celebrated Spanish story) is

full of spirit; but it is the spirit of licentiousness and impiety. At

no time do there appear to have been such extreme speculations afloat on

the subject of religion and morality, as there were shortly after the

Reformation, and afterwards under the Stuarts, the differences being

widened by political irritation; and the Puritans often over-acting one

extreme out of grimace and hypocrisy, as the king’s party did the other

out of _bravado_.

Carew is excluded from his pretensions to the laureateship in Suckling’s

Sessions of the Poets, on account of his slowness. His verses are

delicate and pleasing, with a certain feebleness, but with very little

tincture of the affectation of this period. His masque (called _Cœlum

Britannicum_) in celebration of a marriage at court, has not much wit

nor fancy, but the accompanying prose directions and commentary on the

mythological story, are written with wonderful facility and elegance, in

a style of familiar dramatic dialogue approaching nearer the writers of

Queen Anne’s reign than those of Queen Elizabeth’s.

Milton’s name is included by Dr. Johnson in the list of metaphysical

poets on no better authority than his lines on Hobson the Cambridge

Carrier, which he acknowledges were the only ones Milton wrote on this

model. Indeed, he is the great contrast to that style of poetry, being

remarkable for breadth and massiness, or what Dr. Johnson calls

‘aggregation of ideas,’ beyond almost any other poet. He has in this

respect been compared to Michael Angelo, but not with much reason: his

verses are

——‘inimitable on earth

By model, or by shading pencil drawn.’

Suckling is also ranked, without sufficient warrant, among the

metaphysical poets. Sir John was of ‘the court, courtly;’ and his style

almost entirely free from the charge of pedantry and affectation. There

are a few blemishes of this kind in his works, but they are but few. His

compositions are almost all of them short and lively effusions of wit

and gallantry, written in a familiar but spirited style, without much

design or effort. His shrewd and taunting address to a desponding lover

will sufficiently vouch for the truth of this account of the general

cast of his best pieces.

‘Why so pale and wan, fond lover?

Pr’ythee why so pale?

Will, when looking well can’t move her,

Looking ill prevail?

Pr’ythee why so pale?

Why so dull and mute, young sinner?

Pr’ythee why so mute?

Will, when speaking well, can’t win her,

Saying nothing do ‘t?

Pr’ythee why so mute?

Quit, quit for shame, this will not move,

This cannot take her;

If of herself she will not love,

Nothing can make her;

The Devil take her.’

The two short poems against Fruition, that beginning, ‘There never yet

was woman made, nor shall, but to be curst,’—the song, ‘I pr’ythee,

spare me, gentle boy, press me no more for that slight toy, that foolish

trifle of a heart,’—another, ‘’Tis now, since I sat down before, that

foolish fort, a heart,’—_Lutea Alanson_—the set of similes, ‘Hast thou

seen the down in the air, when wanton winds have tost it,’—and his

‘Dream,’ which is of a more tender and romantic cast, are all exquisite

in their way. They are the origin of the style of Prior and Gay in their

short fugitive verses, and of the songs in the Beggar’s Opera. His

Ballad on a Wedding is his masterpiece, and is indeed unrivalled in that

class of composition, for the voluptuous delicacy of the sentiments, and

the luxuriant richness of the images. I wish I could repeat the whole,

but that, from the change of manners, is impossible. The description of

the bride is (half of it) as follows: the story is supposed to be told

by one countryman to another:—

‘Her finger was so small, the ring

Would not stay on, which they did bring;

It was too wide a peck:

And to say truth (for out it must)

It look’d like the great collar (just)

About our young colt’s neck.

Her feet beneath her petticoat,

Like little mice, stole in and out,

As if they fear’d the light:

But oh! she dances such a way!

No sun upon an Easter-day

Is half so fine a sight.

* * * * *

Her cheeks so rare a white was on,

No daisy makes comparison,

(Who sees them is undone)

For streaks of red were mingled there,

Such as are on a Cath’rine pear,

(The side that’s next the sun.)

Her lips were red; and one was thin,

Compar’d to that was next her chin;

(Some bee had stung it newly)

But (Dick) her eyes so guard her face,

I durst no more upon them gaze,

Than on the sun in July.

Her mouth so small, when she does speak,

Thoud’st swear her teeth her words did break,

That they might passage get;

But she so handled still the matter,

They came as good as ours, or better,

And are not spent a whit.’

There is to me in the whole of this delightful performance a freshness

and purity like the first breath of morning. Its sportive irony never

trespasses on modesty, though it sometimes (laughing) threatens to do

so! Suckling’s Letters are full of habitual gaiety and good sense. His

Discourse on Reason in Religion is well enough meant. Though he excelled

in the conversational style of poetry, writing verse with the freedom

and readiness, vivacity and unconcern, with which he would have talked

on the most familiar and sprightly topics, his peculiar powers deserted

him in attempting dramatic dialogue. His comedy of the _Goblins_ is

equally defective in plot, wit, and nature; it is a wretched list of

_exits_ and _entrances_, and the whole business of the scene is taken up

in the unaccountable seizure, and equally unaccountable escapes, of a

number of persons from a band of robbers in the shape of goblins, who

turn out to be noblemen and gentlemen in disguise. Suckling was not a

Grub-street author; or it might be said, that this play is like what he

might have written after dreaming all night of duns and a

spunging-house. His tragedies are no better: their titles are the most

interesting part of them, Aglaura, Brennoralt, and the Sad One.

Cowley had more brilliancy of fancy and ingenuity of thought than Donne,

with less pathos and sentiment. His mode of illustrating his ideas

differs also from Donne’s in this: that whereas Donne is contented to

analyse an image into its component elements, and resolve it into its

most abstracted species; Cowley first does this, indeed, but does not

stop till he has fixed upon some other prominent example of the same

general class of ideas, and forced them into a metaphorical union, by

the medium of the generic definition. Thus he says—

‘The Phœnix Pindar is a vast species alone.’

He means to say that he stands by himself: he is then ‘a vast species

alone:’ then by applying to this generality the _principium

individuationis_, he becomes a Phœnix, because the Phœnix is the only

example of a species contained in an individual. Yet this is only a

literal or metaphysical coincidence: and literally and metaphysically

speaking, Pindar was not a species by himself, but only seemed so by

pre-eminence or excellence; that is, from qualities of mind appealing to

and absorbing the imagination, and which, therefore, ought to be

represented in poetical language, by some other obvious and palpable

image exhibiting the same kind or degree of excellence in other things,

as when Gray compares him to the Theban eagle,

‘Sailing with supreme dominion

Through the azure deep of air.’

Again, he talks in the Motto, or Invocation to his Muse, of ‘marching

the Muse’s Hannibal’ into undiscovered regions. That is, he thinks first

of being a leader in poetry, and then he immediately, by virtue of this

abstraction, becomes a Hannibal; though no two things can really be more

unlike in all the associations belonging to them, than a leader of

armies and a leader of the tuneful Nine. In like manner, he compares

Bacon to Moses; for in _his_ verses extremes are sure to meet. The Hymn

to Light, which forms a perfect contrast to Milton’s Invocation to

Light, in the commencement of the third book of Paradise Lost, begins in

the following manner:—

‘First-born of Chaos, who so fair didst come

From the old negro’s darksome womb!

Which, when it saw the lovely child,

The melancholy mass put on kind looks, and smil’d.’

* * * * *

And soon after—

‘’Tis, I believe, this archery to show

That so much cost in colours thou,

And skill in painting, dost bestow,

Upon thy ancient arms, the gaudy heav’nly bow.

Swift as light thoughts their empty career run,

Thy race is finish’d when begun;

Let a post-angel start with thee,

And thou the goal of earth shalt reach as soon as he.’

The conceits here are neither wit nor poetry; but a burlesque upon both,

made up of a singular metaphorical jargon, verbal generalities, and

physical analogies. Thus his calling Chaos, or Darkness, ‘the old

negro,’ would do for abuse or jest, but is too remote and degrading for

serious poetry, and yet it is meant for such. The ‘old negro’ is at best

a nickname, and the smile on its face loses its beauty in such company.

The making out the rainbow to be a species of heraldic painting, and

converting an angel into a post-boy, shew the same rage for comparison;

but such comparisons are as odious as they are unjust. Dr. Johnson has

multiplied instances of the same false style, in its various divisions

and subdivisions.[4] Of Cowley’s serious poems, the Complaint is the one

I like the best; and some of his translations in the Essays, as those on

Liberty and Retirement, are exceedingly good. The Odes to Vandyke, to

the Royal Society, to Hobbes, and to the latter Brutus, beginning

‘Excellent Brutus,’ are all full of ingenious and high thoughts,

impaired by a load of ornament and quaint disguises. The Chronicle, or

list of his Mistresses, is the best of his original lighter pieces: but

the best of his poems are the translations from Anacreon, which remain,

and are likely to remain unrivalled. The spirit of wine and joy

circulates in them; and though they are lengthened out beyond the

originals, it is by fresh impulses of an eager and inexhaustible feeling

of delight. Here are some of them:—

DRINKING

‘The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,

And drinks, and gapes for drink again.

The plants suck in the earth, and are

With constant drinking fresh and fair.

The sea itself, which one would think

Should have but little need of drink,

Drinks twice ten thousand rivers up,

So fill’d that they o’erflow the cup.

The busy sun (and one would guess

By’s drunken fiery face no less)

Drinks up the sea, and, when he ‘as done,

The moon and stars drink up the sun.

They drink and dance by their own light,

They drink and revel all the night.

Nothing in nature’s sober found,

But an eternal health goes round.

Fill up the bowl then, fill it high,

Fill all the glasses there; for why

Should every creature drink but I;

Why, man of morals, tell me why?’

This is a classical intoxication; and the poet’s imagination, giddy with

fancied joys, communicates its spirit and its motion to inanimate

things, and makes all nature reel round with it. It is not easy to

decide between these choice pieces, which may be reckoned among the

_delights of human kind_; but that to the Grasshopper is one of the

happiest as well as most serious:—

‘Happy insect, what can be

In happiness compar’d to thee?

Fed with nourishment divine,

The dewy morning’s gentle wine!

Nature waits upon thee still,

And thy verdant cup does fill;

’Tis filled wherever thou dost tread,

Nature’s self thy Ganymede.

Thou dost drink, and dance, and sing;

Happier than the happiest king!

All the fields which thou dost see,

All the plants, belong to thee;

All that summer-hours produce,

Fertile made with early juice.

Man for thee does sow and plough,

Farmer he, and landlord thou!

Thou dost innocently joy;

Nor does thy luxury destroy;

The shepherd gladly heareth thee,

More harmonious than he.

Thee country hinds with gladness hear,

Prophet of the ripen’d year!

Thee Phœbus loves, and does inspire;

Phœbus is himself thy sire.

To thee, of all things upon earth,

Life is no longer than thy mirth.

Happy insect, happy thou!

Dost neither age nor winter know;

But, when thou’st drunk, and danc’d, and sung

Thy fill, the flowery leaves among,

(Voluptuous and wise withal,

Epicurean animal!)

Sated with thy summer feast,

Thou retir’st to endless rest.’

Cowley’s Essays are among the most agreeable prose-compositions in our

language, being equally recommended by sense, wit, learning, and

interesting personal history, and written in a style quite free from the

faults of his poetry. It is a pity that he did not cultivate his talent

for prose more, and write less in verse, for he was clearly a man of

more reflection than imagination. The Essays on Agriculture, on Liberty,

on Solitude, and on Greatness, are all of them delightful. From the last

I may give his account of Senecio as an addition to the instances of the

ludicrous, which I have attempted to enumerate in the introductory

Lecture; whose ridiculous affectation of grandeur Seneca the elder (he

tells us) describes to this effect: ‘Senecio was a man of a turbid and

confused wit, who could not endure to speak any but mighty words and

sentences, till this humour grew at last into so notorious a habit, or

rather disease, as became the sport of the whole town: he would have no

servants, but huge, massy fellows; no plate or household stuff, but

thrice as big as the fashion: you may believe me, for I speak it without

raillery, his extravagancy came at last into such a madness, that he

would not put on a pair of shoes, each of which was not big enough for

both his feet: he would eat nothing but what was great, nor touch any

fruit but horse-plums and pound-pears: he kept a mistress that was a

very giantess, and made her walk too always in chiopins, till, at last,

he got the surname of Senecio Grandio.’ This was certainly the most

absurd person we read of in antiquity. Cowley’s character of Oliver

Cromwell, which is intended as a satire, (though it certainly produces a

very different impression on the mind), may vie for truth of outline and

force of colouring with the masterpieces of the Greek and Latin

historians. It may serve as a contrast to the last extract. ‘What can be

more extraordinary, than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no

eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, or of mind, which have

often, raised men to the highest dignities, should have the courage to

attempt, and the happiness to succeed in, so improbable a design, as the

destruction of one of the most ancient and most solidly-founded

monarchies upon the earth? That he should have the power or boldness to

put his prince and master to an open and infamous death; to banish that

numerous and strongly-allied family; to do all this under the name and

wages of a Parliament; to trample upon them too as he pleased, and spurn

them out of doors when he grew weary of them; to raise up a new and

unheard-of monster out of their ashes; to stifle that in the very

infancy, and set up himself above all things that ever were called

sovereign in England; to oppress all his enemies by arms, and all his

friends afterwards by artifice; to serve all parties patiently for a

while, and to command them victoriously at last; to over-run each corner

of the three nations, and overcome with equal facility both the riches

of the south and the poverty of the north; to be feared and courted by

all foreign princes, and adopted a brother to the gods of the earth; to

call together Parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them again

with the breath of his mouth; to be humbly and daily petitioned that he

would please to be hired, at the rate of two millions a-year, to be the

master of those who had hired him before to be their servant; to have

the estates and lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal, as was

the little inheritance of his father, and to be as noble and liberal in

the spending of them; and lastly, (for there is no end of all the

particulars of his glory) to bequeath all this with one word to his

posterity; to die with peace at home, and triumph abroad; to be buried

among kings, and with more than regal solemnity; and to leave a name

behind him, not to be extinguished, but with the whole world; which as

it is now too little for his praises, so might have been too for his

conquests, if the short line of his human life could have been stretched

out to the extent of his immortal designs!’

Cowley has left one comedy, called Cutter of Coleman Street, which met

with an unfavourable reception at the time, and is now (not

undeservedly) forgotten. It contains, however, one good scene, which is

rich both in fancy and humour, that between the puritanical bride,

Tabitha, and her ranting royalist husband. It is said that this play was

originally composed, and afterwards revived, as a satire upon the

Presbyterian party; yet it was resented by the court party as a satire

upon itself. A man must, indeed, be sufficiently blind with

party-prejudice, to have considered this as a compliment to his own side

of the question. ‘Call you this backing of your friends?’ The cavaliers

are in this piece represented as reduced to the lowest shifts in point

of fortune, and sunk still lower in point of principle.

The greatest single production of wit of this period, I might say of

this country, is Butler’s Hudibras. It contains specimens of every

variety of drollery and satire, and those specimens crowded together

into almost every page. The proof of this is, that nearly one half of

his lines are got by heart, and quoted for mottos. In giving instances

of different sorts of wit, or trying to recollect good things of this

kind, they are the first which stand ready in the memory; and they are

those which furnish the best tests and most striking illustrations of

what we want. Dr. Campbell, in his Philosophy of Rhetoric, when treating

of the subject of wit, which he has done very neatly and sensibly, has

constant recourse to two authors, Pope and Butler, the one for ornament,

the other more for use. Butler is equally in the hands of the learned

and the vulgar; for the sense is generally as solid, as the images are

amusing and grotesque. Whigs and Tories join in his praise. He could

not, in spite of himself,

——‘narrow his mind,

‘And to party give up what was meant for mankind.’

Though his subject was local and temporary, his fame was not

circumscribed within his own age. He was admired by Charles II. and has

been rewarded by posterity. It is the poet’s fate! It is not, perhaps,

to be wondered at, that arbitrary and worthless monarchs like Charles

II. should neglect those who pay court to them. The idol (if it had

sense) would despise its worshippers. Indeed, Butler hardly merited any

thing on the score of loyalty to the house of Stuart. True wit is not a

parasite plant. The strokes which it aims at folly and knavery on one

side of a question, tell equally home on the other. Dr. Zachary Grey,

who added notes to the poem, and abused the leaders of Cromwell’s party

by name, would be more likely to have gained a pension for his services

than Butler, who was above such petty work. A poem like Hudibras could

not be _made to order of a court_. Charles might very well have

reproached the author with wanting to shew his own wit and sense rather

than to favour a tottering cause; and he has even been suspected, in

parts of his poem, of glancing at majesty itself. He in general

ridicules not persons, but things, not a party, but their principles,

which may belong, as time and occasion serve, to one set of solemn

pretenders or another. This he has done most effectually, in every

possible way, and from every possible source, learned or unlearned. He

has exhausted the moods and figures of satire and sophistry.[5] It would

be possible to deduce the different forms of syllogism in Aristotle,

from the different violations or mock-imitations of them in Butler. He

fulfils every one of Barrow’s conditions of wit, which I have enumerated

in the first Lecture. He makes you laugh or smile by comparing the high

to the low,[6] or by pretending to raise the low to the lofty;[7] he

succeeds equally in the familiarity of his illustrations,[8] or their

incredible extravagance,[9] by comparing things that are alike or not

alike. He surprises equally by his coincidences or contradictions, by

spinning out a long-winded flimsy excuse, or by turning short upon you

with the point-blank truth. His rhymes are as witty as his reasons,

equally remote from what common custom would suggest;[10] and he

startles you sometimes by an empty sound like a blow upon a

drum-head,[11] by a pun upon one word,[12] and by splitting another in

two at the end of a verse, with the same alertness and power over the

odd and unaccountable in the combinations of sounds as of images.[13]

There are as many shrewd aphorisms in his works, clenched by as many

quaint and individual allusions, as perhaps in any author whatever. He

makes none but palpable hits, that may be said to give one’s

understanding a rap on the knuckles.[14] He is, indeed, sometimes too

prolific, and spins his antithetical sentences out, one after another,

till the reader, not the author, is wearied. He is, however, very seldom

guilty of repetitions or wordy paraphrases of himself; but he sometimes

comes rather too near it; and interrupts the thread of his argument (for

narrative he has none) by a tissue of epigrams, and the tagging of

points and conundrums without end. The fault, or original sin of his

genius, is, that from too much leaven it ferments and runs over; and

there is, unfortunately, nothing in his subject to restrain and keep it

within compass. He has no story good for any thing; and his characters

are good for very little. They are too low and mechanical, or too much

one thing, personifications, as it were, of nicknames, and bugbears of

popular prejudice and vulgar cant, unredeemed by any virtue, or

difference or variety of disposition. There is no relaxation or shifting

of the parts; and the impression in some degree fails of its effect, and

becomes questionable from its being always the same. The satire looks,

at length, almost like special-pleading: it has nothing to confirm it in

the apparent good humour or impartiality of the writer. It is something

revolting to see an author persecute his characters, the cherished

offspring of his brain, in this manner, without mercy. Hudibras and

Ralpho have immortalised Butler; and what has he done for them in

return, but set them up to be ‘pilloried on infamy’s high and lasting

stage?’ This is ungrateful!

The rest of the characters have, in general, little more than their

names and professions to distinguish them. We scarcely know one from

another, Cerdon, or Orsin, or Crowdero, and are often obliged to turn

back, to connect their several adventures together. In fact, Butler

drives only at a set of obnoxious opinions, and runs into general

declamations. His poem in its essence is a satire, or didactic poem. It

is not virtually dramatic, or narrative. It is composed of digressions

by the author. He instantly breaks off in the middle of a story, or

incident, to comment upon and turn it into ridicule. He does not give

characters but topics, which would do just as well in his own mouth

without agents, or machinery of any kind. The long digression in Part

III. in which no mention is made of the hero, is just as good and as

much an integrant part of the poem as the rest. The conclusion is lame

and impotent, but that is saying nothing; the beginning and middle are

equally so as to historical merit. There is no keeping in his

characters, as in Don Quixote; nor any enjoyment of the ludicrousness of

their situations, as in Hogarth. Indeed, it requires a considerable

degree of sympathy to enter into and describe to the life even the

ludicrous eccentricities of others, and there is no appearance of

sympathy or liking to his subject in Butler. His humour is to his wit,

‘as one grain of wheat in a bushel of chaff: you shall search all day,

and when you find it, it is not worth the trouble.’ Yet there are

exceptions. The most decisive is, I think, the description of the battle

between Bruin and his foes, Part I. Canto iii., and again of the

triumphal procession in Part II. Canto ii. of which the principal

features are copied in Hogarth’s election print, the Chairing of the

successful candidate. The account of Sidrophel and Whackum is another

instance, and there are some few others, but rarely sprinkled up and

down.[15]

The widow, the termagant heroine of the poem, is still more disagreeable

than her lover; and her sarcastic account of the passion of love, as

consisting entirely in an attachment to land and houses, goods and

chattels, which is enforced with all the rhetoric the author is master

of, and hunted down through endless similes, is evidently false. The

vulgarity and meanness of sentiment which Butler complains of in the

Presbyterians, seems at last from long familiarity and close

contemplation to have tainted his own mind. Their worst vices appear to

have taken root in his imagination. Nothing but what was selfish and

groveling sunk into his memory, in the depression of a menial situation

under his supposed hero. He has, indeed, carried his private grudge too

far into his general speculations. He even makes out the rebels to be

cowards and well beaten, which does not accord with the history of the

times. In an excess of zeal for church and state, he is too much

disposed to treat religion as a cheat, and liberty as a farce. It was

the cant of that day (from which he is not free) to cry down sanctity

and sobriety as marks of disaffection, as it is the cant of this, to

hold them up as proofs of loyalty and staunch monarchical principles.

Religion and morality are, in either case, equally made subservient to

the spirit of party, and a stalking-horse to the love of power. Finally,

there is a want of pathos and humour, but no want of interest in

Hudibras. It is difficult to lay it down. One thought is inserted into

another; the links in the chain of reasoning are so closely rivetted,

that the attention seldom flags, but is kept alive (without any other

assistance) by the mere force of writing. There are occasional

indications of poetical fancy, and an eye for natural beauty; but these

are kept under or soon discarded, judiciously enough, but it should

seem, not for lack of power, for they are certainly as masterly as they

are rare. Such are the burlesque description of the stocks, or

allegorical prison, in which first Crowdero, and then Hudibras, is

confined: the passage beginning—

‘As when an owl that’s in a barn,

Sees a mouse creeping in the corn,

Sits still and shuts his round blue eyes,

As if he slept,’ &c.

And the description of the moon going down in the early morning, which

is as pure, original, and picturesque as possible:—

‘The queen of night, whose large command

Rules all the sea and half the land,

And over moist and crazy brains

In high spring-tides at midnight reigns,

Was now declining to the west,

To go to bed and take her rest.’

Butler is sometimes scholastic, but he makes his learning tell to good

account; and for the purposes of burlesque, nothing can be better fitted

than the scholastic style.

Butler’s Remains are nearly as good and full of sterling genius as his

principal poem. Take the following ridicule of the plan of the Greek

tragedies as an instance.

—‘Reduce all tragedy, by rules of art,

Back to its ancient theatre, a cart,

And make them henceforth keep the beaten roads

Of reverend choruses and episodes;

Reform and regulate a puppet-play,

According to the true and ancient way;

That not an actor shall presume to squeak,

Unless he have a license for ‘t in Greek:

Nor devil in the puppet-play be allowed

To roar and spit fire, but to fright the crowd,

Unless some god or demon chance to have piques

Against an ancient family of Greeks;

That other men may tremble and take warning

How such a fatal progeny they’re born in;

For none but such for tragedy are fitted,

That have been ruined only to be pitied:

And only those held proper to deter,

Who have th’ ill luck against their wills to err;

Whence only such as are of middling sizes,

Betwixt morality and venial vices,

Are qualified to be destroyed by fate,

For other mortals to take warning at.’

_Upon Critics._

His ridicule of Milton’s Latin style is equally severe, but not so well

founded.

I have only to add a few words respecting the dramatic writers about

this time, before we arrive at the golden period of our comedy. Those of

Etherege[16] are good for nothing, except The Man of Mode, or Sir

Fopling Flutter, which is, I think, a more exquisite and airy picture of

the manners of that age than any other extant. Sir Fopling himself is an

inimitable coxcomb, but pleasant withal. He is a suit of clothes

personified. Dorimant (supposed to be Lord Rochester) is the genius of

grace, gallantry, and gaiety. The women in this courtly play have very

much the look and air (but something more demure and significant) of Sir

Peter Lely’s beauties. Harriet, the mistress of Dorimant, who ‘tames his

wild heart to her loving hand,’ is the flower of the piece. Her natural,

untutored grace and spirit, her meeting with Dorimant in the Park,

bowing and mimicking him, and the luxuriant description which is given

of her fine person, altogether form one of the _chef d’œuvres_ of

dramatic painting. I should think this comedy would bear reviving; and

if Mr. Liston were to play Sir Fopling, the part would shine out with

double lustre, ‘like the morn risen on mid-noon.’—Dryden’s comedies have

all the point that there is in ribaldry, and all the humour that there

is in extravagance. I am sorry I can say nothing better of them. He was

not at home in this kind of writing, of which he was himself conscious.

His play was _horse-play_. His wit (what there is of it) is ingenious

and scholar-like, rather than natural and dramatic. Thus Burr, in the

Wild Gallant, says to Failer, ‘She shall sooner cut an atom than part

us.’—His plots are pure _voluntaries_ in absurdity, that bend and shift

to his purpose without any previous notice or reason, and are governed

by final causes. Sir Martin Mar-all, which was taken from the Duchess of

Newcastle, is the best of his plays, and the origin of the Busy Body.

Otway’s comedies do no sort of credit to him: on the contrary, they are

as desperate as his fortunes. The Duke of Buckingham’s famous Rehearsal,

which has made, and deservedly, so much noise in the world, is in a

great measure taken from Beaumont and Fletcher’s Knight of the Burning

Pestle, which was written in ridicule of the London apprentices in the

reign of Elizabeth, who had a great hand in the critical decisions of

that age. There were other dramatic writers of this period, noble and

plebeian. I shall only mention one other piece, the Committee, I believe

by Sir Robert Howard, which has of late been cut down into the farce

called Honest Thieves, and which I remember reading with a great deal of

pleasure many years ago.

One cause of the difference between the immediate reception and lasting

success of dramatic works at this period may be, that after the court

took the play-houses under its particular protection, every thing became

very much an affair of private patronage. If an author could get a

learned lord or a countess-dowager to bespeak a box at his play, and

applaud the doubtful passages, he considered his business as done. On

the other hand, there was a reciprocity between men of letters and their

patrons; critics were ‘mitigated into courtiers, and submitted,’ as Mr.

Burke has it, ‘to the soft collar of social esteem,’ in pronouncing

sentence on the works of lords and ladies. How ridiculous this seems

now! What a hubbub it would create, if it were known that a particular

person of fashion and title had taken a front-box in order to decide on

the fate of a first play! How the newspaper critics would laugh in their

sleeves! How the public would sneer! But at this time there was no

public. I will not say, therefore, that these times are better than

those; but they are better, I think, in this respect. An author

now-a-days no longer hangs dangling on the frown of a lord, or the smile

of a lady of quality (the one governed perhaps by his valet, and the

other by her waiting-maid), but throws himself boldly, making a lover’s

leap of it, into the broad lap of public opinion, on which he falls like

a feather-bed; and which, like the great bed of Ware, is wide enough to

hold us all very comfortably!

LECTURE IV

ON WYCHERLEY, CONGREVE, VANBRUGH, AND FARQUHAR

Comedy is a ‘graceful ornament to the civil order; the Corinthian

capital of polished society.’ Like the mirrors which have been added to

the sides of one of our theatres, it reflects the images of grace, of

gaiety, and pleasure double, and completes the perspective of human

life. To read a good comedy is to keep the best company in the world,

where the best things are said, and the most amusing happen. The

wittiest remarks are always ready on the tongue, and the luckiest

occasions are always at hand to give birth to the happiest conceptions.

Sense makes strange havoc of nonsense. Refinement acts as a foil to

affectation, and affectation to ignorance. Sentence after sentence

tells. We don’t know which to admire most, the observation, or the

answer to it. We would give our fingers to be able to talk so ourselves,

or to hear others talk so. In turning over the pages of the best

comedies, we are almost transported to another world, and escape from

this dull age to one that was all life, and whim, and mirth, and humour.

The curtain rises, and a gayer scene presents itself, as on the canvass

of Watteau. We are admitted behind the scenes like spectators at court,

on a levee or birth-day; but it is the court, the gala day of wit and

pleasure, of gallantry and Charles II.! What an air breathes from the

name! what a rustling of silks and waving of plumes! what a sparkling of

diamond earrings and shoe-buckles! What bright eyes, (ah, those were

Waller’s Sacharissa’s as she passed!) what killing looks and graceful

motions! How the faces of the whole ring are dressed in smiles! how the

repartee goes round! how wit and folly, elegance and awkward imitation

of it, set one another off! Happy, thoughtless age, when kings and

nobles led purely ornamental lives; when the utmost stretch of a

morning’s study went no farther than the choice of a sword-knot, or the

adjustment of a side-curl; when the soul spoke out in all the pleasing

eloquence of dress; and beaux and belles, enamoured of themselves in one

another’s follies, fluttered like gilded butterflies, in giddy mazes,

through the walks of St. James’s Park!

The four principal writers of this style of comedy (which I think the

best) are undoubtedly Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar. The

dawn was in Etherege, as its latest close was in Sheridan.—It is hard to

say which of these four is best, or in what each of them excels, they

had so many and such great excellences.

Congreve is the most distinct from the others, and the most easily

defined, both from what he possessed, and from what he wanted. He had by

far the most wit and elegance, with less of other things, of humour,

character, incident, &c. His style is inimitable, nay perfect. It is the

highest model of comic dialogue. Every sentence is replete with sense

and satire, conveyed in the most polished and pointed terms. Every page

presents a shower of brilliant conceits, is a tissue of epigrams in

prose, is a new triumph of wit, a new conquest over dulness. The fire of

artful raillery is nowhere else so well kept up. This style, which he

was almost the first to introduce, and which he carried to the utmost

pitch of classical refinement, reminds one exactly of Collins’s

description of wit as opposed to humour,

‘Whose jewels in his crisped hair

Are placed each other’s light to share.’

Sheridan will not bear a comparison with him in the regular antithetical

construction of his sentences, and in the mechanical artifices of his

style, though so much later, and though style in general has been so

much studied, and in the mechanical part so much improved since then. It

bears every mark of being what he himself in the dedication of one of

his plays tells us that it was, a spirited copy taken off and carefully

revised from the most select society of his time, exhibiting all the

sprightliness, ease, and animation of familiar conversation, with the

correctness and delicacy of the most finished composition. His works are

a singular treat to those who have cultivated a taste for the niceties

of English style: there is a peculiar flavour in the very words, which

is to be found in hardly any other writer. To the mere reader his

writings would be an irreparable loss: to the stage they are already

become a dead letter, with the exception of one of them, Love for Love.

This play is as full of character, incident, and stage-effect, as almost

any of those of his contemporaries, and fuller of wit than any of his

own, except perhaps the Way of the World. It still acts, and is still

acted well. The effect of it is prodigious on the well-informed

spectator. In particular, Munden’s Foresight, if it is not just the

thing, is a wonderfully rich and powerful piece of comic acting. His

look is planet-struck; his dress and appearance like one of the signs of

the Zodiac taken down. Nothing can be more bewildered; and it only wants

a little more helplessness, a little more of the doating querulous

garrulity of age, to be all that one conceives of the superannuated,

star-gazing original. The gay, unconcerned opening of this play, and the

romantic generosity of the conclusion, where Valentine, when about to

resign his mistress, declares—‘I never valued fortune, but as it was

subservient to my pleasure; and my only pleasure was to please this

lady,’—are alike admirable. The peremptory bluntness and exaggerated

descriptions of Sir Sampson Legend are in a vein truly oriental, with a

Shakespearian cast of language, and form a striking contrast to the

quaint credulity and senseless superstitions of Foresight. The

remonstrance of his son to him, ‘to divest him, along with his

inheritance, of his reason, thoughts, passions, inclinations,

affections, appetites, senses, and the huge train of attendants which he

brought into the world with him,’ with his valet’s accompanying

comments, is one of the most eloquent and spirited specimens of wit,

pathos, and morality, that is to be found. The short scene with

Trapland, the money-broker, is of the first water. What a picture is

here drawn of Tattle! ‘More misfortunes, Sir!’ says Jeremy. _Valentine._

‘What, another dun?’ _Jeremy._ ‘No, Sir, but Mr. Tattle is come to wait

upon you.’ What an introduction to give of an honest gentleman in the

shape of a misfortune! The scenes between him, Miss Prue, and Ben, are

of a highly coloured description. Mrs. Frail and Mrs. Foresight are

‘sisters every way;’ and the bodkin which Mrs. Foresight brings as a

proof of her sister’s levity of conduct, and which is so convincingly

turned against her as a demonstration of her own—‘Nay, if you come to

that, where did you find that bodkin?’—is one of the trophies of the

moral justice of the comic drama. The Old Bachelor and Double Dealer are

inferior to Love for Love, but one is never tired of reading them. The

fault of the last is, that Lady Touchwood approaches, in the turbulent

impetuosity of her character, and measured tone of her declamation, too

near to the tragedy-queen; and that Maskwell’s plots puzzle the brain by

their intricacy, as they stagger our belief by their gratuitous

villainy. Sir Paul and Lady Pliant, and my Lord and Lady Froth, are also

scarcely credible in the extravagant insipidity and romantic vein of

their follies, in which they are notably seconded by the lively Mr.

Brisk and ‘dying Ned Careless.’

The Way of the World was the author’s last and most carefully finished

performance. It is an essence almost too fine; and the sense of pleasure

evaporates in an aspiration after something that seems too exquisite

ever to have been realised. After inhaling the spirit of Congreve’s wit,

and tasting ‘love’s thrice reputed nectar’ in his works, the head grows

giddy in turning from the highest point of rapture to the ordinary

business of life; and we can with difficulty recal the truant Fancy to

those objects which we are fain to take up with here, _for better, for

worse_. What can be more enchanting than Millamant and her morning

thoughts, her _doux sommeils_? What more provoking than her reproach to

her lover, who proposes to rise early, ‘Ah! idle creature!’ The meeting

of these two lovers after the abrupt dismissal of Sir Wilful, is the

height of careless and voluptuous elegance, as if they moved in air, and

drank a finer spirit of humanity.

‘_Millamant._ Like Phœbus sung the no less amorous boy.

_Mirabell._ Like Daphne she, as lovely and as coy.’

Millamant is the perfect model of the accomplished fine lady:

‘Come, then, the colours and the ground prepare,

Dip in the rainbow, trick her off in air;

Choose a firm cloud, before it falls, and in it

Catch ere she change, the Cynthia of a minute.’

She is the ideal heroine of the comedy of high life, who arrives at the

height of indifference to every thing from the height of satisfaction;

to whom pleasure is as familiar as the air she draws; elegance worn as a

part of her dress; wit the habitual language which she hears and speaks;

love, a matter of course; and who has nothing to hope or to fear, her

own caprice being the only law to herself, and rule to those about her.

Her words seem composed of amorous sighs—her looks are glanced at

prostrate admirers or envious rivals.

‘If there’s delight in love, ’tis when I see

That heart that others bleed for, bleed for me.’

She refines on her pleasures to satiety; and is almost stifled in the

incense that is offered to her person, her wit, her beauty, and her

fortune. Secure of triumph, her slaves tremble at her frown: her charms

are so irresistible, that her conquests give her neither surprise nor

concern. ‘Beauty the lover’s gift?’ she exclaims, in answer to

Mirabell—‘Dear me, what is a lover that it can give? Why one makes

lovers as fast as one pleases, and they live as long as one pleases, and

they die as soon as one pleases; and then if one pleases, one makes

more.’ We are not sorry to see her tamed down at last, from her pride of

love and beauty, into a wife. She is good-natured and generous, with all

her temptations to the contrary; and her behaviour to Mirabell

reconciles us to her treatment of Witwoud and Petulant, and of her

country admirer, Sir Wilful.

Congreve has described all this in his character of Millamant, but he

has done no more; and if he had, he would have done wrong. He has given

us the finest idea of an artificial character of this kind; but it is

still the reflection of an artificial character. The springs of nature,

passion, or imagination are but feebly touched. The impressions appealed

to, and with masterly address, are habitual, external, and conventional

advantages: the ideas of birth, of fortune, of connexions, of dress,

accomplishment, fashion, the opinion of the world, of crowds of

admirers, continually come into play, flatter our vanity, bribe our

interest, soothe our indolence, fall in with our prejudices;—it is these

that support the goddess of our idolatry, with which she is every thing,

and without which she would be nothing. The mere fine lady of comedy,

compared with the heroine of romance or poetry, when stripped of her

adventitious ornaments and advantages, is too much like the doll

stripped of its finery. In thinking of Millamant, we think almost as

much of her dress as of her person: it is not so with respect to

Rosalind or Perdita. The poet has painted them differently; in colours

which ‘nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on,’ with health, with

innocence, with gaiety, ‘wild wit, invention ever new;’ with pure red

and white, like the wilding’s blossoms; with warbled wood-notes, like

the feathered choir’s; with thoughts fluttering on the wings of

imagination, and hearts panting and breathless with eager delight. The

interest we feel is in themselves; the admiration they excite is for

themselves. They do not depend upon the drapery of circumstances. It is

nature that ‘blazons herself’ in them. Imogen is the same in a lonely

cave as in a court; nay more, for she there seems something heavenly—a

spirit or a vision; and, as it were, shames her destiny, brighter for

the foil of circumstances. Millamant is nothing but a fine lady; and all

her airs and affectation would be blown away with the first breath of

misfortune. Enviable in drawing-rooms, adorable at her toilette,

fashion, like a witch, has thrown its spell around her; but if that

spell were broken, her power of fascination would be gone. For that

reason I think the character better adapted for the stage: it is more

artificial, more theatrical, more meretricious. I would rather have seen

Mrs. Abington’s Millamant, than any Rosalind that ever appeared on the

stage. Some how, this sort of acquired elegance is more a thing of

costume, of air and manner; and in comedy, or on the comic stage, the

light and familiar, the trifling, superficial, and agreeable, bears,

perhaps, rightful sway over that which touches the affections, or

exhausts the fancy.—There is a callousness in the worst characters in

the Way of the World, in Fainall, and his wife and Mrs. Marwood, not

very pleasant; and a grossness in the absurd ones, such as Lady Wishfort

and Sir Wilful, which is not a little amusing. Witwoud wishes to

declaim, as far as he can, his relationship to this last character, and

says, ‘he’s but his half-brother;’ to which Mirabell makes answer—‘Then,

perhaps, he’s but half a fool.’ Peg is an admirable caricature of rustic

awkwardness and simplicity, which is carried to excess without any

offence, from a sense of contrast to the refinement of the chief

characters in the play. The description of Lady Wishfort’s face is a

perfect piece of painting. The force of style in this author at times

amounts to poetry. Waitwell, who personates Sir Rowland, and Foible, his

accomplice in the matrimonial scheme upon her mistress, hang as a dead

weight upon the plot. They are mere tools in the hands of Mirabell, and

want life and interest. Congreve’s characters can all of them speak

well, they are mere machines when they come to act. Our author’s

superiority deserted him almost entirely with his wit. His serious and

tragic poetry is frigid and jejune to an unaccountable degree. His

_forte_ was the description of actual manners, whether elegant or

absurd; and when he could not deride the one or embellish the other, his

attempts at romantic passion or imaginary enthusiasm are forced,

abortive, and ridiculous, or common-place. The description of the ruins

of a temple in the beginning of the Mourning Bride, was a great stretch

of his poetic genius. It has, however, been over-rated, particularly by

Dr. Johnson, who could have done nearly as well himself for a single

passage in the same style of moralising and sentimental description. To

justify this general censure, and to shew how the lightest and most

graceful wit degenerates into the heaviest and most bombastic poetry, I

will give one description out of his tragedy, which will be enough. It

is the speech which Gonsalez addresses to Almeria:

‘Be every day of your long life like this.

The sun, bright conquest, and your brighter eyes

Have all conspired to blaze promiscuous light,

And bless this day with most unequal lustre.

Your royal father, my victorious lord,

Loaden with spoils, and ever-living laurel,

Is entering now, in martial pomp, the palace.

Five hundred mules precede his solemn march,

Which groan beneath the weight of Moorish wealth.

Chariots of war, adorn’d with glittering gems,

Succeed; and next, a hundred neighing steeds,

White as the fleecy rain on Alpine hills;

That bound, and foam, and champ the golden bit,

As they disdain’d the victory they grace.

Prisoners of war in shining fetters follow:

And captains of the noblest blood of Afric

Sweat by his chariot-wheels, and lick and grind,

With gnashing teeth, the dust his triumphs raise.

The swarming populace spread every wall,

And cling, as if with claws they did enforce

Their hold, through clifted stones stretching and staring

As if they were all eyes, and every limb

Would feed its faculty of admiration,

While you alone retire, and shun this sight;

This sight, which is indeed not seen (though twice

The multitude should gaze) in absence of your eyes.’

This passage seems, in part, an imitation of Bolingbroke’s entry into

London. The style is as different from Shakspeare, as it is from that of

Witwoud and Petulant. It is plain that the imagination of the author

could not raise itself above the burlesque. His Mask of Semele, Judgment

of Paris, and other occasional poems, are even worse. I would not advise

any one to read them, or if I did, they would not.

Wycherley was before Congreve; and his Country Wife will last longer

than any thing of Congreve’s as a popular acting play. It is only a pity

that it is not entirely his own; but it is enough so to do him

never-ceasing honour, for the best things are his own. His humour is, in

general, broader, his characters more natural, and his incidents more

striking than Congreve’s. It may be said of Congreve, that the

workmanship overlays the materials: in Wycherley, the casting of the

parts and the fable are alone sufficient to ensure success. We forget

Congreve’s characters, and only remember what they say: we remember

Wycherley’s characters, and the incidents they meet with, just as if

they were real, and forget what they say, comparatively speaking. Miss

Peggy (or Mrs. Margery Pinchwife) is a character that will last for

ever, I should hope; and even when the original is no more, if that

should ever be, while self-will, curiosity, art, and ignorance are to be

found in the same person, it will be just as good and as intelligible as

ever in the description, because it is built on first principles, and

brought out in the fullest and broadest manner. Agnes, in Moliere’s

play, has a great deal of the same unconscious impulse and heedless

_naïveté_, but hers is sentimentalised and varnished over (in the French

fashion) with long-winded apologies and analytical distinctions. It

wants the same simple force and _home_ truth. It is not so direct and

downright. Miss Peggy is not even a novice in casuistry: she blurts out

her meaning before she knows what she is saying, and she speaks her mind

by her actions oftener than by her words. The outline of the plot is the

same; but the point-blank hits and master-strokes, the sudden thoughts

and delightful expedients, such as her changing the letters, the meeting

her husband plump in the Park, as she is running away from him as fast

as her heels can carry her, her being turned out of doors by her jealous

booby of a husband, and sent by him to her lover disguised as Alicia,

her sisterin-law—occur first in the modern play. There are scarcely any

incidents or situations on the stage, which tell like these for

pantomimic effect, which give such a tingling to the blood, or so

completely take away the breath with expectation and surprise. Miss

Prue, in Love for Love, is a lively reflection of Miss Peggy, but

without the bottom and weight of metal. Hoyden is a match for her in

constitution and complete effect, as Corinna, in the Confederacy, is in

mischief, but without the wit. Mrs. Jordan used to play all these

characters; and as she played them, it was hard to know which was best.

Pinchwife, or Moody, (as he is at present called) is, like others of

Wycherley’s moral characters, too rustic, abrupt, and cynical. He is a

more disagreeable, but less tedious character than the husband of Agnes,

and both seem, by all accounts, to have been rightly served. The

character of Sparkish is quite new, and admirably hit off. He is an

exquisite and suffocating coxcomb; a pretender to wit and letters,

without common understanding, or the use of his senses. The class of

character is thoroughly exposed and understood; but he persists in his

absurd conduct so far, that it becomes extravagant and disgusting, if

not incredible, from mere weakness and foppery. Yet there is something

in him that we are inclined to tolerate at first, as his professing that

‘with him a wit is the first title to respect;’ and we regard his

unwillingness to be pushed out of the room, and coming back, in spite of

their teeth, to keep the company of wits and raillers, as a favourable

omen. But he utterly disgraces his pretensions before he has done. With

all his faults and absurdities, he is, however, a much less offensive

character than Tattle.—Horner is a stretch of probability in the first

concoction of that ambiguous character, (for he does not appear at

present on the stage as Wycherley made him) but notwithstanding the

indecency and indirectness of the means he employs to carry his plans

into effect, he deserves every sort of consideration and forgiveness,

both for the display of his own ingenuity, and the deep insight he

discovers into human nature—such as it was in the time of Wycherley. The

author has commented on this character, and the double meaning of the

name in his Plain Dealer, borrowing the remarks, and almost the very

words of Moliere, who has brought forward and defended his own work

against the objections of the precise part of his audience, in his

_Critique de l’Ecole des Femmes_. There is no great harm in these

occasional plagiarisms, except that they make one uncomfortable at other

times, and distrustful of the originality of the whole.—The Plain Dealer

is Wycherley’s next best work; and is a most severe and poignant moral

satire. There is a heaviness about it, indeed, an extravagance, an

overdoing both in the style, the plot, and characters, but the truth of

feeling and the force of interest prevail over every objection. The

character of Manly, the Plain Dealer, is violent, repulsive, and

uncouth, which is a fault, though one that seems to have been intended

for the sake of contrast; for the portrait of consummate, artful

hypocrisy in Olivia, is, perhaps, rendered more striking by it. The

indignation excited against this odious and pernicious quality by the

masterly exposure to which it is here subjected, is ‘a discipline of

humanity.’ No one can read this play attentively without being the

better for it as long as he lives. It penetrates to the core; it shews

the immorality and hateful effects of duplicity, by shewing it fixing

its harpy fangs in the heart of an honest and worthy man. It is worth

ten volumes of sermons. The scenes between Manly after his return,

Olivia, Plausible, and Novel, are instructive examples of unblushing

impudence, of shallow pretensions to principle, and of the most

mortifying reflections on his own situation, and bitter sense of female

injustice and ingratitude, on the part of Manly. The devil of hypocrisy

and hardened assurance seems worked up to the highest pitch of

conceivable effrontery in Olivia, when, after confiding to her cousin

the story of her infamy, she, in a moment, turns round upon her for some

sudden purpose, and affecting not to know the meaning of the other’s

allusions to what she has just told her, reproaches her with forging

insinuations to the prejudice of her character, and in violation of

their friendship. ‘Go! you’re a censorious ill woman.’ This is more

trying to the patience than any thing in the Tartuffe. The name of this

heroine, and her overtures to Fidelia, as the page, seem to have been

suggested by Twelfth Night. It is curious to see how the same subject is

treated by two such different authors as Shakspeare and Wycherley. The

widow Blackacre and her son are like her lawsuit—everlasting. A more

lively, palpable, bustling, ridiculous picture cannot be drawn. Jerry is

a hopeful lad, though undutiful and gets out of bad hands into worse.

Goldsmith evidently had an eye to these two precious characters, in She

Stoops to Conquer. Tony Lumpkin and his mother are of the same family,

and the incident of the theft of the casket of jewels, and the bag of

parchments, is nearly the same in both authors. Wycherley’s other plays

are not so good. The Gentleman Dancing Master is a long, foolish farce,

in the exaggerated manner of Moliere, but without his spirit or

whimsical invention. Love in a Wood, though not what one would wish it

to be for the author’s sake or our own, is much better, and abounds in

several rich and highly-coloured scenes, particularly those in which

Miss Lucy, her mother Crossbite, Dapperwit, and Alderman Gripe are

concerned. Some of the subordinate characters and intrigues in this

comedy are grievously spun out. Wycherley, when he got hold of a good

thing, or sometimes even of a bad one, was determined to make the most

of it; and might have said with Dogberry, truly enough, ‘Had I the

tediousness of a king, I could find in my heart to bestow it all upon

your worships.’ In reading this author’s best works, those which one

reads most frequently over, and knows almost by heart, one cannot help

thinking of the treatment he received from Pope about his verses. It was

hardly excusable in a boy of sixteen to an old man of seventy.

Vanbrugh comes next, and holds his own fully with the best. He is no

writer at all, as to mere authorship; but he makes up for it by a

prodigious fund of comic invention and ludicrous description, bordering

somewhat on caricature. Though he did not borrow from him, he was much

more like Moliere in genius than Wycherley was, who professedly imitated

him. He has none of Congreve’s graceful refinement, and as little of

Wycherley’s serious manner and studied insight into the springs of

character; but his exhibition of it in dramatic contrast and

unlooked-for situations, where the different parties play upon one

another’s failings, and into one another’s hands, keeping up the jest

like a game at battledore and shuttlecock, and urging it to the utmost

verge of breathless extravagance, in the mere eagerness of the fray, is

beyond that of any other of our writers. His fable is not so profoundly

laid, nor his characters so well digested as Wycherley’s (who, in these

respects, bore some resemblance to Fielding). Vanbrugh does not lay the

same deliberate train from the outset to the conclusion, so that the

whole may hang together, and tend inevitably from the combination of

different agents and circumstances to the same decisive point: but he

works out scene after scene, on the spur of the occasion, and from the

immediate hold they take of his imagination at the moment, without any

previous bias or ultimate purpose, much more powerfully, with more

_verve_, and in a richer vein of original invention. His fancy warms and

burnishes out as if he were engaged in the real scene of action, and

felt all his faculties suddenly called forth to meet the emergency. He

has more nature than art: what he does best, he does because he cannot

help it. He has a masterly eye to the advantages which certain

accidental situations of character present to him on the spot, and he

executes the most difficult and rapid theatrical movements at a moment’s

warning. Of this kind are the inimitable scenes in the Provoked Wife,

between Razor and Mademoiselle, where they repeat and act over again the

rencontre in the Mulberry-walk between Constant and his mistress, than

which nothing was ever more happily conceived, or done to more absolute

perfection; that again in the Relapse, where Loveless pushes Berinthia

into the closet; the sudden meeting in the Confederacy between Dick and

Mrs. Amlet; the altercation about the letter between Flippanta and

Corinna, in the same play, and that again where Brass, at the house of

Gripe the money-scrivener, threatens to discover his friend and

accomplice, and by talking louder and louder to him, as he tries to

evade his demands, extorts a grudging submission from him. This last

scene is as follows:—

‘_Dick._ I wish my old hobbling mother han’t been blabbing something

here she should not do.

_Brass._ Fear nothing, all’s safe on that side yet. But how speaks

young mistress’s epistle? soft and tender?

_Dick._ As pen can write.

_Brass._ So you think all goes well there?

_Dick._ As my heart can wish.

_Brass._ You are sure on’t?

_Dick._ Sure on’t!

_Brass._ Why then, ceremony aside—[_Putting on his hat_]—you and I

must have a little talk, Mr. Amlet.

_Dick._ Ah, Brass, what art thou going to do? wo’t ruin me?

_Brass._ Look you, Dick, few words; you are in a smooth way of

making your fortune; I hope all will roll on. But how do you intend

matters shall pass ’twixt you and me in this business?

_Dick._ Death and furies! What a time does take to talk on’t?

_Brass._ Good words, or I betray you; they have already heard of one

Mr. Amlet in the house.

_Dick._ Here’s a son of a whore. [_Aside._

_Brass._ In short, look smooth, and be a good prince. I am your

valet, ’tis true: your footman, sometimes, which I’m enraged at; but

you have always had the ascendant I confess: when we were

schoolfellows, you made me carry your books, make your exercise, own

your rogueries, and sometimes take a whipping for you. When we were

fellow-’prentices, though I was your senior, you made me open the

shop, clean my master’s shoes, cut last at dinner, and eat all the

crust. In our sins too, I must own you still kept me under; you

soar’d up to adultery with the mistress, while I was at humble

fornication with the maid. Nay, in our punishments you still made

good your post; for when once upon a time I was sentenced but to be

whipp’d, I cannot deny but you were condemn’d to be hang’d. So that

in all times, I must confess, your inclinations have been greater

and nobler than mine; however, I cannot consent that you should at

once fix fortune for life, and I dwell in my humilities for the rest

of my days.

_Dick._ Hark thee, Brass, if I do not most nobly by thee, I’m a dog.

_Brass._ And when?

_Dick._ As soon as ever I am married.

_Brass._ Ay, the plague take thee.

_Dick._ Then you mistrust me?

_Brass._ I do, by my faith. Look you, Sir, some folks we mistrust,

because we don’t know them: others we mistrust, because we do know

them: and for one of these reasons I desire there may be a bargain

beforehand: if not [_raising his voice_] look ye, Dick Amlet—

_Dick._ Soft, my dear friend and companion. The dog will ruin me

[_Aside_]. Say, what is’t will content thee?

_Brass._ O ho!

_Dick._ But how canst thou be such a barbarian?

_Brass._ I learnt it at Algiers.

_Dick._ Come, make thy Turkish demand then.

_Brass._ You know you gave me a bank-bill this morning to receive

for you.

_Dick._ I did so, of fifty pounds; ’tis thine. So, now thou art

satisfied all is fixed.

_Brass._ It is not indeed. There’s a diamond necklace you robb’d

your mother of e’en now.

_Dick._ Ah, you Jew!

_Brass._ No words.

_Dick._ My dear Brass!

_Brass._ I insist.

_Dick._ My old friend!

_Brass._ Dick Amlet [_raising his voice_] I insist.

_Dick._ Ah, the cormorant [_Aside_].—Well, ’tis thine: thou’lt never

thrive with it.

_Brass._ When I find it begins to do me mischief, I’ll give it you

again. But I must have a wedding suit.

_Dick._ Well.

_Brass._ A stock of linen.

_Dick._ Enough.

_Brass._ Not yet——a silver-hilted sword.

_Dick._ Well, thou shalt have that too. Now thou hast every thing.

_Brass._ Heav’n forgive me, I forgot a ring of remembrance. I would

not forget all these favours for the world: a sparkling diamond will

be always playing in my eye, and put me in mind of them.

_Dick._ This unconscionable rogue! [_Aside_]—Well, I’ll bespeak one

for thee.

_Brass._ Brilliant.

_Dick._ It shall. But if the thing don’t succeed after all—

_Brass._ I am a man of honour and restore: and so, the treaty being

finish’d, I strike my flag of defiance, and fall into my respects

again.’

[_Takes off his hat._

The Confederacy is a comedy of infinite contrivance and intrigue, with a

matchless spirit of impudence. It is a fine careless _exposé_ of

heartless want of principle: for there is no anger or severity against

vice expressed in it, as in Wycherley. The author’s morality in all

cases (except his Provoked Wife, which was undertaken as a penance for

past peccadillos) sits very loose upon him. It is a little upon the

turn; ‘it does somewhat smack.’ Old Palmer, as Dick Amlet, asking his

mother’s blessing on his knee, was the very idea of a graceless son.—His

sweetheart Corinna is a Miss Prue, but nature works in her more

powerfully.—Lord Foppington, in the Relapse, is a most splendid

caricature: he is a personification of the foppery and folly of dress

and external appearance in full feather. He blazes out and dazzles sober

reason with ridiculous ostentation. Still I think this character is a

copy from Etherege’s Sir Fopling Flutter, and upon the whole, perhaps,

Sir Fopling is the more natural grotesque of the two. His soul is more

in his dress; he is a more disinterested coxcomb. The lord is an

ostentatious, strutting, vain-glorious blockhead: the knight is an

unaffected, self-complacent, serious admirer of his equipage and person.

For instance, what they severally say on the subject of contemplating

themselves in the glass, is a proof of this. Sir Fopling thinks a

looking-glass in the room ‘the best company in the world;’ it is another

self to him: Lord Foppington merely considers it as necessary to adjust

his appearance, that he may make a figure in company. The finery of the

one has an imposing air of grandeur about it, and is studied for effect:

the other is really in love with a laced suit, and is hand and glove

with the newest-cut fashion. He really thinks his tailor or peruke-maker

the greatest man in the world, while his lordship treats them familiarly

as necessary appendages of his person. Still this coxcomb-nobleman’s

effeminacy and mock-heroic vanity are admirably depicted, and held up to

unrivalled ridicule; and his courtship of Miss Hoyden is excellent in

all its stages, and ends oracularly.

_Lord Foppington._—‘Now, for my part, I think the wisest thing a man can

do with an aching heart, is to put on a serene countenance; for a

philosophical air is the most becoming thing in the world to the face of

a person of quality: I will therefore bear my disgrace like a great man,

and let the people see I am above an affront. [_then turning to his

brother_] Dear Tam, since things are thus fallen out, pr’ythee give me

leave to wish thee joy, I do it _de bon cœur_, strike me dumb: you have

married a woman beautiful in her person, charming in her airs, prudent

in her conduct, constant in her inclinations, and of a nice

morality—stap my vitals!’

Poor Hoyden fares ill in his lordship’s description of her, though she

could expect no better at his hands for her desertion of him. She wants

sentiment, to be sure, but she has other qualifications—she is a fine

bouncing piece of flesh and blood. Her first announcement is

decisive—‘Let loose the greyhound, and lock up Hoyden.’ Her declaration,

‘It’s well they’ve got me a husband, or ecod, I’d marry the baker,’

comes from her mouth like a shot from a culverin, and leaves no doubt,

by its effect upon the ear, that she would have made it good in the

sequel, if she had not been provided for. Her indifference to the man

she is to marry, and her attachment to the finery and the title, are

justified by an attentive observation of nature in its simplest guise.

There is, however, no harm in Hoyden; she merely wishes to consult her

own inclination: she is by no means like Corinna in the Confederacy, ‘a

devilish girl at the bottom,’ nor is it her great delight to plague

other people.—Sir Tunbelly Clumsy is the right worshipful and worthy

father of so delicate an offspring. He is a coarse, substantial contrast

to the flippant and flimsy Lord Foppington. If the one is not without

reason ‘proud to be at the head of so prevailing a party’ as that of

coxcombs, the other may look big and console himself (under some

affronts) with being a very competent representative, a knight of the

shire, of the once formidable, though now obsolete class of country

squires, who had no idea beyond the boundaries of their own estates, or

the circumference of their own persons. His unwieldy dulness gives, by

the rule of contraries, a lively sense of lightness and grace: his

stupidity answers all the purposes of wit. His portly paunch repels a

jest like a woolsack: a sarcasm rebounds from him like a ball. His

presence is a cure for gravity; and he is a standing satire upon himself

and the class in natural history to which he belonged.—Sir John Brute,

in the Provoked Wife, is an animal of the same English growth, but of a

cross-grained breed. He has a spice of the demon mixed up with the

brute; is mischievous as well as stupid; has improved his natural parts

by a town education and example; opposes the fine-lady airs and graces

of his wife by brawling oaths, impenetrable surliness, and pot-house

valour; overpowers any tendency she might have to vapours or hysterics,

by the fumes of tobacco and strong beer; and thinks to be master in his

own house by roaring in taverns, reeling home drunk every night,

breaking lamps, and beating the watch. He does not, however, find this

lordly method answer. He turns out to be a coward as well as a bully,

and dares not resent the injuries he has provoked by his unmanly

behaviour. This was Garrick’s favourite part; and I have heard that his

acting in the drunken scene, in which he was disguised not as a

clergyman, but as a woman of the town, which was an alteration of his

own to suit the delicacy of the times, was irresistible. The ironical

conversations in this play between Belinda and Lady Brute, as well as

those in the Relapse between Amanda and her cousin Berinthia, will do to

compare with Congreve in the way of wit and studied raillery, but they

will not stand the comparison. Araminta and Clarissa keep up the ball

between them with more spirit, for their conversation is very like that

of kept-mistresses; and the mixture of fashionable _slang_ and professed

want of principle gives a sort of zest and high seasoning to their

confidential communications, which Vanbrugh could supply as well as any

body. But he could not do without the taint of grossness and

licentiousness. Lady Townly is not the really vicious character, nor

quite the fine lady, which the author would have her to be. Lady Grace

is so far better; she is what she pretends to be, merely _sober_ and

insipid.—Vanbrugh’s _forte_ was not the sentimental or didactic; his

genius flags and grows dull when it is not put into action, and wants

the stimulus of sudden emergency, or the fortuitous collision of

different motives, to call out all its force and vivacity. His

antitheses are happy and brilliant contrasts of character; his _double

entendres_ equivocal situations; his best jokes are practical devices,

not epigrammatic conceits. His wit is that which is emphatically called

_mother-wit_. It brings those who possess it, or to whom he lends it,

into scrapes by its restlessness, and brings them out of them by its

alacrity. Several of his favourite characters are knavish, adroit

adventurers, who have all the gipsy jargon, the cunning impudence, cool

presence of mind, selfishness, and indefatigable industry; all the

excuses, lying, dexterity, the intellectual juggling and legerdemain

tricks, necessary to fit them for this sort of predatory warfare on the

simplicity, follies, or vices of mankind. He discovers the utmost

dramatic generalship in bringing off his characters at a pinch, and by

an instantaneous _ruse de guerre_, when the case seems hopeless in any

other hands. The train of his associations, to express the same thing in

metaphysical language, lies in following the suggestions of his fancy

into every possible connexion of cause and effect, rather than into

every possible combination of likeness or difference. His ablest

characters shew that they are so by displaying their ingenuity, address,

and presence of mind in critical junctures, and in their own affairs,

rather than their wisdom or their wit ‘in intellectual gladiatorship,’

or in speculating on the affairs and characters of other people.

Farquhar’s chief characters are also adventurers; but they are

adventurers of a romantic, not a knavish stamp, and succeed no less by

their honesty than their boldness. They conquer their difficulties, and

effect their ‘hair-breadth ‘scapes’ by the impulse of natural enthusiasm

and the confidence of high principles of gallantry and honour, as much

as by their dexterity and readiness at expedients. They are real

gentlemen, and only pretended impostors. Vanbrugh’s upstart heroes are

without ‘any relish of salvation,’ without generosity, virtue, or any

pretensions to it. We have little sympathy for them, and no respect at

all. But we have every sort of good-will towards Farquhar’s heroes, who

have as many peccadillos to answer for, and play as many rogue’s tricks,

but are honest fellows at bottom. I know little other difference between

these two capital writers and copyists of nature, than that Farquhar’s

nature is the better nature of the two. We seem to like both the author

and his favourites. He has humour, character, and invention, in common

with the other, with a more unaffected gaiety and spirit of enjoyment,

which overflows and sparkles in all he does. He makes us laugh from

pleasure oftener than from malice. He somewhere prides himself in having

introduced on the stage the class of comic heroes here spoken of, which

has since become a standard character, and which represents the

warm-hearted, rattle-brained, thoughtless, high-spirited young fellow,

who floats on the back of his misfortunes without repining, who forfeits

appearances, but saves his honour—and he gives us to understand that it

was his own. He did not need to be ashamed of it. Indeed there is

internal evidence that this sort of character is his own, for it

pervades his works generally, and is the moving spirit that informs

them. His comedies have on this account probably a greater appearance of

truth and nature than almost any others. His incidents succeed one

another with rapidity, but without premeditation; his wit is easy and

spontaneous; his style animated, unembarrassed, and flowing; his

characters full of life and spirit, and never overstrained so as to

‘o’erstep the modesty of nature,’ though they sometimes, from haste and

carelessness, seem left in a crude, unfinished state. There is a

constant ebullition of gay, laughing invention, cordial good humour, and

fine animal spirits, in his writings.

Of the four writers here classed together, we should perhaps have

courted Congreve’s acquaintance most, for his wit and the elegance of

his manners; Wycherley’s, for his sense and observation on human nature;

Vanbrugh’s, for his power of farcical description and telling a story;

Farquhar’s, for the pleasure of his society, and the love of good

fellowship. His fine gentlemen are not gentlemen of fortune and fashion,

like those in Congreve; but are rather ‘God Almighty’s gentlemen.’ His

valets are good fellows: even his chambermaids are some of them

disinterested and sincere. But his fine ladies, it must be allowed, are

not so amiable, so witty, or accomplished, as those in Congreve. Perhaps

they both described women in high-life as they found them: Congreve took

their conversation, Farquhar their conduct. In the way of fashionable

vice and petrifying affectation, there is nothing to come up to his Lady

Lurewell, in the Trip to the Jubilee. She by no means makes good Mr.

Burke’s courtly and chivalrous observation, that the evil of vice

consists principally in its want of refinement; and one benefit of the

dramatic exhibition of such characters is, that they overturn false

maxims of morality, and settle accounts fairly and satisfactorily

between theory and practice. Her lover, Colonel Standard, is indeed an

awkward incumbrance upon so fine a lady: it was a character that the

poet did not like; and he has merely sketched him in, leaving him to

answer for himself as well as he could, which is but badly. We have no

suspicion, either from his conduct, or from any hint dropped by

accident, that he is the first seducer and the possessor of the virgin

affections of Lady Lurewell. The double transformation of this virago

from vice to virtue, and from virtue to vice again, her plausible

pretensions and artful wiles, her violent temper and dissolute passions,

shew a thorough knowledge of the effects both of nature and habit in

making up human character. Farquhar’s own heedless turn for gallantry

would be likely to throw him upon such a character; and his goodness of

heart and sincerity of disposition would teach him to expose its wanton

duplicity and gilded rottenness. Lurewell is almost as abandoned a

character as Olivia, in the Plain Dealer; but the indignation excited

against her is of a less serious and tragic cast. Her peevish disgust

and affected horror at every thing that comes near her, form a very

edifying picture. Her dissatisfaction and _ennui_ are not mere airs and

graces worn for fashion’s sake; but are real and tormenting inmates of

her breast, arising from a surfeit of pleasure and the consciousness of

guilt. All that is hateful in the caprice, ill humour, spite, _hauteur_,

folly, impudence, and affectation of the complete woman of quality, is

contained in the scene between her and her servants in the first act.

The depravity would be intolerable, even in imagination, if the weakness

were not ludicrous in the extreme. It shews, in the highest degree, the

power of circumstances and example to pervert the understanding, the

imagination, and even the senses. The manner in which the character of

the gay, wild, free-hearted, but not altogether profligate or unfeeling

Sir Harry Wildair is played off against the designing, vindictive,

imperious, uncontroulable, and unreasonable humours of Lurewell, in the

scene where she tries to convince him of his wife’s infidelity, while he

stops his ears to her pretended proofs, is not surpassed in modern

comedy. I shall give it here:—

‘_Wildair._ Now, dear madam, I have secur’d my brother, you have

dispos’d of the colonel, and we’ll rail at love till we ha’n’t a

word more to say.

_Lurewell._ Ay, Sir Harry. Please to sit a little, Sir. You must

know I’m in a strange humour of asking you some questions. How did

you like your lady, pray, Sir?

_Wild._ Like her! Ha, ha, ha. So very well, faith, that for her very

sake I’m in love with every woman I meet.

_Lure._ And did matrimony please you extremely?

_Wild._ So very much, that if polygamy were allow’d, I would have a

new wife every day.

_Lure._ Oh, Sir Harry! this is raillery. But your serious thoughts

upon the matter, pray.

_Wild._ Why, then, Madam, to give you my true sentiments of wedlock:

I had a lady that I married by chance, she was virtuous by chance,

and I lov’d her by great chance. Nature gave her beauty, education

an air; and fortune threw a young fellow of five-and-twenty in her

lap. I courted her all day, lov’d her all night; she was my mistress

one day, and my wife another: I found in one the variety of a

thousand, and the very confinement of marriage gave me the pleasure

of change.

_Lure._ And she was very virtuous.

_Wild._ Look ye, Madam, you know she was beautiful. She had good

nature about her mouth, the smile of beauty in her cheeks, sparkling

wit in her forehead, and sprightly love in her eyes.

_Lure._ Pshaw! I knew her very well; the woman was well enough. But

you don’t answer my question, Sir.

_Wild._ So, Madam, as I told you before, she was young and

beautiful, I was rich and vigorous; my estate gave a lustre to my

love, and a swing to our enjoyment; round, like the ring that made

us one, our golden pleasures circled without end.

_Lure._ Golden pleasures! Golden fiddlesticks. What d’ye tell me of

your canting stuff? Was she virtuous, I say?

_Wild._ Ready to burst with envy; but I will torment thee a little.

[_Aside._] So, Madam, I powder’d to please her, she dress’d to

engage me; we toy’d away the morning in amorous nonsense, loll’d

away the evening in the Park or the playhouse, and all the

night—hem!

_Lure._ Look ye, Sir, answer my question, or I shall take it ill.

_Wild._ Then, Madam, there was never such a pattern of unity. Her

wants were still prevented by my supplies; my own heart whisper’d me

her desires, ‘cause she herself was there; no contention ever rose,

but the dear strife of who should most oblige: no noise about

authority; for neither would stoop to command, ‘cause both thought

it glory to obey.

_Lure._ Stuff! stuff! stuff! I won’t believe a word on’t.

_Wild._ Ha, ha, ha. Then, Madam, we never felt the yoke of

matrimony, because our inclinations made us one; a power superior to

the forms of wedlock. The marriage torch had lost its weaker light

in the bright flame of mutual love that join’d our hearts before;

then—

_Lure._ Hold, hold, Sir; I cannot bear it; Sir Harry, I’m affronted.

_Wild._ Ha, ha, ha. Affronted!

_Lure._ Yes, Sir; ’tis an affront to any woman to hear another

commended; and I will resent it.—In short, Sir Harry, your wife was

a—

_Wild._ Buz, Madam—no detraction! I’ll tell you what she was. So

much an angel in her conduct, that though I saw another in her arms,

I should have thought the devil had rais’d the phantom, and my more

conscious reason had given my eyes the lie.

_Lure._ Very well! Then I a’n’t to be believ’d, it seems. But, d’ye

hear, Sir?

_Wild._ Nay, Madam, do you hear! I tell you, ’tis not in the power

of malice to cast a blot upon her fame; and though the vanity of our

sex, and the envy of yours, conspir’d both against her honour, I

would not hear a syllable.

[_Stopping his ears._

_Lure._ Why then, as I hope to breathe, you shall hear it. The

picture! the picture! the picture!

[_Bawling aloud._

_Wild._ Ran, tan, tan. A pistol-bullet from ear to ear.

_Lure._ That picture which you had just now from the French marquis

for a thousand pound; that very picture did your very virtuous wife

send to the marquis as a pledge of her very virtuous and dying

affection. So that you are both robb’d of your honour, and cheated

of your money.

[_Aloud._

_Wild._ Louder, louder, Madam.

_Lure._ I tell you, Sir, your wife was a jilt; I know it, I’ll swear

it. She virtuous! she was a devil!

_Wild._ [_Sings._] Tal, al, deral.

_Lure._ Was ever the like seen! He won’t hear me. I burst with

malice, and now he won’t mind me! Won’t you hear me yet?

_Wild._ No, no, Madam.

_Lure._ Nay, then I can’t bear it. [_Bursts out a crying._] Sir, I

must say that you’re an unworthy person, to use a woman of quality

at this rate, when she has her heart full of malice; I don’t know

but it may make me miscarry. Sir, I say again and again, that she

was no better than one of us, and I know it; I have seen it with my

eyes, so I have.

_Wild._ Good heav’ns deliver me, I beseech thee. How shall I ’scape!

_Lure._ Will you hear me yet? Dear Sir Harry, do but hear me; I’m

longing to speak.

_Wild._ Oh! I have it.—Hush, hush, hush.

_Lure._ Eh! what’s the matter?

_Wild._ A mouse! a mouse! a mouse!

_Lure._ Where? where? where?

_Wild._ Your petticoats, your petticoats, Madam. [_Lurewell shrieks

and runs._] O my head! I was never worsted by a woman before. But I

have heard so much to know the marquis to be a villain.

[_Knocking._] Nay, then, I must run for’t. [_Runs out, and

returns._] The entry is stopt by a chair coming in; and something

there is in that chair that I will discover, if I can find a place

to hide myself. [_Goes to the closet door._] Fast! I have keys about

me for most locks about St. James’s. Let me see. [_Tries one key._]

No, no; this opens my Lady Planthorn’s back-door. [_Tries another._]

Nor this; this is the key to my Lady Stakeall’s garden. [_Tries a

third._] Ay, ay, this does it, faith. [_Goes into the closet._]’

The dialogue between Cherry and Archer, in the Beaux’ Stratagem, in

which she repeats her well-conned love catechism, is as good as this,

but not so fit to be repeated any where but on the stage. The Beaux’

Stratagem is the best of his plays, as a whole; infinitely lively,

bustling, and full of point and interest. The assumed disguise of the

two principal characters, Archer and Aimwell, is a perpetual amusement

to the mind. Scrub is an indispensable appendage to a country

gentleman’s kitchen, and an exquisite confidant for the secrets of young

ladies. The Recruiting Officer is not one of Farquhar’s best comedies,

though it is light and entertaining. It contains chiefly sketches and

hints of characters; and the conclusion of the plot is rather lame. He

informs us, in the dedication to the published play, that it was founded

on some local and personal circumstances that happened in Shropshire,

where he was himself a recruiting officer; and it seems not unlikely,

that most of the scenes actually took place at the foot of the Wrekin.

The Inconstant is much superior to it. The romantic interest and

impressive catastrophe of this play I thought had been borrowed from the

more poetical and tragedy-practised muse of Beaumont and Fletcher; but I

find they are taken from an actual circumstance which took place in the

author’s knowledge, at Paris. His other pieces, Love and a Bottle, and

the Twin Rivals, are not on a par with these; and are no longer in

possession of the stage. The public are, after all, not the worst

judges.—Farquhar’s Letters, prefixed to the collection of his plays, are

lively, good humoured, and sensible; and contain, among other things, an

admirable exposition of the futility of the dramatic unities of time and

place. This criticism preceded Dennis’s remarks on that subject, in his

Strictures on Mr. Addison’s Cato; and completely anticipates all that

Dr. Johnson has urged so unanswerably on the subject, in his preface to

Shakspeare.

We may date the decline of English comedy from the time of Farquhar. For

this several causes might be assigned in the political and moral changes

of the times; but among other minor ones, Jeremy Collier, in his View of

the English Stage, frightened the poets, and did all he could to spoil

the stage, by pretending to reform it; that is, by making it an echo of

the pulpit, instead of a reflection of the manners of the world. He

complains bitterly of the profaneness of the stage; and is for fining

the actors for every oath they utter, to put an end to the practice; as

if common swearing had been an invention of the poets and stage-players.

He cannot endure that the fine gentlemen drink, and the fine ladies

intrigue, in the scenes of Congreve and Wycherley, when things so

contrary to law and gospel happened nowhere else. He is vehement against

duelling, as a barbarous custom, of which the example is suffered with

impunity nowhere but on the stage. He is shocked at the number of

fortunes that are irreparably ruined by the vice of gaming on the boards

of the theatres. He seems to think that every breach of the ten

commandments begins and ends there. He complains that the tame husbands

of his time are laughed at on the stage, and that the successful

gallants triumph, which was without precedent either in the city or the

court. He does not think it enough that the stage ‘shews vice its own

image, scorn its own feature,’ unless they are damned at the same

instant, and carried off (like Don Juan) by real devils to the infernal

regions, before the faces of the spectators. It seems that the author

would have been contented to be present at a comedy or a farce, like a

Father Inquisitor, if there was to be an _auto da fé_ at the end, to

burn both the actors and the poet. This sour, nonjuring critic has a

great horror and repugnance at poor human nature, in nearly all its

shapes; of the existence of which he appears only to be aware through

the stage: and this he considers as the only exception to the practice

of piety, and the performance of the whole duty of man; and seems fully

convinced, that if this nuisance were abated, the whole world would be

regulated according to the creed and the catechism.—This is a strange

blindness and infatuation! He forgets, in his overheated zeal, two

things: First, That the stage must be copied from real life, that the

manners represented there must exist elsewhere, and ‘denote a foregone

conclusion,’ to satisfy common sense.—Secondly, That the stage cannot

shock common decency, according to the notions that prevail of it in any

age or country, because the exhibition is public. If the pulpit, for

instance, had banished all vice and imperfection from the world, as our

critic would suppose, we should not have seen the offensive reflection

of them on the stage, which he resents as an affront to the cloth, and

an outrage on religion. On the contrary, with such a sweeping

reformation as this theory implies, the office of the preacher, as well

as of the player, would be gone; and if the common peccadillos of lying,

swearing, intriguing, fighting, drinking, gaming, and other such

obnoxious dramatic common-places, were once fairly got rid of in

reality, neither the comic poet would be able to laugh at them on the

stage, nor our good-natured author to consign them over to damnation

elsewhere. The work is, however, written with ability, and did much

mischief: it produced those _do-me-good_, lack-a-daisical, whining,

make-believe comedies in the next age, (such as Steele’s Conscious

Lovers, and others,) which are enough to set one to sleep, and where the

author tries in vain to be merry and wise in the same breath; in which

the utmost stretch of licentiousness goes no farther than the gallant’s

being suspected of keeping a mistress, and the highest proof of courage

is given in his refusing to accept a challenge.

In looking into the old editions of the comedies of the last age, I find

the names of the best actors of those times, of whom scarcely any record

is left but in Colley Cibber’s Life, and the monument to Mrs. Oldfield,

in Westminster Abbey; which Voltaire reckons among the proofs of the

liberality, wisdom, and politeness of the English nation:—

‘Let no rude hand deface it,

And its forlorn _hic jacet_.’

Authors after their deaths live in their works; players only in their

epitaphs and the breath of common tradition. They ‘die and leave the

world no copy.’ Their uncertain popularity is as short-lived as it is

dazzling: and in a few years nothing is known of them but that _they

were_.

LECTURE V

ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS

‘THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND IS MAN’

I now come to speak of that sort of writing which has been so

successfully cultivated in this country by our periodical Essayists, and

which consists in applying the talents and resources of the mind to all

that mixed mass of human affairs, which, though not included under the

head of any regular art, science, or profession, falls under the

cognizance of the writer, and ‘comes home to the business and bosoms of

men.’ _Quicquid agunt homines nostri farrago libelli_, is the general

motto of this department of literature. It does not treat of minerals or

fossils, of the virtues of plants, or the influence of planets; it does

not meddle with forms of belief, or systems of philosophy, nor launch

into the world of spiritual existences; but it makes familiar with the

world of men and women, records their actions, assigns their motives,

exhibits their whims, characterises their pursuits in all their singular

and endless variety, ridicules their absurdities, exposes their

inconsistencies, ‘holds the mirror up to nature, and shews the very age

and body of the time its form and pressure;’ takes minutes of our dress,

air, looks, words, thoughts, and actions; shews us what we are, and what

we are not; plays the whole game of human life over before us, and by

making us enlightened spectators of its many-coloured scenes, enables us

(if possible) to become tolerably reasonable agents in the one in which

we have to perform a part. ‘The act and practic part of life is thus

made the mistress of our theorique.’ It is the best and most natural

course of study. It is in morals and manners what the experimental is in

natural philosophy, as opposed to the dogmatical method. It does not

deal in sweeping clauses of proscription and anathema, but in nice

distinctions and liberal constructions. It makes up its general accounts

from details, its few theories from many facts. It does not try to prove

all black or all white as it wishes, but lays on the intermediate

colours, (and most of them not unpleasing ones,) as it finds them

blended with ‘the web of our life, which is of a mingled yarn, good and

ill together.’ It inquires what human life is and has been, to shew what

it ought to be. It follows it into courts and camps, into town and

country, into rustic sports or learned disputations, into the various

shades of prejudice or ignorance, of refinement or barbarism, into its

private haunts or public pageants, into its weaknesses and littlenesses,

its professions and its practices—before it pretends to distinguish

right from wrong, or one thing from another. How, indeed, should it do

so otherwise?

‘Quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,

Plenius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit.’

The writers I speak of are, if not moral philosophers, moral historians,

and that’s better: or if they are both, they found the one character

upon the other; their premises precede their conclusions; and we put

faith in their testimony, for we know that it is true.

Montaigne was the first person who in his Essays led the way to this

kind of writing among the moderns. The great merit of Montaigne then

was, that he may be said to have been the first who had the courage to

say as an author what he felt as a man. And as courage is generally the

effect of conscious strength, he was probably led to do so by the

richness, truth, and force of his own observations on books and men. He

was, in the truest sense, a man of original mind, that is, he had the

power of looking at things for himself, or as they really were, instead

of blindly trusting to, and fondly repeating what others told him that

they were. He got rid of the go-cart of prejudice and affectation, with

the learned lumber that follows at their heels, because he could do

without them. In taking up his pen he did not set up for a philosopher,

wit, orator, or moralist, but he became all these by merely daring to

tell us whatever passed through his mind, in its naked simplicity and

force, that he thought any ways worth communicating. He did not, in the

abstract character of an author, undertake to say all that could be said

upon a subject, but what in his capacity as an inquirer after truth he

happened to know about it. He was neither a pedant nor a bigot. He

neither supposed that he was bound to know all things, nor that all

things were bound to conform to what he had fancied or would have them

to be. In treating of men and manners, he spoke of them as he found

them, not according to preconceived notions and abstract dogmas; and he

began by teaching us what he himself was. In criticising books he did

not compare them with rules and systems, but told us what he saw to like

or dislike in them. He did not take his standard of excellence

‘according to an exact scale’ of Aristotle, or fall out with a work that

was good for any thing, because ‘not one of the angles at the four

corners was a right one.’ He was, in a word, the first author who was

not a book-maker, and who wrote not to make converts of others to

established creeds and prejudices, but to satisfy his own mind of the

truth of things. In this respect we know not which to be most charmed

with, the author or the man. There is an inexpressible frankness and

sincerity, as well as power, in what he writes. There is no attempt at

imposition or concealment, no juggling tricks or solemn mouthing, no

laboured attempts at proving himself always in the right, and every body

else in the wrong; he says what is uppermost, lays open what floats at

the top or the bottom of his mind, and deserves Pope’s character of him,

where he professes to

‘——pour out all as plain

As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne.’[17]

He does not converse with us like a pedagogue with his pupil, whom he

wishes to make as great a blockhead as himself, but like a philosopher

and friend who has passed through life with thought and observation, and

is willing to enable others to pass through it with pleasure and profit.

A writer of this stamp, I confess, appears to me as much superior to a

common bookworm, as a library of real books is superior to a mere

book-case, painted and lettered on the outside with the names of

celebrated works. As he was the first to attempt this new way of

writing, so the same strong natural impulse which prompted the

undertaking, carried him to the end of his career. The same force and

honesty of mind which urged him to throw off the shackles of custom and

prejudice, would enable him to complete his triumph over them. He has

left little for his successors to achieve in the way of just and

original speculation on human life. Nearly all the thinking of the two

last centuries of that kind which the French denominate _morale

observatrice_, is to be found in Montaigne’s Essays: there is the germ,

at least, and generally much more. He sowed the seed and cleared away

the rubbish, even where others have reaped the fruit, or cultivated and

decorated the soil to a greater degree of nicety and perfection. There

is no one to whom the old Latin adage is more applicable than to

Montaigne, ‘_Pereant isti qui ante nos nostra dixerunt_.’ There has been

no new impulse given to thought since his time. Among the specimens of

criticisms on authors which he has left us, are those on Virgil, Ovid,

and Boccaccio, in the account of books which he thinks worth reading, or

(which is the same thing) which he finds he can read in his old age, and

which may be reckoned among the few criticisms which are worth reading

at any age.[18]

Montaigne’s Essays were translated into English by Charles Cotton, who

was one of the wits and poets of the age of Charles II.; and Lord

Halifax, one of the noble critics of that day, declared it to be ‘the

book in the world he was the best pleased with.’ This mode of familiar

Essay-writing, free from the trammels of the schools, and the airs of

professed authorship, was successfully imitated, about the same time, by

Cowley and Sir William Temple, in their miscellaneous Essays, which are

very agreeable and learned talking upon paper. Lord Shaftesbury, on the

contrary, who aimed at the same easy, _degagé_ mode of communicating his

thoughts to the world, has quite spoiled his matter, which is sometimes

valuable, by his manner, in which he carries a certain flaunting,

flowery, figurative, flirting style of amicable condescension to the

reader, to an excess more tantalising than the most starched and

ridiculous formality of the age of James I. There is nothing so

tormenting as the affectation of ease and freedom from affectation.

The ice being thus thawed, and the barrier that kept authors at a

distance from common sense and feeling broken through, the transition

was not difficult from Montaigne and his imitators, to our Periodical

Essayists. These last applied the same unrestrained expression of their

thoughts to the more immediate and passing scenes of life, to temporary

and local matters; and in order to discharge the invidious office of

_Censor Morum_ more freely, and with less responsibility, assumed some

fictitious and humorous disguise, which, however, in a great degree

corresponded to their own peculiar habits and character. By thus

concealing their own name and person under the title of the Tatler,

Spectator, &c. they were enabled to inform us more fully of what was

passing in the world, while the dramatic contrast and ironical point of

view to which the whole is subjected, added a greater liveliness and

_piquancy_ to the descriptions. The philosopher and wit here commences

newsmonger, makes himself master of ‘the perfect spy o’ th’ time,’ and

from his various walks and turns through life, brings home little

curious specimens of the humours, opinions, and manners of his

contemporaries, as the botanist brings home different plants and weeds,

or the mineralogist different shells and fossils, to illustrate their

several theories, and be useful to mankind.

The first of these papers that was attempted in this country was set up

by Steele in the beginning of the last century; and of all our

periodical Essayists, the _Tatler_ (for that was the name he assumed)

has always appeared to me the most amusing and agreeable. Montaigne,

whom I have proposed to consider as the father of this kind of personal

authorship among the moderns, in which the reader is admitted behind the

curtain, and sits down with the writer in his gown and slippers, was a

most magnanimous and undisguised egotist; but Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.

was the more disinterested gossip of the two. The French author is

contented to describe the peculiarities of his own mind and

constitution, which he does with a copious and unsparing hand. The

English journalist good-naturedly lets you into the secret both of his

own affairs and those of others. A young lady, on the other side Temple

Bar, cannot be seen at her glass for half a day together, but Mr.

Bickerstaff takes due notice of it; and he has the first intelligence of

the symptoms of the _belle_ passion appearing in any young gentleman at

the West-end of the town. The departures and arrivals of widows with

handsome jointures, either to bury their grief in the country, or to

procure a second husband in town, are punctually recorded in his pages.

He is well acquainted with the celebrated beauties of the preceding age

at the court of Charles II.; and the old gentleman (as he feigns

himself) often grows romantic in recounting ‘the disastrous strokes

which his youth suffered’ from the glances of their bright eyes, and

their unaccountable caprices. In particular, he dwells with a secret

satisfaction on the recollection of one of his mistresses, who left him

for a richer rival, and whose constant reproach to her husband, on

occasion of any quarrel between them, was ‘I, that might have married

the famous Mr. Bickerstaff, to be treated in this manner!’ The club at

the Trumpet consists of a set of persons almost as well worth knowing as

himself. The cavalcade of the justice of the peace, the knight of the

shire, the country squire, and the young gentleman, his nephew, who came

to wait on him at his chambers, in such form and ceremony, seem not to

have settled the order of their precedence to this hour;[19] and I

should hope that the upholsterer and his companions, who used to sun

themselves in the Green Park, and who broke their rest and fortunes to

maintain the balance of power in Europe, stand as fair a chance for

immortality as some modern politicians. Mr. Bickerstaff himself is a

gentleman and a scholar, a humourist, and a man of the world; with a

great deal of nice easy _naïveté_ about him. If he walks out and is

caught in a shower of rain, he makes amends for this unlucky accident by

a criticism on the shower in Virgil, and concludes with a burlesque copy

of verses on a city-shower. He entertains us, when he dates from his own

apartment, with a quotation from Plutarch, or a moral reflection; from

the Grecian coffee-house with politics; and from Wills’, or the Temple,

with the poets and players, the beaux and men of wit and pleasure about

town. In reading the pages of the Tatler, we seem as if suddenly carried

back to the age of Queen Anne, of toupees and full-bottomed periwigs.

The whole appearance of our dress and manners undergoes a delightful

metamorphosis. The beaux and the belles are of a quite different species

from what they are at present; we distinguish the dappers, the smarts,

and the pretty fellows, as they pass by Mr. Lilly’s shop-windows in the

Strand; we are introduced to Betterton and Mrs. Oldfield behind the

scenes; are made familiar with the persons and performances of Will

Estcourt or Tom Durfey; we listen to a dispute at a tavern, on the

merits of the Duke of Marlborough, or Marshal Turenne; or are present at

the first rehearsal of a play by Vanbrugh, or the reading of a new poem

by Mr. Pope. The privilege of thus virtually transporting ourselves to

past times, is even greater than that of visiting distant places in

reality. London, a hundred years ago, would be much better worth seeing

than Paris at the present moment.

It will be said, that all this is to be found, in the same or a greater

degree, in the Spectator. For myself, I do not think so; or at least,

there is in the last work a much greater proportion of commonplace

matter. I have, on this account, always preferred the Tatler to the

Spectator. Whether it is owing to my having been earlier or better

acquainted with the one than the other, my pleasure in reading these two

admirable works is not in proportion to their comparative reputation.

The Tatler contains only half the number of volumes, and, I will venture

to say, nearly an equal quantity of sterling wit and sense. ‘The first

sprightly runnings’ are there; it has more of the original spirit, more

of the freshness and stamp of nature. The indications of character and

strokes of humour are more true and frequent; the reflections that

suggest themselves arise more from the occasion, and are less spun out

into regular dissertations. They are more like the remarks which occur

in sensible conversation, and less like a lecture. Something is left to

the understanding of the reader. Steele seems to have gone into his

closet chiefly to set down what he observed out of doors. Addison seems

to have spent most of his time in his study, and to have spun out and

wire-drawn the hints, which he borrowed from Steele, or took from

nature, to the utmost. I am far from wishing to depreciate Addison’s

talents, but I am anxious to do justice to Steele, who was, I think,

upon the whole, a less artificial and more original writer. The humorous

descriptions of Steele resemble loose sketches, or fragments of a

comedy; those of Addison are rather comments or ingenious paraphrases on

the genuine text. The characters of the club not only in the Tatler, but

in the Spectator, were drawn by Steele. That of Sir Roger de Coverley is

among the number. Addison has, however, gained himself immortal honour

by his manner of filling up this last character. Who is there that can

forget, or be insensible to, the inimitable nameless graces and varied

traits of nature and of old English character in it—to his unpretending

virtues and amiable weaknesses—to his modesty, generosity, hospitality,

and eccentric whims—to the respect of his neighbours, and the affection

of his domestics—to his wayward, hopeless, secret passion for his fair

enemy, the widow, in which there is more of real romance and true

delicacy, than in a thousand tales of knight-errantry—(we perceive the

hectic flush of his cheek, the faltering of his tongue in speaking of

her bewitching airs and ‘the whiteness of her hand’)—to the havoc he

makes among the game in his neighbourhood—to his speech from the bench,

to shew the Spectator what is thought of him in the country—to his

unwillingness to be put up as a sign-post, and his having his own

likeness turned into the Saracen’s head—to his gentle reproof of the

baggage of a gipsy that tells him ‘he has a widow in his line of

life’—to his doubts as to the existence of witchcraft, and protection of

reputed witches—to his account of the family pictures, and his choice of

a chaplain—to his falling asleep at church, and his reproof of John

Williams, as soon as he recovered from his nap, for talking in

sermon-time. The characters of Will. Wimble, and Will. Honeycomb are not

a whit behind their friend, Sir Roger, in delicacy and felicity. The

delightful simplicity and good-humoured officiousness in the one, are

set off by the graceful affectation and courtly pretension in the other.

How long since I first became acquainted with these two characters in

the Spectator! What old-fashioned friends they seem, and yet I am not

tired of them, like so many other friends, nor they of me! How airy

these abstractions of the poet’s pen stream over the dawn of our

acquaintance with human life! how they glance their fairest colours on

the prospect before us! how pure they remain in it to the last, like the

rainbow in the evening-cloud, which the rude hand of time and experience

can neither soil nor dissipate! What a pity that we cannot find the

reality, and yet if we did, the dream would be over. I once thought I

knew a Will. Wimble, and a Will. Honeycomb, but they turned out but

indifferently; the originals in the Spectator still read, word for word,

the same that they always did. We have only to turn to the page, and

find them where we left them!—Many of the most exquisite pieces in the

Tatler, it is to be observed, are Addison’s, as the Court of Honour, and

the Personification of Musical Instruments, with almost all those papers

that form regular sets or series. I do not know whether the picture of

the family of an old college acquaintance, in the Tatler, where the

children run to let Mr. Bickerstaff in at the door, and where the one

that loses the race that way, turns back to tell the father that he is

come; with the nice gradation of incredulity in the little boy, who is

got into Guy of Warwick, and the Seven Champions, and who shakes his

head at the improbability of Æsop’s Fables, is Steele’s or Addison’s,

though I believe it belongs to the former. The account of the two

sisters, one of whom held up her head higher than ordinary, from having

on a pair of flowered garters, and that of the married lady who

complained to the Tatler of the neglect of her husband, with her answers

to some _home_ questions that were put to her, are unquestionably

Steele’s.—If the Tatler is not inferior to the Spectator as a record of

manners and character, it is superior to it in the interest of many of

the stories. Several of the incidents related there by Steele have never

been surpassed in the heart-rending pathos of private distress. I might

refer to those of the lover and his mistress, when the theatre, in which

they were, caught fire; of the bridegroom, who by accident kills his

bride on the day of their marriage; the story of Mr. Eustace and his

wife; and the fine dream about his own mistress when a youth. What has

given its superior reputation to the Spectator, is the greater gravity

of its pretensions, its moral dissertations and critical reasonings, by

which I confess myself less edified than by other things, which are

thought more lightly of. Systems and opinions change, but nature is

always true. It is the moral and didactic tone of the Spectator which

makes us apt to think of Addison (according to Mandeville’s sarcasm) as

‘a parson in a tie-wig.’ Many of his moral Essays are, however,

exquisitely beautiful and quite happy. Such are the reflections on

cheerfulness, those in Westminster Abbey, on the Royal Exchange, and

particularly some very affecting ones on the death of a young lady in

the fourth volume. These, it must be allowed, are the perfection of

elegant sermonising. His critical Essays are not so good. I prefer

Steele’s occasional selection of beautiful poetical passages, without

any affectation of analysing their beauties, to Addison’s finer-spun

theories. The best criticism in the Spectator, that on the Cartoons of

Raphael, of which Mr. Fuseli has availed himself with great spirit in

his Lectures, is by Steele.[20] I owed this acknowledgment to a writer

who has so often put me in good humour with myself, and every thing

about me, when few things else could, and when the tomes of casuistry

and ecclesiastical history, with which the little duodecimo volumes of

the Tatler were overwhelmed and surrounded, in the only library to which

I had access when a boy, had tried their tranquillising effects upon me

in vain. I had not long ago in my hands, by favour of a friend, an

original copy of the quarto edition of the Tatler, with a list of the

subscribers. It is curious to see some names there which we should

hardly think of, (that of Sir Isaac Newton is among them,) and also to

observe the degree of interest excited by those of the different

persons, which is not determined according to the rules of the Herald’s

College. One literary name lasts as long as a whole race of heroes and

their descendants! The Guardian, which followed the Spectator, was, as

may be supposed, inferior to it.

The dramatic and conversational turn which forms the distinguishing

feature and greatest charm of the Spectator and Tatler, is quite lost in

the Rambler by Dr. Johnson. There is no reflected light thrown on human

life from an assumed character, nor any direct one from a display of the

author’s own. The Tatler and Spectator are, as it were, made up of notes

and memorandums of the events and incidents of the day, with finished

studies after nature, and characters fresh from the life, which the

writer moralises upon, and turns to account as they come before him: the

Rambler is a collection of moral Essays, or scholastic theses, written

on set subjects, and of which the individual characters and incidents

are merely artificial illustrations, brought in to give a pretended

relief to the dryness of didactic discussion. The Rambler is a splendid

and imposing common-place book of general topics, and rhetorical

declamation on the conduct and business of human life. In this sense,

there is hardly a reflection that had been suggested on such subjects

which is not to be found in this celebrated work, and there is, perhaps,

hardly a reflection to be found in it which had not been already

suggested and developed by some other author, or in the common course of

conversation. The mass of intellectual wealth here heaped together is

immense, but it is rather the result of gradual accumulation, the

produce of the general intellect, labouring in the mine of knowledge and

reflection, than dug out of the quarry, and dragged into the light by

the industry and sagacity of a single mind. I am not here saying that

Dr. Johnson was a man without originality, compared with the ordinary

run of men’s minds, but he was not a man of original thought or genius,

in the sense in which Montaigne or Lord Bacon was. He opened no new vein

of precious ore, nor did he light upon any single pebbles of uncommon

size and unrivalled lustre. We seldom meet with any thing to ‘give us

pause;’ he does not set us thinking for the first time. His reflections

present themselves like reminiscences; do not disturb the ordinary march

of our thoughts; arrest our attention by the stateliness of their

appearance, and the costliness of their garb, but pass on and mingle

with the throng of our impressions. After closing the volumes of the

Rambler, there is nothing that we remember as a new truth gained to the

mind, nothing indelibly stamped upon the memory; nor is there any

passage that we wish to turn to as embodying any known principle or

observation, with such force and beauty that justice can only be done to

the idea in the author’s own words. Such, for instance, are many of the

passages to be found in Burke, which shine by their own light, belong to

no class, have neither equal nor counterpart, and of which we say that

no one but the author could have written them! There is neither the same

boldness of design, nor mastery of execution in Johnson. In the one, the

spark of genius seems to have met with its congenial matter: the shaft

is sped; the forked lightning dresses up the face of nature in ghastly

smiles, and the loud thunder rolls far away from the ruin that is made.

Dr. Johnson’s style, on the contrary, resembles rather the rumbling of

mimic thunder at one of our theatres; and the light he throws upon a

subject is like the dazzling effect of phosphorus, or an _ignis fatuus_

of words. There is a wide difference, however, between perfect

originality and perfect common-place: neither ideas nor expressions are

trite or vulgar because they are not quite new. They are valuable, and

ought to be repeated, if they have not become quite common; and

Johnson’s style both of reasoning and imagery holds the middle rank

between startling novelty and vapid common-place. Johnson has as much

originality of thinking as Addison; but then he wants his familiarity of

illustration, knowledge of character, and delightful humour.—What most

distinguishes Dr. Johnson from other writers is the pomp and uniformity

of his style. All his periods are cast in the same mould, are of the

same size and shape, and consequently have little fitness to the variety

of things he professes to treat of. His subjects are familiar, but the

author is always upon stilts. He has neither ease nor simplicity, and

his efforts at playfulness, in part, remind one of the lines in Milton:—

‘——The elephant

To make them sport wreath’d his proboscis lithe.’

His Letters from Correspondents, in particular, are more pompous and

unwieldy than what he writes in his own person. This want of relaxation

and variety of manner has, I think, after the first effects of novelty

and surprise were over, been prejudicial to the matter. It takes from

the general power, not only to please, but to instruct. The monotony of

style produces an apparent monotony of ideas. What is really striking

and valuable, is lost in the vain ostentation and circumlocution of the

expression; for when we find the same pains and pomp of diction bestowed

upon the most trifling as upon the most important parts of a sentence or

discourse, we grow tired of distinguishing between pretension and

reality, and are disposed to confound the tinsel and bombast of the

phraseology with want of weight in the thoughts. Thus, from the imposing

and oracular nature of the style, people are tempted at first to imagine

that our author’s speculations are all wisdom and profundity: till

having found out their mistake in some instances, they suppose that

there is nothing but common-place in them, concealed under verbiage and

pedantry; and in both they are wrong. The fault of Dr. Johnson’s style

is, that it reduces all things to the same artificial and unmeaning

level. It destroys all shades of difference, the association between

words and things. It is a perpetual paradox and innovation. He

condescends to the familiar till we are ashamed of our interest in it:

he expands the little till it looks big. ‘If he were to write a fable of

little fishes,’ as Goldsmith said of him, ‘he would make them speak like

great whales.’ We can no more distinguish the most familiar objects in

his descriptions of them, than we can a well-known face under a huge

painted mask. The structure of his sentences, which was his own

invention, and which has been generally imitated since his time, is a

species of rhyming in prose, where one clause answers to another in

measure and quantity, like the tagging of syllables at the end of a

verse; the close of the period follows as mechanically as the

oscillation of a pendulum, the sense is balanced with the sound; each

sentence, revolving round its centre of gravity, is contained with

itself like a couplet, and each paragraph forms itself into a stanza.

Dr. Johnson is also a complete balance-master in the topics of morality.

He never encourages hope, but he counteracts it by fear; he never

elicits a truth, but he suggests some objection in answer to it. He

seizes and alternately quits the clue of reason, lest it should involve

him in the labyrinths of endless error: he wants confidence in himself

and his fellows. He dares not trust himself with the immediate

impressions of things, for fear of compromising his dignity; or follow

them into their consequences, for fear of committing his prejudices. His

timidity is the result, not of ignorance, but of morbid apprehension.

‘He runs the great circle, and is still at home.’ No advance is made by

his writings in any sentiment, or mode of reasoning. Out of the pale of

established authority and received dogmas, all is sceptical, loose, and

desultory: he seems in imagination to strengthen the dominion of

prejudice, as he weakens and dissipates that of reason; and round the

rock of faith and power, on the edge of which he slumbers blindfold and

uneasy, the waves and billows of uncertain and dangerous opinion roar

and heave for evermore. His Rasselas is the most melancholy and

debilitating moral speculation that ever was put forth. Doubtful of the

faculties of his mind, as of his organs of vision, Johnson trusted only

to his feelings and his fears. He cultivated a belief in witches as an

out-guard to the evidences of religion; and abused Milton, and

patronised Lauder, in spite of his aversion to his countrymen, as a step

to secure the existing establishment in church and state. This was

neither right feeling nor sound logic.

The most triumphant record of the talents and character of Johnson is to

be found in Boswell’s Life of him. The man was superior to the author.

When he threw aside his pen, which he regarded as an incumbrance, he

became not only learned and thoughtful, but acute, witty, humorous,

natural, honest; hearty and determined, ‘the king of good fellows and

wale of old men.’ There are as many smart repartees, profound remarks,

and keen invectives to be found in Boswell’s ‘inventory of all he said,’

as are recorded of any celebrated man. The life and dramatic play of his

conversation forms a contrast to his written works. His natural powers

and undisguised opinions were called out in convivial intercourse. In

public, he practised with the foils on: in private, he unsheathed the

sword of controversy, and it was ‘the Ebro’s temper.’ The eagerness of

opposition roused him from his natural sluggishness and acquired

timidity; he returned blow for blow; and whether the trial were of

argument or wit, none of his rivals could boast much of the encounter.

Burke seems to have been the only person who had a chance with him: and

it is the unpardonable sin of Boswell’s work, that he has purposely

omitted their combats of strength and skill. Goldsmith asked, ‘Does he

wind into a subject like a serpent, as Burke does?’ And when exhausted

with sickness, he himself said, ‘If that fellow Burke were here now, he

would kill me.’ It is to be observed, that Johnson’s colloquial style

was as blunt, direct, and downright, as his style of studied composition

was involved and circuitous. As when Topham Beauclerc and Langton

knocked him up at his chambers, at three in the morning, and he came to

the door with the poker in his hand, but seeing them, exclaimed, ‘What,

is it you, my lads? then I’ll have a frisk with you!’ and he afterwards

reproaches Langton, who was a literary milksop, for leaving them to go

to an engagement ‘with some _un-idead_ girls.’ What words to come from

the mouth of the great moralist and lexicographer! His good deeds were

as many as his good sayings. His domestic habits, his tenderness to

servants, and readiness to oblige his friends; the quantity of strong

tea that he drank to keep down sad thoughts; his many labours

reluctantly begun, and irresolutely laid aside; his honest

acknowledgement of his own, and indulgence to the weaknesses of others;

his throwing himself back in the post-chaise with Boswell, and saying,

‘Now I think I am a good-humoured fellow,’ though nobody thought him so,

and yet he was; his quitting the society of Garrick and his actresses,

and his reason for it; his dining with Wilkes, and his kindness to

Goldsmith; his sitting with the young ladies on his knee at the Mitre,

to give them good advice, in which situation, if not explained, he might

be taken for Falstaff; and last and noblest, his carrying the

unfortunate victim of disease and dissipation on his back up through

Fleet Street, (an act which realises the parable of the good

Samaritan)—all these, and innumerable others, endear him to the reader,

and must be remembered to his lasting honour. He had faults, but they

lie buried with him. He had his prejudices and his intolerant feelings;

but he suffered enough in the conflict of his own mind with them. For if

no man can be happy in the free exercise of his reason, no wise man can

be happy without it. His were not time-serving, heartless, hypocritical

prejudices; but deep, inwoven, not to be rooted out but with life and

hope, which he found from old habit necessary to his own peace of mind,

and thought so to the peace of mankind. I do not hate, but love him for

them. They were between himself and his conscience; and should be left

to that higher tribunal, ‘where they in trembling hope repose, the bosom

of his Father and his God.’ In a word, he has left behind him few wiser

or better men.

The herd of his imitators shewed what he was by their disproportionate

effects. The Periodical Essayists, that succeeded the Rambler, are, and

deserve to be, little read at present. The Adventurer, by Hawksworth, is

completely trite and vapid, aping all the faults of Johnson’s style,

without any thing to atone for them. The sentences are often absolutely

unmeaning; and one half of each might regularly be left blank. The

World, and Connoisseur, which followed, are a little better; and in the

last of these there is one good idea, that of a man in indifferent

health, who judges of every one’s title to respect from their possession

of this blessing, and bows to a sturdy beggar with sound limbs and a

florid complexion, while he turns his back upon a lord who is a

valetudinarian.

Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World, like all his works, bears the stamp of

the author’s mind. It does not ‘go about to cozen reputation without the

stamp of merit.’ He is more observing, more original, more natural and

picturesque than Johnson. His work is written on the model of the

Persian Letters; and contrives to give an abstracted and somewhat

perplexing view of things, by opposing foreign prepossessions to our

own, and thus stripping objects of their customary disguises. Whether

truth is elicited in this collision of contrary absurdities, I do not

know; but I confess the process is too ambiguous and full of intricacy

to be very amusing to my plain understanding. For light summer reading,

it is like walking in a garden full of traps and pitfalls. It

necessarily gives rise to paradoxes, and there are some very bold ones

in the Essays, which would subject an author less established to no very

agreeable sort of _censura literaria_. Thus the Chinese philosopher

exclaims very unadvisedly, ‘The bonzes and priests of all religions keep

up superstition and imposture: all reformations begin with the laity.’

Goldsmith, however, was staunch in his practical creed, and might bolt

speculative extravagances with impunity. There is a striking difference

in this respect between him and Addison, who, if he attacked authority,

took care to have common sense on his side, and never hazarded any thing

offensive to the feelings of others, or on the strength of his own

discretional opinion. There is another inconvenience in this assumption

of an exotic character and tone of sentiment, that it produces an

inconsistency between the knowledge which the individual has time to

acquire, and which the author is bound to communicate. Thus the Chinese

has not been in England three days before he is acquainted with the

characters of the three countries which compose this kingdom, and

describes them to his friend at Canton, by extracts from the newspapers

of each metropolis. The nationality of Scotchmen is thus

ridiculed:—‘_Edinburgh_. We are positive when we say, that Sanders

Macgregor, lately executed for horse-stealing, is not a native of

Scotland, but born at Carrickfergus.’ Now this is very good; but how

should our Chinese philosopher find it out by instinct? Beau Tibbs, a

prominent character in this little work, is the best comic sketch since

the time of Addison; unrivalled in his finery, his vanity, and his

poverty.

I have only to mention the names of the Lounger and the Mirror, which

are ranked by the author’s admirers with Sterne for sentiment, and with

Addison for humour. I shall not enter into that: but I know that the

story of La Roche is not like the story of Le Fevre, nor one hundredth

part so good. Do I say this from prejudice to the author? No: for I have

read his novels. Of the Man of the World I cannot think so favourably as

some others; nor shall I here dwell on the picturesque and romantic

beauties of Julia de Roubigné, the early favourite of the author of

Rosamond Gray; but of the Man of Feeling I would speak with grateful

recollections: nor is it possible to forget the sensitive, irresolute,

interesting Harley: and that lone figure of Miss Walton in it, that

floats in the horizon, dim and ethereal, the day-dream of her lover’s

youthful fancy—better, far better than all the realities of life!

LECTURE VI

ON THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS

There is an exclamation in one of Gray’s Letters—‘Be mine to read

eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon!’—If I did not utter a

similar aspiration at the conclusion of the last new novel which I read

(I would not give offence by being more particular as to the name) it

was not from any want of affection for the class of writing to which it

belongs: for, without going so far as the celebrated French philosopher,

who thought that more was to be learnt from good novels and romances

than from the gravest treatises on history and morality, yet there are

few works to which I am oftener tempted to turn for profit or delight,

than to the standard productions in this species of composition. We find

there a close imitation of men and manners; we see the very web and

texture of society as it really exists, and as we meet with it when we

come into the world. If poetry has ‘something more divine in it,’ this

savours more of humanity. We are brought acquainted with the motives and

characters of mankind, imbibe our notions of virtue and vice from

practical examples, and are taught a knowledge of the world through the

airy medium of romance. As a record of past manners and opinions, too,

such writings afford the best and fullest information. For example, I

should be at a loss where to find in any authentic documents of the same

period so satisfactory an account of the general state of society, and

of moral, political, and religious feeling in the reign of George II. as

we meet with in the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his friend Mr.

Abraham Adams. This work, indeed, I take to be a perfect piece of

statistics in its kind. In looking into any regular history of that

period, into a learned and eloquent charge to a grand jury or the clergy

of a diocese, or into a tract on controversial divinity, we should hear

only of the ascendancy of the Protestant succession, the horrors of

Popery, the triumph of civil and religious liberty, the wisdom and

moderation of the sovereign, the happiness of the subject, and the

flourishing state of manufactures and commerce. But if we really wish to

know what all these fine-sounding names come to, we cannot do better

than turn to the works of those, who having no other object than to

imitate nature, could only hope for success from the fidelity of their

pictures; and were bound (in self-defence) to reduce the boasts of vague

theorists and the exaggerations of angry disputants to the mortifying

standard of reality. Extremes are said to meet: and the works of

imagination, as they are called, sometimes come the nearest to truth and

nature. Fielding in speaking on this subject, and vindicating the use

and dignity of the style of writing in which he excelled against the

loftier pretensions of professed historians, says, that in their

productions nothing is true but the names and dates, whereas in his

every thing is true but the names and dates. If so, he has the advantage

on his side.

I will here confess, however, that I am a little prejudiced on the point

in question; and that the effect of many fine speculations has been lost

upon me, from an early familiarity with the most striking passages in

the work to which I have just alluded. Thus nothing can be more

captivating than the description somewhere given by Mr. Burke of the

indissoluble connection between learning and nobility; and of the

respect universally paid by wealth to piety and morals. But the effect

of this ideal representation has always been spoiled by my recollection

of Parson Adams sitting over his cup of ale in Sir Thomas Booby’s

kitchen. Echard ‘On the Contempt of the Clergy’ is, in like manner, a

very good book, and ‘worthy of all acceptation:’ but, somehow, an

unlucky impression of the reality of Parson Trulliber involuntarily

checks the emotions of respect, to which it might otherwise give rise:

while, on the other hand, the lecture which Lady Booby reads to Lawyer

Scout on the immediate expulsion of Joseph and Fanny from the parish,

casts no very favourable light on the flattering accounts of our

practical jurisprudence which are to be found in Blackstone or De Lolme.

The most moral writers, after all, are those who do not pretend to

inculcate any moral. The professed moralist almost unavoidably

degenerates into the partisan of a system; and the philosopher is too

apt to warp the evidence to his own purpose. But the painter of manners

gives the facts of human nature, and leaves us to draw the inference: if

we are not able to do this, or do it ill, at least it is our own fault.

The first-rate writers in this class, of course, are few; but those few

we may reckon among the greatest ornaments and best benefactors of our

kind. There is a certain set of them who, as it were, take their rank by

the side of reality, and are appealed to as evidence on all questions

concerning human nature. The principal of these are Cervantes and Le

Sage, who may be considered as having been naturalised among ourselves;

and, of native English growth, Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, and

Sterne.[21] As this is a department of criticism which deserves more

attention than has been usually bestowed upon it, I shall here venture

to recur (not from choice, but necessity) to what I have said upon it in

a well known periodical publication; and endeavour to contribute my mite

towards settling the standard of excellence, both as to degree and kind,

in these several writers.

I shall begin with the history of the renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha;

who presents something more stately, more romantic, and at the same time

more real to the imagination than any other hero upon record. His

lineaments, his accoutrements, his pasteboard vizor, are familiar to us;

and Mambrino’s helmet still glitters in the sun! We not only feel the

greatest veneration and love for the knight himself, but a certain

respect for all those connected with him, the curate and Master Nicolas

the barber, Sancho and Dapple, and even for Rosinante’s leanness and his

errors.—Perhaps there is no work which combines so much whimsical

invention with such an air of truth. Its popularity is almost

unequalled; and yet its merits have not been sufficiently understood.

The story is the least part of them; though the blunders of Sancho, and

the unlucky adventures of his master, are what naturally catch the

attention of the majority of readers. The pathos and dignity of the

sentiments are often disguised under the ludicrousness of the subject;

and provoke laughter when they might well draw tears. The character of

Don Quixote himself is one of the most perfect disinterestedness. He is

an enthusiast of the most amiable kind; of a nature equally open,

gentle, and generous; a lover of truth and justice; and one who had

brooded over the fine dreams of chivalry and romance, till they had

robbed him of himself, and cheated his brain into a belief of their

reality. There cannot be a greater mistake than to consider Don Quixote

as a merely satirical work, or as a vulgar attempt to explode ‘the

long-forgotten order of chivalry.’ There could be no need to explode

what no longer existed. Besides, Cervantes himself was a man of the most

sanguine and enthusiastic temperament; and even through the crazed and

battered figure of the knight, the spirit of chivalry shines out with

undiminished lustre; as if the author had half-designed to revive the

example of past ages, and once more ‘witch the world with noble

horsemanship.’ Oh! if ever the mouldering flame of Spanish liberty is

destined to break forth, wrapping the tyrant and the tyranny in one

consuming blaze, that the spark of generous sentiment and romantic

enterprise, from which it must be kindled, has not been quite

extinguished, will perhaps be owing to thee, Cervantes, and to thy Don

Quixote!

The character of Sancho is not more admirable in itself, than as a

relief to that of the knight. The contrast is as picturesque and

striking as that between the figures of Rosinante and Dapple. Never was

there so complete a _partie quarrée_:—they answer to one another at all

points. Nothing need surpass the truth of physiognomy in the description

of the master and man, both as to body and mind; the one lean and tall,

the other round and short; the one heroical and courteous, the other

selfish and servile; the one full of high-flown fancies, the other a bag

of proverbs; the one always starting some romantic scheme, the other

trying to keep to the safe side of custom and tradition. The gradual

ascendancy, however, obtained by Don Quixote over Sancho, is as finely

managed as it is characteristic. Credulity and a love of the marvellous

are as natural to ignorance, as selfishness and cunning. Sancho by

degrees becomes a kind of lay-brother of the order; acquires a taste for

adventures in his own way, and is made all but an entire convert, by the

discovery of the hundred crowns in one of his most comfortless journeys.

Towards the end, his regret at being forced to give up the pursuit of

knight-errantry, almost equals his master’s; and he seizes the proposal

of Don Quixote for them to turn shepherds with the greatest

avidity—still applying it in his own fashion; for while the Don is

ingeniously torturing the names of his humble acquaintance into

classical terminations, and contriving scenes of gallantry and song,

Sancho exclaims, ‘Oh, what delicate wooden spoons shall I carve! what

crumbs and cream shall I devour!’—forgetting, in his milk and fruits,

the pullets and geese at Camacho’s wedding.

This intuitive perception of the hidden analogies of things, or, as it

may be called, this _instinct of the imagination_, is, perhaps, what

stamps the character of genius on the productions of art more than any

other circumstance: for it works unconsciously, like nature, and

receives its impressions from a kind of inspiration. There is as much of

this indistinct keeping and involuntary unity of purpose in Cervantes,

as in any author whatever. Something of the same unsettled, rambling

humour extends itself to all the subordinate parts and characters of the

work. Thus we find the curate confidentially informing Don Quixote, that

if he could get the ear of the government, he has something of

considerable importance to propose for the good of the state; and our

adventurer afterwards (in the course of his peregrinations) meets with a

young gentleman who is a candidate for poetical honours, with a mad

lover, a forsaken damsel, a Mahometan lady converted to the Christian

faith, &c.—all delineated with the same truth, wildness, and delicacy of

fancy. The whole work breathes that air of romance, that aspiration

after imaginary good, that indescribable longing after something more

than we possess, that in all places and in all conditions of life,

‘——still prompts the eternal sigh,

For which we wish to live, or dare to die!’

The leading characters in Don Quixote are strictly individuals; that is,

they do not so much belong to, as form a class by themselves. In other

words, the actions and manners of the chief _dramatis personæ_ do not

arise out of the actions and manners of those around them, or the

situation of life in which they are placed, but out of the peculiar

dispositions of the persons themselves, operated upon by certain

impulses of caprice and accident. Yet these impulses are so true to

nature, and their operation so exactly described, that we not only

recognise the fidelity of the representation, but recognise it with all

the advantages of novelty superadded. They are in the best sense

_originals_, namely, in the sense in which nature has her originals.

They are unlike any thing we have seen before—may be said to be purely

ideal; and yet identify themselves more readily with our imagination,

and are retained more strongly in memory, than perhaps any others: they

are never lost in the crowd. One test of the truth of this ideal

painting, is the number of allusions which Don Quixote has furnished to

the whole of civilised Europe; that is to say, of appropriate cases and

striking illustrations of the universal principles of our nature. The

detached incidents and occasional descriptions of human life are more

familiar and obvious; so that we have nearly the same insight here given

us into the characters of innkeepers, barmaids, ostlers, and puppet-show

men, that we have in Fielding. There is much greater mixture, however,

of the pathetic and sentimental with the quaint and humorous, than there

ever is in Fielding. I might instance the story of the countryman whom

Don Quixote and Sancho met in their doubtful search after Dulcinea,

driving his mules to plough at break of day, and ‘singing the ancient

ballad of Ronscevalles!’ The episodes, which are frequently introduced,

are excellent, but have, upon the whole, been overrated. They derive

their interest from their connexion with the main story. We are so

pleased with that, that we are disposed to receive pleasure from every

thing else. Compared, for instance, with the serious tales in Boccaccio,

they are slight and somewhat superficial. That of Marcella, the fair

shepherdess, is, I think, the best. I shall only add, that Don Quixote

was, at the time it was published, an entirely original work in its

kind, and that the author claims the highest honour which can belong to

one, that of being the inventor of a new style of writing. I have never

read his Galatea, nor his Loves of Persiles and Sigismunda, though I

have often meant to do it, and I hope to do so yet. Perhaps there is a

reason lurking at the bottom of this dilatoriness: I am quite sure the

reading of these works could not make me think higher of the author of

Don Quixote, and it might, for a moment or two, make me think less.

There is another Spanish novel, Gusman D’Alfarache, nearly of the same

age as Don Quixote, and of great genius, though it can hardly be ranked

as a novel or a work of imagination. It is a series of strange,

unconnected adventures, rather drily told, but accompanied by the most

severe and sarcastic commentary. The satire, the wit, the eloquence and

reasoning, are of the most potent kind: but they are didactic rather

than dramatic. They would suit a homily or a pasquinade as well or

better than a romance. Still there are in this extraordinary book

occasional sketches of character and humorous descriptions, to which it

would be difficult to produce any thing superior. This work, which is

hardly known in this country except by name, has the credit, without any

reason, of being the original of Gil Blas. There is one incident the

same, that of the unsavoury ragout, which is served up for supper at the

inn. In all other respects these two works are the very reverse of each

other, both in their excellences and defects.—Lazarillo de Tormes has

been more read than the Spanish Rogue, and is a work more readable, on

this account among others, that it is contained in a duodecimo instead

of a folio volume. This, however, is long enough, considering that it

treats of only one subject, that of eating, or rather the possibility of

living without eating. Famine is here framed into an art, and feasting

is banished far hence. The hero’s time and thoughts are taken up in a

thousand shifts to procure a dinner; and that failing, in tampering with

his stomach till supper time, when being forced to go supperless to bed,

he comforts himself with the hopes of a breakfast the next morning, of

which being again disappointed, he reserves his appetite for a luncheon,

and then has to stave it off again by some meagre excuse or other till

dinner; and so on, by a perpetual adjournment of this necessary process,

through the four and twenty hours round. The quantity of food proper to

keep body and soul together is reduced to a _minimum_; and the most

uninviting morsels with which Lazarillo meets once a week as a

God’s-send, are pampered into the most sumptuous fare by a long course

of inanition. The scene of this novel could be laid nowhere so properly

as in Spain, that land of priestcraft and poverty, where hunger seems to

be the ruling passion, and starving the order of the day.

Gil Blas has, next to Don Quixote, been more generally read and admired

than any other novel; and in one sense, deservedly so: for it is at the

head of its class, though that class is very different from, and I

should say inferior to the other. There is little individual character

in Gil Blas. The author is a describer of manners, and not of character.

He does not take the elements of human nature, and work them up into new

combinations (which is the excellence of Don Quixote); nor trace the

peculiar and shifting shades of folly and knavery as they are to be

found in real life (like Fielding): but he takes off, as it were, the

general, habitual impression which circumstances make on certain

conditions of life, and moulds all his characters accordingly. All the

persons whom he introduces, carry about with them the badge of their

profession; and you see little more of them than their costume. He

describes men as belonging to distinct classes in society; not as they

are in themselves, or with the individual differences which are always

to be discovered in nature. His hero, in particular, has no character

but that of the successive circumstances in which he is placed. His

priests are only described as priests: his valets, his players, his

women, his courtiers and his sharpers, are all alike. Nothing can well

exceed the monotony of the work in this respect:—at the same time that

nothing can exceed the truth and precision with which the general

manners of these different characters are preserved, nor the felicity of

the particular traits by which their common foibles are brought out.

Thus the Archbishop of Grenada will remain an everlasting memento of the

weakness of human vanity; and the account of Gil Blas’ legacy, of the

uncertainty of human expectations. This novel is also deficient in the

fable as well as in the characters. It is not a regularly constructed

story; but a series of amusing adventures told with equal gaiety and

good sense, and in the most graceful style imaginable.

It has been usual to class our own great novelists as imitators of one

or other of these two writers. Fielding, no doubt, is more like Don

Quixote than Gil Blas; Smollett is more like Gil Blas than Don Quixote;

but there is not much resemblance in either case. Sterne’s Tristram

Shandy is a more direct instance of imitation. Richardson can scarcely

be called an imitator of any one; or if he is, it is of the sentimental

refinement of Marivaux, or of the verbose gallantry of the writers of

the seventeenth century.

There is very little to warrant the common idea that Fielding was an

imitator of Cervantes, except his own declaration of such an intention

in the title-page of Joseph Andrews, the romantic turn of the character

of Parson Adams (the only romantic character in his works), and the

proverbial humour of Partridge, which is kept up only for a few pages.

Fielding’s novels are, in general, thoroughly his own; and they are

thoroughly English. What they are most remarkable for, is neither

sentiment, nor imagination, nor wit, nor even humour, though there is an

immense deal of this last quality; but profound knowledge of human

nature, at least of English nature; and masterly pictures of the

characters of men as he saw them existing. This quality distinguishes

all his works, and is shown almost equally in all of them. As a painter

of real life, he was equal to Hogarth; as a mere observer of human

nature, he was little inferior to Shakspeare, though without any of the

genius and poetical qualities of his mind. His humour is less rich and

laughable than Smollett’s; his wit as often misses as hits; he has none

of the fine pathos of Richardson or Sterne; but he has brought together

a greater variety of characters in common life, marked with more

distinct peculiarities, and without an atom of caricature, than any

other novel writer whatever. The extreme subtlety of observation on the

springs of human conduct in ordinary characters, is only equalled by the

ingenuity of contrivance in bringing those springs into play, in such a

manner as to lay open their smallest irregularity. The detection is

always complete, and made with the certainty and skill of a

philosophical experiment, and the obviousness and familiarity of a

casual observation. The truth of the imitation is indeed so great, that

it has been argued that Fielding must have had his materials ready-made

to his hands, and was merely a transcriber of local manners and

individual habits. For this conjecture, however, there seems to be no

foundation. His representations, it is true, are local and individual;

but they are not the less profound and conclusive. The feeling of the

general principles of human nature operating in particular

circumstances, is always intense, and uppermost in his mind; and he

makes use of incident and situation only to bring out character.

It is scarcely necessary to give any illustrations. Tom Jones is full of

them. There is the account, for example, of the gratitude of the elder

Blifil to his brother, for assisting him to obtain the fortune of Miss

Bridget Alworthy by marriage; and of the gratitude of the poor in his

neighbourhood to Alworthy himself, who had done so much good in the

country that he had made every one in it his enemy. There is the account

of the Latin dialogues between Partridge and his maid, of the assault

made on him during one of these by Mrs. Partridge, and the severe

bruises he patiently received on that occasion, after which the parish

of Little Baddington rung with the story, that the school-master had

killed his wife. There is the exquisite keeping in the character of

Blifil, and the want of it in that of Jones. There is the gradation in

the lovers of Molly Seagrim; the philosopher Square succeeding to Tom

Jones, who again finds that he himself had succeeded to the accomplished

Will. Barnes, who had the first possession of her person, and had still

possession of her heart, Jones being only the instrument of her vanity,

as Square was of her interest. Then there is the discreet honesty of

Black George, the learning of Thwackum and Square, and the profundity of

Squire Western, who considered it as a physical impossibility that his

daughter should fall in love with Tom Jones. We have also that

gentleman’s disputes with his sister, and the inimitable appeal of that

lady to her niece.—‘I was never so handsome as you, Sophy: yet I had

something of you formerly. I was called the cruel Parthenissa. Kingdoms

and states, as Tully Cicero says, undergo alteration, and so must the

human form!’ The adventure of the same lady with the highwayman, who

robbed her of her jewels, while he complimented her beauty, ought not to

be passed over, nor that of Sophia and her muff, nor the reserved

coquetry of her cousin Fitzpatrick, nor the description of Lady

Bellaston, nor the modest overtures of the pretty widow Hunt, nor the

indiscreet babblings of Mrs. Honour. The moral of this book has been

objected to, without much reason; but a more serious objection has been

made to the want of refinement and elegance in two principal characters.

We never feel this objection, indeed, while we are reading the book: but

at other times, we have something like a lurking suspicion that Jones

was but an awkward fellow, and Sophia a pretty simpleton. I do not know

how to account for this effect, unless it is that Fielding’s constantly

assuring us of the beauty of his hero, and the good sense of his

heroine, at last produces a distrust of both. The story of Tom Jones is

allowed to be unrivalled: and it is this circumstance, together with the

vast variety of characters, that has given the history of a Foundling so

decided a preference over Fielding’s other novels. The characters

themselves, both in Amelia and Joseph Andrews, are quite equal to any of

those in Tom Jones. The account of Miss Matthews and Ensign Hibbert, in

the former of these; the way in which that lady reconciles herself to

the death of her father; the inflexible Colonel Bath; the insipid Mrs.

James, the complaisant Colonel Trent, the demure, sly, intriguing,

equivocal Mrs. Bennet, the lord who is her seducer, and who attempts

afterwards to seduce Amelia by the same mechanical process of a

concert-ticket, a book, and the disguise of a great coat; his little,

fat, short-nosed, red-faced, good-humoured accomplice, the keeper of the

lodging-house, who, having no pretensions to gallantry herself, has a

disinterested delight in forwarding the intrigues and pleasures of

others, (to say nothing of honest Atkinson, the story of the

miniature-picture of Amelia, and the hashed mutton, which are in a

different style,) are masterpieces of description. The whole scene at

the lodging-house, the masquerade, &c. in Amelia, are equal in interest

to the parallel scenes in Tom Jones, and even more refined in the

knowledge of character. For instance, Mrs. Bennet is superior to Mrs.

Fitzpatrick in her own way. The uncertainty, in which the event of her

interview with her former seducer is left, is admirable. Fielding was a

master of what may be called the _double entendre_ of character, and

surprises you no less by what he leaves in the dark, (hardly known to

the persons themselves) than by the unexpected discoveries he makes of

the real traits and circumstances in a character with which, till then,

you find you were unacquainted. There is nothing at all heroic, however,

in the usual style of his delineations. He does not draw lofty

characters or strong passions; all his persons are of the ordinary

stature as to intellect; and possess little elevation of fancy, or

energy of purpose. Perhaps, after all, Parson Adams is his finest

character. It is equally true to nature, and more ideal than any of the

others. Its unsuspecting simplicity makes it not only more amiable, but

doubly amusing, by gratifying the sense of superior sagacity in the

reader. Our laughing at him does not once lessen our respect for him.

His declaring that he would willingly walk ten miles to fetch his sermon

on vanity, merely to convince Wilson of his thorough contempt of this

vice, and his consoling himself for the loss of his Æschylus, by

suddenly recollecting that he could not read it if he had it, because it

is dark, are among the finest touches of _naïveté_. The night-adventures

at Lady Booby’s with Beau Didapper, and the amiable Slipslop, are the

most ludicrous; and that with the huntsman, who draws off the hounds

from the poor Parson, because they would be spoiled by following

_vermin_, the most profound. Fielding did not often repeat himself; but

Dr. Harrison, in Amelia, may be considered as a variation of the

character of Adams: so also is Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield; and the

latter part of that work, which sets out so delightfully, an almost

entire plagiarism from Wilson’s account of himself, and Adams’s domestic

history.

Smollett’s first novel, Roderick Random, which is also his best,

appeared about the same time as Fielding’s Tom Jones; and yet it has a

much more modern air with it: but this may be accounted for, from the

circumstance that Smollett was quite a young man at the time, whereas

Fielding’s manner must have been formed long before. The style of

Roderick Random is more easy and flowing than that of Tom Jones; the

incidents follow one another more rapidly (though, it must be confessed,

they never come in such a throng, or are brought out with the same

dramatic effect); the humour is broader, and as effectual; and there is

very nearly, if not quite, an equal interest excited by the story. What

then is it that gives the superiority to Fielding? It is the superior

insight into the springs of human character, and the constant

developement of that character through every change of circumstance.

Smollett’s humour often arises from the situation of the persons, or the

peculiarity of their external appearance; as, from Roderick Random’s

carrotty locks, which hung down over his shoulders like a pound of

candles, or Strap’s ignorance of London, and the blunders that follow

from it. There is a tone of vulgarity about all his productions. The

incidents frequently resemble detached anecdotes taken from a newspaper

or magazine; and, like those in Gil Blas, might happen to a hundred

other characters. He exhibits the ridiculous accidents and reverses to

which human life is liable, not ‘the stuff’ of which it is composed. He

seldom probes to the quick, or penetrates beyond the surface; and,

therefore, he leaves no stings in the minds of his readers, and in this

respect is far less interesting than Fielding. His novels always

enliven, and never tire us: we take them up with pleasure, and lay them

down without any strong feeling of regret. We look on and laugh, as

spectators of a highly amusing scene, without closing in with the

combatants, or being made parties in the event. We read Roderick Random

as an entertaining story; for the particular accidents and modes of life

which it describes have ceased to exist: but we regard Tom Jones as a

real history; because the author never stops short of those essential

principles which lie at the bottom of all our actions, and in which we

feel an immediate interest—_intus et in cute_. Smollett excels most as

the lively caricaturist: Fielding as the exact painter and profound

metaphysician. I am far from maintaining that this account applies

uniformly to the productions of these two writers; but I think that, as

far as they essentially differ, what I have stated is the general

distinction between them. Roderick Random is the purest of Smollett’s

novels: I mean in point of style and description. Most of the incidents

and characters are supposed to have been taken from the events of his

own life; and are, therefore, truer to nature. There is a rude

conception of generosity in some of his characters, of which Fielding

seems to have been incapable, his amiable persons being merely

good-natured. It is owing to this that Strap is superior to Partridge;

as there is a heartiness and warmth of feeling in some of the scenes

between Lieutenant Bowling and his nephew, which is beyond Fielding’s

power of impassioned writing. The whole of the scene on ship-board is a

most admirable and striking picture, and, I imagine, very little if at

all exaggerated, though the interest it excites is of a very unpleasant

kind, because the irritation and resistance to petty oppression can be

of no avail. The picture of the little profligate French friar, who was

Roderick’s travelling companion, and of whom he always kept to the

windward, is one of Smollett’s most masterly sketches.—Peregrine Pickle

is no great favourite of mine, and Launcelot Greaves was not worthy of

the genius of the author.

Humphry Clinker and Count Fathom are both equally admirable in their

way. Perhaps the former is the most pleasant gossiping novel that ever

was written; that which gives the most pleasure with the least effort to

the reader. It is quite as amusing as going the journey could have been;

and we have just as good an idea of what happened on the road, as if we

had been of the party. Humphry Clinker himself is exquisite; and his

sweetheart, Winifred Jenkins, not much behind him. Matthew Bramble,

though not altogether original, is excellently supported, and seems to

have been the prototype of Sir Anthony Absolute in the Rivals. But

Lismahago is the flower of the flock. His tenaciousness in argument is

not so delightful as the relaxation of his logical severity, when he

finds his fortune mellowing in the wintry smiles of Mrs. Tabitha

Bramble. This is the best preserved, and most severe of all Smollett’s

characters. The resemblance to Don Quixote is only just enough to make

it interesting to the critical reader, without giving offence to any

body else. The indecency and filth in this novel, are what must be

allowed to all Smollett’s writings.—The subject and characters in Count

Fathom are, in general, exceedingly disgusting: the story is also spun

out to a degree of tediousness in the serious and sentimental parts; but

there is more power of writing occasionally shewn in it than in any of

his works. I need only to refer to the fine and bitter irony of the

Count’s address to the country of his ancestors on his landing in

England; to the robber scene in the forest, which has never been

surpassed; to the Parisian swindler who personates a raw English country

squire (Western is tame in the comparison); and to the story of the

seduction in the west of England. It would be difficult to point out, in

any author, passages written with more force and mastery than these.

It is not a very difficult undertaking to class Fielding or

Smollett;—the one as an observer of the characters of human life, the

other as a describer of its various eccentricities. But it is by no

means so easy to dispose of Richardson, who was neither an observer of

the one, nor a describer of the other; but who seemed to spin his

materials entirely out of his own brain, as if there had been nothing

existing in the world beyond the little room in which he sat writing.

There is an artificial reality about his works, which is no where else

to be met with. They have the romantic air of a pure fiction, with the

literal minuteness of a common diary. The author had the strongest

matter-of-fact imagination that ever existed, and wrote the oddest

mixture of poetry and prose. He does not appear to have taken advantage

of any thing in actual nature, from one end of his works to the other;

and yet, throughout all his works, voluminous as they are—(and this, to

be sure, is one reason why they are so,)—he sets about describing every

object and transaction, as if the whole had been given in on evidence by

an eye-witness. This kind of high finishing from imagination is an

anomaly in the history of human genius; and, certainly, nothing so fine

was ever produced by the same accumulation of minute parts. There is not

the least distraction, the least forgetfulness of the end: every

circumstance is made to tell. I cannot agree that this exactness of

detail produces heaviness; on the contrary, it gives an appearance of

truth, and a positive interest to the story; and we listen with the same

attention as we should to the particulars of a confidential

communication. I at one time used to think some parts of Sir Charles

Grandison rather trifling and tedious, especially the long description

of Miss Harriet Byron’s wedding clothes, till I was told of two young

ladies who had severally copied out the whole of that very description

for their own private gratification. After that, I could not blame the

author.

The effect of reading this work is like an increase of kindred. You find

yourself all of a sudden introduced into the midst of a large family,

with aunts and cousins to the third and fourth generation, and

grandmothers both by the father’s and mother’s side;—and a very odd set

of people they are, but people whose real existence and personal

identity you can no more dispute than your own senses, for you see and

hear all that they do or say. What is still more extraordinary, all this

extreme elaborateness in working out the story, seems to have cost the

author nothing; for it is said, that the published works are mere

abridgments. I have heard (though this I suspect must be a pleasant

exaggeration) that Sir Charles Grandison was originally written in eight

and twenty volumes.

Pamela is the first of Richardson’s productions, and the very child of

his brain. Taking the general idea of the character of a modest and

beautiful country girl, and of the ordinary situation in which she is

placed, he makes out all the rest, even to the smallest circumstance, by

the mere force of a reasoning imagination. It would seem as if a step

lost, would be as fatal here as in a mathematical demonstration. The

developement of the character is the most simple, and comes the nearest

to nature that it can do, without being the same thing. The interest of

the story increases with the dawn of understanding and reflection in the

heroine: her sentiments gradually expand themselves, like opening

flowers. She writes better every time, and acquires a confidence in

herself, just as a girl would do, writing such letters in such

circumstances; and yet it is certain _that no girl would write such

letters in such circumstances_. What I mean is this:—Richardson’s nature

is always the nature of sentiment and reflection, not of impulse or

situation. He furnishes his characters, on every occasion, with the

presence of mind of the author. He makes them act, not as they would

from the impulse of the moment, but as they might upon reflection, and

upon a careful review of every motive and circumstance in their

situation. They regularly sit down to write letters: and if the business

of life consisted in letter-writing, and was carried on by the post

(like a Spanish game at chess), human nature would be what Richardson

represents it. All actual objects and feelings are blunted and deadened

by being presented through a medium which may be true to reason, but is

false in nature. He confounds his own point of view with that of the

immediate actors in the scene; and hence presents you with a

conventional and factitious nature, instead of that which is real. Dr.

Johnson seems to have preferred this truth of reflection to the truth of

nature, when he said that there was more knowledge of the human heart in

a page of Richardson, than in all Fielding. Fielding, however, saw more

of the practical results, and understood the principles as well; but he

had not the same power of speculating upon their possible results, and

combining them in certain ideal forms of passion and imagination, which

was Richardson’s real excellence.

It must be observed, however, that it is this mutual good understanding,

and comparing of notes between the author and the persons he describes;

his infinite circumspection, his exact process of ratiocination and

calculation, which gives such an appearance of coldness and formality to

most of his characters,—which makes prudes of his women, and coxcombs of

his men. Every thing is too conscious in his works. Every thing is

distinctly brought home to the mind of the actors in the scene, which is

a fault undoubtedly: but then it must be confessed, every thing is

brought home in its full force to the mind of the reader also; and we

feel the same interest in the story as if it were our own. Can any thing

be more beautiful or more affecting than Pamela’s reproaches to her

‘lumpish heart,’ when she is sent away from her master’s at her own

request; its lightness, when she is sent for back; the joy which the

conviction of the sincerity of his love diffuses in her heart, like the

coming on of spring; the artifice of the stuff gown; the meeting with

Lady Davers after her marriage; and the trial-scene with her husband?

Who ever remained insensible to the passion of Lady Clementina, except

Sir Charles Grandison himself, who was the object of it? Clarissa is,

however, his masterpiece, if we except Lovelace. If she is fine in

herself, she is still finer in his account of her. With that foil, her

purity is dazzling indeed: and she who could triumph by her virtue, and

the force of her love, over the regality of Lovelace’s mind, his wit,

his person, his accomplishments, and his spirit, conquers all hearts. I

should suppose that never sympathy more deep or sincere was excited than

by the heroine of Richardson’s romance, except by the calamities of real

life. The links in this wonderful chain of interest are not more finely

wrought, than their whole weight is overwhelming and irresistible. Who

can forget the exquisite gradations of her long dying-scene, or the

closing of the coffin-lid, when Miss Howe comes to take her last leave

of her friend; or the heart-breaking reflection that Clarissa makes on

what was to have been her wedding-day? Well does a certain writer

exclaim—

‘Books are a real world, both pure and good,

Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,

Our pastime and our happiness may grow!’

Richardson’s wit was unlike that of any other writer—his humour was so

too. Both were the effect of intense activity of mind—laboured, and yet

completely effectual. I might refer to Lovelace’s reception and

description of Hickman, when he calls out Death in his ear, as the name

of the person with whom Clarissa had fallen in love; and to the scene at

the glove-shop. What can be more magnificent than his enumeration of his

companions—‘Belton, so pert and so pimply—Tourville, so fair and so

foppish!’ &c. In casuistry this author is quite at home; and, with a

boldness greater even than his puritanical severity, has exhausted every

topic on virtue and vice. There is another peculiarity in Richardson,

not perhaps so uncommon, which is, his systematically preferring his

most insipid characters to his finest, though both were equally his own

invention, and he must be supposed to have understood something of their

qualities. Thus he preferred the little, selfish, affected,

insignificant Miss Byron, to the divine Clementina; and again, Sir

Charles Grandison, to the nobler Lovelace. I have nothing to say in

favour of Lovelace’s morality; but Sir Charles is the prince of

coxcombs,—whose eye was never once taken from his own person, and his

own virtues; and there is nothing which excites so little sympathy as

this excessive egotism.

It remains to speak of Sterne; and I shall do it in few words. There is

more of _mannerism_ and affectation in him, and a more immediate

reference to preceding authors; but his excellences, where he is

excellent, are of the first order. His characters are intellectual and

inventive, like Richardson’s; but totally opposite in the execution. The

one are made out by continuity, and patient repetition of touches: the

others, by glancing transitions and graceful apposition. His style is

equally different from Richardson’s: it is at times the most rapid, the

most happy, the most idiomatic of any that is to be found. It is the

pure essence of English conversational style. His works consist only of

_morceaux_—of brilliant passages. I wonder that Goldsmith, who ought to

have known better, should call him ‘a dull fellow.’ His wit is poignant,

though artificial; and his characters (though the groundwork of some of

them had been laid before) have yet invaluable original differences; and

the spirit of the execution, the master-strokes constantly thrown into

them, are not to be surpassed. It is sufficient to name them;—Yorick,

Dr. Slop, Mr. Shandy, My Uncle Toby, Trim, Susanna, and the Widow

Wadman. In these he has contrived to oppose, with equal felicity and

originality, two characters, one of pure intellect, and the other of

pure good nature, in My Father and My Uncle Toby. There appears to have

been in Sterne a vein of dry, sarcastic humour, and of extreme

tenderness of feeling; the latter sometimes carried to affectation, as

in the tale of Maria, and the apostrophe to the recording angel: but at

other times pure, and without blemish. The story of Le Fevre is perhaps

the finest in the English language. My Father’s restlessness, both of

body and mind, is inimitable. It is the model from which all those

despicable performances against modern philosophy ought to have been

copied, if their authors had known any thing of the subject they were

writing about. My Uncle Toby is one of the finest compliments ever paid

to human nature. He is the most unoffending of God’s creatures; or, as

the French express it, _un tel petit bon homme_! Of his bowling-green,

his sieges, and his amours, who would say or think any thing amiss!

It is remarkable that our four best novel-writers belong nearly to the

same age. We also owe to the same period (the reign of George II.) the

inimitable Hogarth, and some of our best writers of the middle style of

comedy. If I were called upon to account for this coincidence, I should

wave the consideration of more general causes, and ascribe it at once to

the establishment of the Protestant ascendancy, and the succession of

the House of Hanover. These great events appear to have given a more

popular turn to our literature and genius, as well as to our government.

It was found high time that the people should be represented in books as

well as in Parliament. They wished to see some account of themselves in

what they read; and not to be confined always to the vices, the

miseries, and frivolities of the great. Our domestic tragedy, and our

earliest periodical works, appeared a little before the same period. In

despotic countries, human nature is not of sufficient importance to be

studied or described. The _canaille_ are objects rather of disgust than

curiosity; and there are no middle classes. The works of Racine and

Moliere are either imitations of the verbiage of the court, before which

they were represented, or fanciful caricatures of the manners of the

lowest of the people. But in the period of our history in question, a

security of person and property, and a freedom of opinion had been

established, which made every man feel of some consequence to himself,

and appear an object of some curiosity to his neighbours: our manners

became more domesticated; there was a general spirit of sturdiness and

independence, which made the English character more truly English than

perhaps at any other period—that is, more tenacious of its own opinions

and purposes. The whole surface of society appeared cut out into square

enclosures and sharp angles, which extended to the dresses of the time,

their gravel-walks, and clipped hedges. Each individual had a certain

ground-plot of his own to cultivate his particular humours in, and let

them shoot out at pleasure; and a most plentiful crop they have produced

accordingly. The reign of George II. was, in a word, the age of

_hobby-horses_: but, since that period, things have taken a different

turn.

His present Majesty (God save the mark!) during almost the whole of his

reign, has been constantly mounted on a great war-horse; and has fairly

driven all competitors out of the field. Instead of minding our own

affairs, or laughing at each other, the eyes of all his faithful

subjects have been fixed on the career of the sovereign, and all hearts

anxious for the safety of his person and government. Our pens and our

swords have been alike drawn in their defence; and the returns of killed

and wounded, the manufacture of newspapers and parliamentary speeches,

have exceeded all former example. If we have had little of the blessings

of peace, we have had enough of the glories and calamities of war. His

Majesty has indeed contrived to keep alive the greatest public interest

ever known, by his determined manner of riding his hobby for half a

century together, with the aristocracy, the democracy, the clergy, the

landed and monied interest, and the rabble, in full cry after him;—and

at the end of his career, most happily and unexpectedly succeeded,

amidst empires lost and won, kingdoms overturned and created, and the

destruction of an incredible number of lives, in restoring _the divine

right of kings_, and thus preventing any future abuse of the example

which seated his family on the throne!

It is not to be wondered at, if amidst the tumult of events crowded into

this period, our literature has partaken of the disorder of the time; if

our prose has run mad, and our poetry grown childish. Among those

persons who ‘have kept the even tenor of their way,’ the author of

Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla, must be allowed to hold a distinguished

place.[22] Mrs. Radcliffe’s ‘enchantments drear,’ and mouldering

castles, derived part of their interest, no doubt, from the supposed

tottering state of all old structures at the time; and Mrs. Inchbald’s

‘Nature and Art’ would scarcely have had the same popularity, but that

it fell in (as to its two main characters) with the prevailing prejudice

of the moment, that judges and bishops were not invariably pure

abstractions of justice and piety. Miss Edgeworth’s Tales again (with

the exception of Castle Rack-rent, which is a genuine, unsophisticated,

national portrait) are a kind of pedantic, pragmatical common sense,

tinctured with the pertness and pretensions of the paradoxes to which

they are so self-complacently opposed. Madame D’Arblay is, on the

contrary, quite of the old school, a mere common observer of manners,

and also a very woman. It is this last circumstance which forms the

peculiarity of her writings, and distinguishes them from those

masterpieces which I have before mentioned. She is a quick, lively, and

accurate observer of persons and things; but she always looks at them

with a consciousness of her sex, and in that point of view in which it

is the particular business and interest of women to observe them. There

is little in her works of passion or character, or even manners, in the

most extended sense of the word, as implying the sum-total of our habits

and pursuits; her _forte_ is in describing the absurdities and

affectations of external behaviour, or _the manners of people in

company_. Her characters, which are ingenious caricatures, are, no

doubt, distinctly marked, and well kept up; but they are slightly

shaded, and exceedingly uniform. Her heroes and heroines, almost all of

them, depend on the stock of a single phrase or sentiment, and have

certain mottoes or devices by which they may always be known. They form

such characters as people might be supposed to assume for a night at a

masquerade. She presents, not the whole-length figure, nor even the

face, but some prominent feature. In one of her novels, for example, a

lady appears regularly every ten pages, to get a lesson in music for

nothing. She never appears for any other purpose; this is all you know

of her; and in this the whole wit and humour of the character consists.

Meadows is the same, who has always the cue of being tired, without any

other idea. It has been said of Shakspeare, that you may always assign

his speeches to the proper characters;—and you may infallibly do the

same thing with Madame D’Arblay’s, for they always say the same thing.

The Branghtons are the best. Mr. Smith is an exquisite city portrait.

Evelina is also her best novel, because it is the shortest; that is, it

has all the liveliness in the sketches of character, and smartness of

common dialogue and repartee, without the tediousness of the story, and

endless affectation of sentiment which disfigures the others.

Women, in general, have a quicker perception of any oddity or

singularity of character than men, and are more alive to every absurdity

which arises from a violation of the rules of society, or a deviation

from established custom. This partly arises from the restraints on their

own behaviour, which turn their attention constantly on the subject, and

partly from other causes. The surface of their minds, like that of their

bodies, seems of a finer texture than ours; more soft, and susceptible

of immediate impulses. They have less muscular strength; less power of

continued voluntary attention—of reason, passion, and imagination: but

they are more easily impressed with whatever appeals to their senses or

habitual prejudices. The intuitive perception of their minds is less

disturbed by any abstruse reasonings on causes or consequences. They

learn the idiom of character and manners, as they acquire that of

language, by rote, without troubling themselves about the principles.

Their observation is not the less accurate on that account, as far as it

goes; for it has been well said, that ‘there is nothing so true as

habit.’

There is little other power in Miss Burney’s novels, than that of

immediate observation: her characters, whether of refinement or

vulgarity, are equally superficial and confined. The whole is a question

of form, whether that form is adhered to or infringed upon. It is this

circumstance which takes away dignity and interest from her story and

sentiments, and makes the one so teazing and tedious, and the other so

insipid. The difficulties in which she involves her heroines are too

much ‘Female Difficulties’; they are difficulties created out of

nothing. The author appears to have no other idea of refinement than

that it is the reverse of vulgarity; but the reverse of vulgarity is

fastidiousness and affectation. There is a true and a false delicacy.

Because a vulgar country Miss would answer ‘yes’ to a proposal of

marriage in the first page, Madame D’Arblay makes it a proof of an

excess of refinement, and an indispensable point of etiquette in her

young ladies, to postpone the answer to the end of five volumes, without

the smallest reason for their doing so, and with every reason to the

contrary. The reader is led every moment to expect a _denouement_, and

is as often disappointed on some trifling pretext. The whole artifice of

her fable consists in coming to no conclusion. Her ladies ‘stand so upon

the order of their going,’ that they do not go at all. They will not

abate an ace of their punctilio in any circumstances, or on any

emergency. They would consider it as quite indecorous to run down stairs

though the house were in flames, or to move an inch off the pavement

though a scaffolding was falling. She has formed to herself an abstract

idea of perfection in common behaviour, which is quite as romantic and

impracticable as any other idea of the sort: and the consequence has

naturally been, that she makes her heroines commit the greatest

improprieties and absurdities in order to avoid the smallest. In

opposition to a maxim in philosophy, they constantly act from the

weakest motive, or rather from pure contradiction. The whole tissue of

the fable is, in general, more wild and chimerical than any thing in Don

Quixote, without the poetical truth or elevation. Madame D’Arblay has

woven a web of difficulties for her heroines, something like the green

silken threads in which the shepherdesses entangled the steed of

Cervantes’s hero, who swore, in his fine enthusiastic way, that he would

sooner cut his passage to another world than disturb the least of those

beautiful meshes. To mention the most painful instance—the Wanderer, in

her last novel, raises obstacles, lighter than ‘the gossamer that idles

in the wanton summer air,’ into insurmountable barriers; and trifles

with those that arise out of common sense, reason, and necessity. Her

conduct is not to be accounted for directly out of the circumstances in

which she is placed, but out of some factitious and misplaced refinement

on them. It is a perpetual game at cross-purposes. There being a plain

and strong motive why she should pursue any course of action, is a

sufficient reason for her to avoid it; and the perversity of her conduct

is in proportion to its levity—as the lightness of the feather baffles

the force of the impulse that is given to it, and the slightest breath

of air turns it back on the hand from which it is thrown. We can hardly

consider this as the perfection of the female character!

I must say I like Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances better, and think of them

oftener;—and even when I do not, part of the impression with which I

survey the full-orbed moon shining in the blue expanse of heaven, or

hear the wind sighing through autumnal leaves, or walk under the echoing

archways of a Gothic ruin, is owing to a repeated perusal of the Romance

of the Forest and the Mysteries of Udolpho. Her descriptions of scenery,

indeed, are vague and wordy to the last degree; they are neither like

Salvator nor Claude, nor nature nor art; and she dwells on the effects

of moonlight till we are sometimes weary of them: her characters are

insipid, the shadows of a shade, continued on, under different names,

through all her novels: her story comes to nothing. But in harrowing up

the soul with imaginary horrors, and making the flesh creep, and the

nerves thrill, with fond hopes and fears, she is unrivalled among her

fair country-women. Her great power lies in describing the indefinable,

and embodying a phantom. She makes her readers twice children: and from

the dim and shadowy veil which she draws over the objects of her fancy,

forces us to believe all that is strange, and next to impossible, of

their mysterious agency:—whether it is the sound of the lover’s lute

borne o’er the distant waters along the winding shores of Provence,

recalling, with its magic breath, some long-lost friendship, or some

hopeless love; or the full choir of the cloistered monks, chaunting

their midnight orgies, or the lonely voice of an unhappy sister in her

pensive cell, like angels’ whispered music; or the deep sigh that steals

from a dungeon on the startled ear; or the dim apparition of ghastly

features; or the face of an assassin hid beneath a monk’s cowl; or the

robber gliding through the twilight gloom of the forest. All the

fascination that links the world of passion to the world unknown, is

hers, and she plays with it at her pleasure: she has all the poetry of

romance, all that is obscure, visionary, and objectless, in the

imagination. It seems that the simple notes of Clara’s lute, which so

delighted her youthful heart, still echo among the rocks and mountains

of the Valois; the mellow tones of the minstrel’s songs still mingle

with the noise of the dashing oar, and the rippling of the silver waves

of the Mediterranean; the voice of Agnes is heard from the haunted

tower; and Schedoni’s form still stalks through the frowning ruins of

Palinzi. The greatest treat, however, which Mrs. Radcliffe’s pen has

provided for the lovers of the marvellous and terrible, is the Provençal

tale which Ludovico reads in the Castle of Udolpho, as the lights are

beginning to burn blue, and just before the faces appear from behind the

tapestry that carry him off, and we hear no more of him. This tale is of

a knight, who being engaged in a dance at some high festival of old

romance, was summoned out by another knight clad in complete steel; and

being solemnly adjured to follow him into the mazes of the neighbouring

wood, his conductor brought him at length to a hollow glade in the

thickest part, where he pointed to the murdered corse of another knight,

and lifting up his beaver, shewed him by the gleam of moonlight which

fell on it, that it had the face of his spectre-guide! The dramatic

power in the character of Schedoni, the Italian monk, has been much

admired and praised; but the effect does not depend upon the character,

but the situations; not upon the figure, but upon the back-ground.—The

Castle of Otranto (which is supposed to have led the way to this style

of writing) is, to my notion, dry, meagre, and without effect. It is

done upon false principles of taste. The great hand and arm, which are

thrust into the court-yard, and remain there all day long, are the

pasteboard machinery of a pantomime; they shock the senses, and have no

purchase upon the imagination. They are a matter-of-fact impossibility;

a fixture, and no longer a phantom. _Quod sic mihi ostendis, incredulus

odi._ By realising the chimeras of ignorance and fear, begot upon

shadows and dim likenesses, we take away the very grounds of credulity

and superstition; and, as in other cases, by facing out the imposture,

betray the secret to the contempt and laughter of the spectators. The

Recess and the Old English Baron are also ‘dismal treatises,’ but with

little in them ‘at which our fell of hair is likely to rouse and stir as

life were in it.’ They are dull and prosing, without the spirit of

fiction, or the air of tradition to make them interesting. After Mrs.

Radcliffe, Monk Lewis was the greatest master of the art of freezing the

blood. The robber-scene in the Monk is only inferior to that in Count

Fathom, and perfectly new in the circumstances and cast of the

characters. Some of his descriptions are chargeable with unpardonable

grossness, but the pieces of poetry interspersed in this far-famed

novel, such as the fight of Ronscevalles and the Exile, in particular,

have a romantic and delightful harmony, such as might be chaunted by the

moonlight pilgrim, or might lull the dreaming mariner on summer-seas.

If Mrs. Radcliffe touched the trembling chords of the imagination,

making wild music there, Mrs. Inchbald has no less power over the

springs of the heart. She not only moves the affections, but melts us

into ‘all the luxury of woe.’ Her ‘Nature and Art’ is one of the most

pathetic and interesting stories in the world. It is, indeed, too much

so; or the distress is too naked, and the situations hardly to be borne

with patience. I think nothing, however, can exceed in delicacy and

beauty the account of the love-letter which the poor girl, who is the

subject of the story, receives from her lover, and which she is a

fortnight in spelling out, sooner than shew it to any one else; nor the

dreadful catastrophe of the last fatal scene, in which the same poor

creature, as her former seducer, now become her judge, is about to

pronounce sentence of death upon her, cries out in agony—‘Oh, not from

you!’ The effect of this novel upon the feelings, is not only of the

most distressing, but withering kind. It blights the sentiments, and

haunts the memory. The Simple Story is not much better in this respect:

the gloom, however, which hangs over it, is of a more fixed and tender

kind: we are not now lifted to ecstacy, only to be plunged in madness;

and besides the sweetness and dignity of some of the characters, there

are redeeming traits, retrospective glances on the course of human life,

which brighten the backward stream, and smile in hope or patience to the

last. Such is the account of Sandford, her stern and inflexible adviser,

sitting by the bedside of Miss Miller, and comforting her in her dying

moments; thus softening the worst pang of human nature, and reconciling

us to the best, but not most shining virtues in human character. The

conclusion of Nature and Art, on the contrary, is a scene of heartless

desolation, which must effectually deter any one from ever reading the

book twice. Mrs. Inchbald is an instance to confute the assertion of

Rousseau, that women fail whenever they attempt to describe the passion

of love.

I shall conclude this Lecture, by saying a few words of the author of

Caleb Williams, and the author of Waverley. I shall speak of the last

first. In knowledge, in variety, in facility, in truth of painting, in

costume and scenery, in freshness of subject and in untired interest, in

glancing lights and the graces of a style passing at will from grave to

gay, from lively to severe, at once romantic and familiar, having the

utmost force of imitation and apparent freedom of invention; these

novels have the highest claims to admiration. What lack they yet? The

author has all power given him from without—he has not, perhaps, an

equal power from within. The intensity of the feeling is not equal to

the distinctness of the imagery. He sits like a magician in his cell,

and conjures up all shapes and sights to the view; and with a little

variation we might apply to him what Spenser says of Fancy:—

‘His chamber was dispainted all within

With sundry colours, in the which were writ

Infinite shapes of things dispersed thin;

Some such as in the world were never yet;

Some daily seen and knowen by their names,

Such as in idle fantasies do flit;

Infernal hags, centaurs, fiends, hippodames,

Apes, lions, eagles, owls, fools, lovers, children, dames.’

In the midst of all this phantasmagoria, the author himself never

appears to take part with his characters, to prompt our affection to the

good, or sharpen our antipathy to the bad. It is the perfection of art

to conceal art; and this is here done so completely, that while it adds

to our pleasure in the work, it seems to take away from the merit of the

author. As he does not thrust himself forward in the foreground, he

loses the credit of the performance. The copies are so true to nature,

that they appear like tapestry figures taken off by the pattern; the

obvious patchwork of tradition and history. His characters are

transplanted at once from their native soil to the page which we are

reading, without any traces of their having passed through the hot-bed

of the author’s genius or vanity. He leaves them as he found them; but

this is doing wonders. The Laird and the Baillie of Bradwardine, the

idiot rhymer David Gellatly, Miss Rose Bradwardine, and Miss Flora Mac

Ivor, her brother the Highland Jacobite chieftain, Vich Ian Vohr, the

Highland rover, Donald Bean Lean, and the worthy page Callum Beg,

Bothwell, and Balfour of Burley, Claverhouse and Macbriar, Elshie, the

Black Dwarf, and the Red Reever of Westburn Flat, Hobbie and Grace

Armstrong, Ellen Gowan and Dominie Sampson, Dirk Hatteraick and Meg

Merrilees, are at present ‘familiar in our mouths as household names,’

and whether they are actual persons or creations of the poet’s pen, is

an impertinent inquiry. The picturesque and local scenery is as fresh as

the lichen on the rock: the characters are a part of the scenery. If

they are put in action, it is a moving picture: if they speak, we hear

their dialect and the tones of their voice. If the humour is made out by

dialect, the character by the dress, the interest by the facts and

documents in the author’s possession, we have no right to complain, if

it is made out; but sometimes it hardly is, and then we have a right to

say so. For instance, in the Tales of my Landlord, Canny Elshie is not

in himself so formidable or petrific a person as the real Black Dwarf,

called David Ritchie, nor are his acts or sayings so staggering to the

imagination. Again, the first introduction of this extraordinary

personage, groping about among the hoary twilight ruins of the Witch of

Micklestane Moor and her Grey Geese, is as full of preternatural power

and bewildering effect (according to the tradition of the country) as

can be; while the last decisive scene, where the Dwarf, in his resumed

character of Sir Edward Mauley, comes from the tomb in the chapel, to

prevent the forced marriage of the daughter of his former betrothed

mistress with the man she abhors, is altogether powerless and tame. No

situation could be imagined more finely calculated to call forth an

author’s powers of imagination and passion; but nothing is done. The

assembly is dispersed under circumstances of the strongest natural

feeling, and the most appalling preternatural appearances, just as if

the effect had been produced by a peace-officer entering for the same

purpose. These instances of a falling off are, however, rare; and if

this author should not be supposed by fastidious critics to have

original genius in the highest degree, he has other qualities which

supply its place so well, his materials are so rich and varied, and he

uses them so lavishly, that the reader is no loser by the exchange. We

are not in fear that he should publish another novel; we are under no

apprehension of his exhausting himself, for he has shewn that he is

inexhaustible.

Whoever else is, it is pretty clear that the author of Caleb Williams

and St. Leon is not the author of Waverley. Nothing can be more distinct

or excellent in their several ways than these two writers. If the one

owes almost every thing to external observation and traditional

character, the other owes every thing to internal conception and

contemplation of the possible workings of the human mind. There is

little knowledge of the world, little variety, neither an eye for the

picturesque, nor a talent for the humorous in Caleb Williams, for

instance, but you cannot doubt for a moment of the originality of the

work and the force of the conception. The impression made upon the

reader is the exact measure of the strength of the author’s genius. For

the effect, both in Caleb Williams and St. Leon, is entirely made out,

neither by facts, nor dates, by black-letter or magazine learning, by

transcript nor record, but by intense and patient study of the human

heart, and by an imagination projecting itself into certain situations,

and capable of working up its imaginary feelings to the height of

reality. The author launches into the ideal world, and must sustain

himself and the reader there by the mere force of imagination. The sense

of power in the writer thus adds to the interest of the subject.—The

character of Falkland is a sort of apotheosis of the love of fame. The

gay, the gallant Falkland lives only in the good opinion of good men;

for this he adorns his soul with virtue, and tarnishes it with crime; he

lives only for this, and dies as he loses it. He is a lover of virtue,

but a worshipper of fame. Stung to madness by a brutal insult, he

avenges himself by a crime of the deepest die, and the remorse of his

conscience and the stain upon his honour prey upon his peace and reason

ever after. It was into the mouth of such a character that a modern poet

has well put the words,

‘——Action is momentary,

The motion of a muscle, this way or that;

Suffering is long, obscure, and infinite.’

In the conflict of his feelings, he is worn to a skeleton, wasted to a

shadow. But he endures this living death to watch over his undying

reputation, and to preserve his name unsullied and free from suspicion.

But he is at last disappointed in this his darling object, by the very

means he takes to secure it, and by harassing and goading Caleb Williams

(whose insatiable, incessant curiosity had wormed itself into his

confidence) to a state of desperation, by employing every sort of

persecution, and by trying to hunt him from society like an infection,

makes him turn upon him, and betray the inmost secret of his soul. The

last moments of Falkland are indeed sublime: the spark of life and the

hope of imperishable renown are extinguished in him together; and

bending his last look of forgiveness on his victim and destroyer, he

dies a martyr to fame, but a confessor at the shrine of virtue! The

re-action and play of these two characters into each other’s hands (like

Othello and Iago) is inimitably well managed, and on a par with any

thing in the dramatic art; but Falkland is the hero of the story, Caleb

Williams is only the instrument of it. This novel is utterly unlike any

thing else that ever was written, and is one of the most original as

well as powerful productions in the English language.—St. Leon is not

equal to it in the plot and ground-work, though perhaps superior in the

execution. In the one Mr. Godwin has hit upon the extreme point of the

perfectly natural and perfectly new; in the other he ventures into the

preternatural world, and comes nearer to the world of common place.

Still the character is of the same exalted intellectual kind. As the

ruling passion of the one was the love of fame, so in the other the sole

business of life is thought. Raised by the fatal discovery of the

philosopher’s stone above mortality, he is cut off from all

participation with its pleasures. He is a limb torn from society. In

possession of eternal youth and beauty, he can feel no love; surrounded,

tantalized, tormented with riches, he can do no good. The races of men

pass before him as in a _speculum_; but he is attached to them by no

common tie of sympathy or suffering. He is thrown back into himself and

his own thoughts. He lives in the solitude of his own breast,—without

wife or child, or friend, or enemy in the world. His is the solitude of

the soul,—not of woods, or seas, or mountains,—but the desart of

society, the waste and desolation of the heart. He is himself alone. His

existence is purely contemplative, and is therefore intolerable to one

who has felt the rapture of affection or the anguish of woe. The

contrast between the enthusiastic eagerness of human pursuits and their

blank disappointment, was never, perhaps, more finely pourtrayed than in

this novel. Marguerite, the wife of St. Leon, is an instance of pure and

disinterested affection in one of the noblest of her sex. It is not

improbable that the author found the model of this character in

nature.—Of Mandeville, I shall say only one word. It appears to me to be

a falling off in the subject, not in the ability. The style and

declamation are even more powerful than ever. But unless an author

surpasses himself, and surprises the public as much the fourth or fifth

time as he did the first, he is said to fall off, because there is not

the same stimulus of novelty. A great deal is here made out of nothing,

or out of a very disagreeable subject. I cannot agree that the story is

out of nature. The feeling is very common indeed; though carried to an

unusual and improbable excess, or to one with which from the

individuality and minuteness of the circumstances, we cannot readily

sympathise.

It is rare that a philosopher is a writer of romances. The union of the

two characters in this author is a sort of phenomenon in the history of

letters; for I cannot but consider the author of Political Justice as a

philosophical reasoner of no ordinary stamp or pretensions. That work,

whatever its defects may be, is distinguished by the most acute and

severe logic, and by the utmost boldness of thinking, founded on a love

and conviction of truth. It is a system of ethics, and one that, though

I think it erroneous myself, is built on following up into its fair

consequences, a very common and acknowledged principle, that abstract

reason and general utility are the only test and standard of moral

rectitude. If this principle is true, then the system is true: but I

think that Mr. Godwin’s book has done more than any thing else to

overturn the sufficiency of this principle by abstracting, in a strict

metaphysical process, the influence of reason or the understanding in

moral questions and relations from that of habit, sense, association,

local and personal attachment, natural affection, &c.; and by thus

making it appear how necessary the latter are to our limited, imperfect,

and mixed being, how impossible the former as an exclusive guide of

action, unless man were, or were capable of becoming, a purely

intellectual being. Reason is no doubt one faculty of the human mind,

and the chief gift of Providence to man; but it must itself be subject

to and modified by other instincts and principles, because it is not the

only one. This work then, even supposing it to be false, is invaluable

as demonstrating an important truth by the _reductio ad absurdum_; or it

is an _experimentum crucis_ in one of the grand and trying questions of

moral philosophy.—In delineating the character and feelings of the

hermetic philosopher St. Leon, perhaps the author had not far to go from

those of a speculative philosophical Recluse. He who deals in the

secrets of magic, or in the secrets of the human mind, is too often

looked upon with jealous eyes by the world, which is no great conjuror;

he who pours out his intellectual wealth into the lap of the public, is

hated by those who cannot understand how he came by it; he who thinks

beyond his age, cannot expect the feelings of his contemporaries to go

along with him; he whose mind is of no age or country, is seldom

properly recognised during his life-time, and must wait, in order to

have justice done him, for the late but lasting award of

posterity:—‘Where his treasure is, there his heart is also.’

LECTURE VII

ON THE WORKS OF HOGARTH.—ON THE GRAND AND FAMILIAR STYLE OF PAINTING

If the quantity of amusement, or of matter for more serious reflection

which their works have afforded, is that by which we are to judge of

precedence among the intellectual benefactors of mankind, there are,

perhaps, few persons who can put in a stronger claim to our gratitude

than Hogarth. It is not hazarding too much to assert, that he was one of

the greatest comic geniuses that ever lived, and he was certainly one of

the most extraordinary men this country has produced. The wonderful

knowledge which he possessed of human life and manners, is only to be

surpassed (if it can be) by the power of invention with which he has

combined and contrasted his materials in the most ludicrous and varied

points of view, and by the mastery of execution with which he has

embodied and made tangible the very thoughts and passing movements of

the mind. Critics sometimes object to the style of Hogarth’s pictures,

or to the class to which they belong. First, he belongs to no class, or

if he does, it is to the same class as Fielding, Smollett, Vanbrugh, and

Moliere. Besides, the merit of his pictures does not depend on the

nature of the subject, but on the knowledge displayed of it, on the

number of ideas they excite, on the fund of thought and observation

contained in them. They are to be studied as works of science as well as

of amusement; they satisfy our love of truth; they fill up the void in

the mind; they form a series of plates in natural history, and of that

most interesting part of natural history, the history of our own

species. Make what deductions you please for the vulgarity of the

subject, yet in the research, the profundity, the absolute truth and

precision of the delineation of character; in the invention of incident,

in wit and humour; in the life with which they are ‘instinct in every

part;’ in everlasting variety and originality; they never have, and

probably never will be surpassed. They stimulate the faculties as well

as soothe them. ‘Other pictures we see, Hogarth’s we read.’

The public had not long ago an opportunity of viewing most of Hogarth’s

pictures, in the collection made of them at the British Gallery. The

superiority of the original paintings to the common prints, is in a

great measure confined to the Marriage a-la-Mode, with which I shall

begin my remarks.

Boccaccio, the most refined and sentimental of all the novel-writers,

has been stigmatised as a mere inventor of licentious tales, because

readers in general have only seized on those things in his works which

were suited to their own taste, and have thus reflected their own

grossness back upon the writer. So it has happened, that the majority of

critics having been most struck with the strong and decided expression

in Hogarth, the extreme delicacy and subtle gradations of character in

his pictures have almost entirely escaped them. In the first picture of

the _Marriage a-la-Mode_, the three figures of the young Nobleman, his

intended Bride, and her Inamorato, the Lawyer, shew how much Hogarth

excelled in the power of giving soft and effeminate expression. They

have, however, been less noticed than the other figures, which tell a

plainer story, and convey a more palpable moral. Nothing can be more

finely managed than the differences of character in these delicate

personages. The beau sits smiling at the looking-glass with a reflected

simper of self-admiration, and a languishing inclination of the head,

while the rest of his body is perked up on his high heels with a certain

air of tip-toe elevation. He is the Narcissus of the reign of George

II.; whose powdered peruke, ruffles, gold-lace, and patches, divide his

self-love unequally with his own person—the true _Sir Plume_ of his day;

‘Of amber-lidded snuff box justly vain,

And the nice conduct of a clouded cane.’

Again we find the same felicity in the figure and attitude of the Bride,

courted by the Lawyer. There is the utmost flexibility, and yielding

softness in her whole person, a listless languor and tremulous suspense

in the expression of her face. It is the precise look and air which Pope

has given to his favourite Belinda, just at the moment of the _Rape of

the Lock_. The heightened glow, the forward intelligence, and loosened

soul of love in the same face, in the Assignation scene before the

masquerade, form a fine and instructive contrast to the delicacy,

timidity, and coy reluctance expressed in the first. The Lawyer in both

pictures is much the same, perhaps too much so; though even this

unmoved, unaltered appearance may be designed as characteristic. In both

cases he has ‘a person, and a smooth dispose, framed to make women

false.’ He is full of that easy good-humour, and easy good opinion of

himself, with which the sex are often delighted. There is not a sharp

angle in his face to obstruct his success, or give a hint of doubt or

difficulty. His whole aspect is round and rosy, lively and unmeaning,

happy without the least expense of thought, careless and inviting; and

conveys a perfect idea of the uninterrupted glide and pleasing murmur of

the soft periods that flow from his tongue.

The expression of the Bride in the Morning Scene is the most highly

seasoned, and at the same time the most vulgar in the series. The

figure, face, and attitude of the husband, are inimitable. Hogarth has

with great skill contrasted the pale countenance of the husband with the

yellow whitish colour of the marble chimneypiece behind him, in such a

manner as to preserve the fleshy tone of the former. The airy splendour

of the view of the inner-room in this picture is probably not exceeded

by any of the productions of the Flemish school.

The young girl in the third picture, who is represented as the victim of

fashionable profligacy, is unquestionably one of the artist’s

_chef-d’œuvres_. The exquisite delicacy of the painting is only

surpassed by the felicity and subtlety of the conception. Nothing can be

more striking than the contrast between the extreme softness of her

person, and the hardened indifference of her character. The vacant

stillness, the docility to vice, the premature suppression of youthful

sensibility, the doll-like mechanism of the whole figure, which seems to

have no other feeling but a sickly sense of pain—shew the deepest

insight into human nature, and into the effects of those refinements in

depravity, by which it has been good-naturedly asserted, that ‘vice

loses half its evil in losing all its grossness.’ The story of this

picture is in some parts very obscure and enigmatical. It is certain

that the nobleman is not looking strait forward to the quack, whom he

seems to have been threatening with his cane; but that his eyes are

turned up with an ironical leer of triumph to the procuress. The

commanding attitude and size of this woman, the swelling circumference

of her dress, spread out like a turkey-cock’s feathers, the fierce,

ungovernable, inveterate malignity of her countenance, which hardly

needs the comment of the clasp-knife to explain her purpose, all are

admirable in themselves, and still more so, as they are opposed to the

mute insensibility, the elegant negligence of dress, and the childish

figure of the girl who is supposed to be her _protégé_.—As for the

Quack, there can be no doubt entertained about him. His face seems as if

it were composed of salve, and his features exhibit all the chaos or

confusion of the most gross, ignorant, and impudent empiricism. The

gradations of ridiculous affectation in the Music scene are finely

imagined and preserved. The preposterous, overstrained admiration of the

lady of quality; the sentimental, insipid, patient delight of the man,

with his hair in papers, and sipping his tea: the pert, smirking,

conceited, half-distorted approbation of the figure next to him; the

transition to the total insensibility of the round face in profile, and

then to the wonder of the negro-boy at the rapture of his mistress, form

a perfect whole. The sanguine complexion and flame-coloured hair of the

female virtuoso throw an additional light on the character. This is lost

in the print. The continuing the red colour of the hair into the back of

the chair, has been pointed out as one of those instances of what may be

termed alliteration in colouring, of which these pictures are every

where full. The gross bloated appearance of the Italian singer is well

relieved by the hard features of the instrumental performer behind him,

which might be carved of wood. The negro-boy holding the chocolate, both

in expression, colour, and execution, is a masterpiece. The gay, lively

derision of the other negro-boy playing with the Acteon, is an ingenious

contrast to the profound amazement of the first. Some account has

already been given of the two lovers in this picture. It is curious to

observe the infinite activity of mind which the artist displays on every

occasion. An instance occurs in the present picture. He has so contrived

the papers in the hair of the bride, as to make them look almost like a

wreath of half-blown flowers; while those which he has placed on the

head of the musical amateur, very much resemble a _cheveux-de-fris_ of

horns, which adorn and fortify the lack lustre expression, and mild

resignation of the face beneath.

The Night Scene is inferior to the rest of the series. The attitude of

the husband, who is just killed, is one in which it would be impossible

for him to stand or even to fall. It resembles the loose pasteboard

figures they make for children. The characters in the last picture, in

which the wife dies, are all masterly. I would particularly refer to the

captious, petulant, self-sufficiency of the Apothecary, whose face and

figure are constructed on exact physiognomical principles; and to the

fine example of passive obedience and non-resistance in the servant,

whom he is taking to task, and whose coat, of green and yellow livery,

is as long and as melancholy as his face. The disconsolate look and

haggard eyes, the open mouth, the comb sticking in the hair, the broken

gapped teeth, which, as it were, hitch in an answer, every thing about

him denotes the utmost perplexity and dismay. The harmony and gradations

of colour in this picture are uniformly preserved with the greatest

nicety, and are well worthy the attention of the artist.—I have so far

attempted to point out the fund of observation, physical and moral,

contained in one set of these pictures, the _Marriage-a-la-Mode_. The

rest would furnish as many topics to descant upon, were the patience of

the reader as inexhaustible as the painter’s invention. But as this is

not the case, I shall content myself with barely referring to some of

those figures in the other pictures, which appear to me the most

striking, and which we see not only while we are looking at them, but

which we have before us at all other times. For instance, who, having

seen, can easily forget that exquisite frost-piece of religion and

morality, the antiquated Prude in the Morning Scene; or that striking

commentary on the _good old times_, the little wretched appendage of a

Foot-boy, who crawls, half famished and half frozen, behind her? The

French man and woman in the Noon, are the perfection of flighty

affectation and studied grimace; the amiable _fraternization_ of the two

old women saluting each other, is not enough to be admired; and in the

little Master, in the same national group, we see the early promise and

personification of that eternal principle of wondrous self-complacency,

proof against all circumstances, and which makes the French the only

people who are vain even of being cuckolded and being conquered! Or

shall we prefer to this the outraged distress and unmitigated terrors of

the Boy who has dropped his dish of meat, and who seems red all over

with shame and vexation, and bursting with the noise he makes? Or what

can be better than the good housewifery of the Girl underneath, who is

devouring the lucky fragments; or than the plump, ripe, florid, luscious

look of the Servant-wench near her, embraced by a greasy rascal of an

Othello, with her pye-dish tottering like her virtue, and with the most

precious part of its contents running over? Just—no, not quite—as good

is the joke of the Woman overhead, who, having quarrelled with her

Husband, is throwing their Sunday’s dinner out of the window, to

complete this chapter of accidents of baked-dishes. The Husband in the

Evening Scene is certainly as meek as any recorded in history; but I

cannot say that I admire this picture, or the Night Scene after it. But

then, in the Taste in High-Life, there is that inimitable pair,

differing only in sex, congratulating and delighting one another by ‘all

the mutually reflected charities’ of folly and affectation, with the

young Lady, coloured like a rose, dandling her little, black, pug-faced,

white-teethed, chuckling favourite; and with the portrait of Monsieur

Des Noyers in the back-ground, dancing in a grand ballet, surrounded by

butterflies. And again, in the Election Dinner, is the immortal Cobbler,

surrounded by his Peers, who,

‘——frequent and full,

In _loud_ recess and _brawling_ conclave sit’——

the Jew in the second picture, a very Jew in grain; innumerable fine

sketches of heads in the Polling for Votes, of which the Nobleman

overlooking the Caricaturist is the second best, and the Blind-man going

up to vote, the best; and then the irresistible, tumultuous display of

broad humour in the Chairing the Member, which is, perhaps, of all

Hogarth’s pictures, the most full of laughable incidents and situations;

the yellow, rusty-faced Thresher, with his swinging flail breaking the

head of one of the chairmen; and his redoubted antagonist, the Sailor,

with his oak-stick, and stumping wooden-leg, a supplemental cudgel; the

persevering ecstasy of the hobbling Blind Fiddler, who, in the fray,

appears to have been trod upon by the artificial excrescence of the

honest tar; Monsieur, the monkey, with piteous aspect, speculating the

impending disaster of the triumphant Candidate, and his brother Bruin,

appropriating the paunch; the precipitous flight of the Pigs, souse over

head into the water; the fine Lady fainting, with vermilion lips; and

the two Chimney Sweepers, satirical young rogues!—I had almost forgot

the Politician, who is burning a hole through his hat with a candle in

reading a newspaper; and the Chickens, in the _March to Finchley_,

wandering in search of their lost dam, who is found in the pocket of the

Serjeant. Of the pictures in the _Rake’s Progress_, exhibited in this

collection, I shall not here say any thing, because I think them on the

whole inferior to the prints, and because they have already been

criticised by a writer, to whom I could add nothing, in a paper which

ought to be read by every lover of Hogarth and of English genius—I mean,

Mr. Lamb’s Essay on the works of Hogarth. I shall at present proceed to

form some estimate of the style of art in which this painter excelled.

What distinguishes his compositions from all others of the same general

kind, is, that they are equally remote from caricature, and from mere

still life. It of course happens in subjects taken from common life,

that the painter can procure real models, and he can get them to sit as

long as he pleases. Hence, in general, those attitudes and expressions

have been chosen which could be assumed the longest; and in imitating

which, the artist by taking pains and time might produce almost as

complete _fac-similes_ as he could of a flower or a flower-pot, of a

damask curtain or a china-vase. The copy was as perfect and as

uninteresting in the one case as in the other. On the contrary, subjects

of drollery and ridicule affording frequent examples of strange

deformity and peculiarity of features, these have been eagerly seized by

another class of artists, who, without subjecting themselves to the

laborious drudgery of the Dutch school and their imitators, have

produced our popular caricatures, by rudely copying or exaggerating the

casual irregularities of the human countenance. Hogarth has equally

avoided the faults of both these styles: the insipid tameness of the

one, and the gross extravagance of the other, so as to give to the

productions of his pencil equal solidity and effect. For his faces go to

the very verge of caricature, and yet never (I believe in any single

instance) go beyond it: they take the very widest latitude, and yet we

always see the links which bind them to nature: they bear all the marks,

and carry all the conviction of reality with them, as if we had seen the

actual faces for the first time, from the precision, consistency, and

good sense with which the whole and every part is made out. They exhibit

the most uncommon features, with the most uncommon expressions: but

which yet are as familiar and intelligible as possible, because with all

the boldness, they have all the truth of nature. Hogarth has left behind

him as many of these memorable faces, in their memorable moments, as,

perhaps, most of us remember in the course of our lives, and has thus

doubled the quantity of our experience.

It will assist us in forming a more determinate idea of the peculiar

genius of Hogarth, to compare him with a deservedly admired artist in

our own times. The highest authority on art in this country, I

understand, has pronounced that Mr. Wilkie united the excellences of

Hogarth to those of Teniers. I demur to this decision in both its

branches; but in demurring to authority, it is necessary to give our

reasons. I conceive that this ingenious and attentive observer of nature

has certain essential, real, and indisputable excellences of his own;

and I think it, therefore, the less important to clothe him with any

vicarious merits which do not belong to him. Mr. Wilkie’s pictures,

generally speaking, derive almost their whole value from their

_reality_, or the truth of the representation. They are works of pure

imitative art; and the test of this style of composition is to represent

nature faithfully and happily in its simplest combinations. It may be

said of an artist like Mr. Wilkie, that _nothing human is indifferent to

him_. His mind takes an interest in, and it gives an interest to, the

most familiar scenes and transactions of life. He professedly gives

character, thought, and passion, in their lowest degrees, and in their

every-day forms. He selects the commonest events and appearances of

nature for his subjects; and trusts to their very commonness for the

interest and amusement he is to excite. Mr. Wilkie is a serious,

prosaic, literal narrator of facts; and his pictures may be considered

as diaries, or minutes of what is passing constantly about us. Hogarth,

on the contrary, is essentially a comic painter; his pictures are not

indifferent, unimpassioned descriptions of human nature, but rich,

exuberant satires upon it. He is carried away by a passion for the

_ridiculous_. His object is ‘to shew vice her own feature, scorn her own

image.’ He is so far from contenting himself with still-life, that he is

always on the verge of caricature, though without ever falling into it.

He does not represent folly or vice in its incipient, or dormant, or

_grub_ state; but full grown, with wings, pampered into all sorts of

affectation, airy, ostentatious, and extravagant. Folly is there seen at

the height—the moon is at the full; it is ‘the very error of the time.’

There is a perpetual collision of eccentricities—a tilt and tournament

of absurdities; the prejudices and caprices of mankind are let loose,

and set together by the ears, as in a bear-garden. Hogarth paints

nothing but comedy, or tragi-comedy. Wilkie paints neither one nor the

other. Hogarth never looks at any object but to find out a moral or a

ludicrous effect. Wilkie never looks at any object but to see that it is

there. Hogarth’s pictures are a perfect jest-book, from one end to the

other. I do not remember a single joke in Wilkie’s, except one very bad

one of the boy in the Blind Fiddler, scraping the gridiron, or

fire-shovel, I forget which it is.[23] In looking at Hogarth, you are

ready to burst your sides with laughing at the unaccountable jumble of

odd things which are brought together; you look at Wilkie’s pictures

with a mingled feeling of curiosity, and admiration at the accuracy of

the representation. For instance, there is a most admirable head of a

man coughing in the Rent-day; the action, the keeping, the choaked

sensation, are inimitable: but there is nothing to laugh at in a man

coughing. What strikes the mind is the difficulty of a man’s being

painted coughing, which here certainly is a masterpiece of art. But turn

to the blackguard Cobbler in the Election Dinner, who has been smutting

his neighbour’s face over, and who is lolling out his tongue at the

joke, with a most surprising obliquity of vision; and immediately ‘your

lungs begin to crow like chanticleer.’ Again, there is the little boy

crying in the Cut Finger, who only gives you the idea of a cross,

disagreeable, obstinate child in pain: whereas the same face in

Hogarth’s Noon, from the ridiculous perplexity it is in, and its

extravagant, noisy, unfelt distress, at the accident of having let fall

the pye-dish, is quite irresistible. Mr. Wilkie, in his picture of the

Ale-house door, I believe, painted Mr. Liston as one of the figures,

without any great effect. Hogarth would have given any price for such a

subject, and would have made it worth any money. I have never seen any

thing, in the expression of comic humour, equal to Hogarth’s pictures,

but Liston’s face!

Mr. Wilkie paints interiors: but still you generally connect them with

the country. Hogarth, even when he paints people in the open air,

represents them either as coming from London, as in the polling for

votes at Brentford, or as returning to it, as the dyer and his wife at

Bagnigge Wells. In this last picture, he has contrived to convert a

common rural image into a type and emblem of city honours. In fact, I

know no one who had a less pastoral imagination than Hogarth. He

delights in the thick of St. Giles’s or St. James’s. His pictures

breathe a certain close, greasy, tavern air. The fare he serves up to us

consists of high-seasoned dishes, ragouts and olla podridas, like the

supper in Gil Blas, which it requires a strong stomach to digest. Mr.

Wilkie presents us with a sort of lenten fare, very good and wholesome,

but rather insipid than overpowering! Mr. Wilkie’s pictures are, in

general, much better painted than Hogarth’s; but the Marriage-a-la-Mode

is superior both in colour and execution to any of Wilkie’s. I may add

here, without any disparagement, that, as an artist, Mr. Wilkie is

hardly to be mentioned with Teniers. Neither in truth and brilliant

clearness of colouring, nor in facility of execution, is there any

comparison. Teniers was a perfect master in all these respects; and our

own countryman is positively defective, notwithstanding the very

laudable care with which he finishes every part of his pictures. There

is an evident smear and dragging of the paint, which is also of a bad

purple, or puttyish tone, and which never appears in the pictures of the

Flemish artist, any more than in a looking-glass. Teniers, probably from

his facility of execution, succeeded in giving a more local and

momentary expression to his figures. They seem each going on with his

particular amusement or occupation; Wilkie’s have, in general, more a

look of sitting for their pictures. Their compositions are very

different also: and in this respect, I believe, Mr. Wilkie has the

advantage. Teniers’s boors are usually amusing themselves at skittles,

or dancing, or drinking, or smoking, or doing what they like, in a

careless, desultory way; and so the composition is loose and irregular.

Wilkie’s figures are all drawn up in a regular order, and engaged in one

principal action, with occasional episodes. The story of the Blind

Fiddler is the most interesting, and the best told. The two children

standing before the musician are delightful. The Card-players is the

best coloured of his pictures, if I am not mistaken. The Village

Politicians, though excellent as to character and composition, is

inferior as a picture to those which Mr. Wilkie has since painted. His

latest pictures, however, do not appear to me to be his best. There is

something of manner and affectation in the grouping of the figures, and

a pink and rosy colour spread over them, which is out of place. The hues

of Rubens and Sir Joshua do not agree with Mr. Wilkie’s subjects. One of

his last pictures, that of Duncan Gray, is equally remarkable for

sweetness and simplicity in colour, composition, and expression. I must

here conclude this very general account; for to point out the particular

beauties of every one of his pictures in detail, would require an Essay

by itself.

I have promised to say something in this Lecture on the difference

between the grand and familiar style of painting; and I shall throw out

what imperfect hints I have been able to collect on this subject, so

often attempted, and never yet succeeded in, taking the examples and

illustrations from Hogarth, that is, from what he possessed or wanted in

each kind.

And first, the difference is not that between imitation and invention:

for there is as much of this last quality in Hogarth, as in any painter

or poet whatever. As, for example, to take two of his pictures only, I

mean the Enraged Musician and the Gin Lane;—in one of which every

conceivable variety of disagreeable and discordant sound—the

razor-grinder turning his wheel; the boy with his drum, and the girl

with her rattle momentarily suspended; the pursuivant blowing his horn;

the shrill milkwoman; the inexorable ballad-singer, with her squalling

infant; the pewterer’s shop close by; the fishwomen; the

chimney-sweepers at the top of a chimney, and the two cats in melodious

concert on the ridge of the tiles; with the bells ringing in the

distance, as we see by the flags flying:—and in the other, the

complicated forms and signs of death and ruinous decay—the woman on the

stairs of the bridge asleep, letting her child fall over; her ghastly

companion opposite, next to death’s door, with hollow, famished cheeks

and staring ribs; the dog fighting with the man for the bare shin-bone;

the man hanging himself in a garret; the female corpse put into a coffin

by the parish beadle; the men marching after a funeral, seen through a

broken wall in the back ground; and the very houses reeling as if drunk

and tumbling about the ears of the infatuated victims below, the

pawnbroker’s being the only one that stands firm and unimpaired—enforce

the moral meant to be conveyed by each of these pieces with a richness

and research of combination and artful contrast not easily paralleled in

any production of the pencil or the pen. The clock pointing to four in

the morning, in Modern Midnight Conversation, just as the immoveable

Parson Ford is filling out another glass from a brimming punch-bowl,

while most of his companions, with the exception of the sly Lawyer, are

falling around him ‘like leaves in October;’ and again, the

extraordinary mistake of the man leaning against the post, in the Lord

Mayor’s Procession—shew a mind capable of seizing the most rare and

transient coincidences of things, of imagining what either never

happened at all, or of instantly fixing on and applying to its purpose

what never happened but once. So far, the invention shewn in the great

style of painting is poor in the comparison. Indeed, grandeur is

supposed (whether rightly or not, I shall not here inquire) to imply a

simplicity inconsistent with this inexhaustible variety of incident and

circumstantial detail.

Secondly, the difference between the ideal and familiar style is not to

be explained by the difference between the genteel and vulgar; for it is

evident that Hogarth was almost as much at home in the genteel comedy,

as in the broad farce of his pictures. He excelled not only in

exhibiting the coarse humours and disgusting incidents of low life, but

in exhibiting the vices, follies, and frivolity of the fashionable

manners of his time: his fine ladies hardly yield the palm to his

waiting-maids, and his lords and his footmen are on a respectable

footing of equality. There is no want, for example, in the

Marriage-a-la-Mode, or in Taste in High Life, of affectation verging

into idiotism, or of languid sensibility, that might—

‘Die of a rose in aromatic pain.’

In short, Hogarth was a painter, not of low but of actual life; and the

ridiculous and prominent features of high or low life, of the great

vulgar or the small, lay equally open to him. The Country Girl, in the

first plate of the Harlot’s Progress, coming out of the waggon, is not

more simple and ungainly, than the same figure, in the second, is

thoroughly initiated into the mysteries of her art, and suddenly

accomplished in all the airs and graces of affectation, ease, and

impudence. The affected languor and imbecility of the same girl

afterwards, when put to beat hemp in Bridewell, is exactly in keeping

with the character she has been taught to assume. Sir Joshua could do

nothing like it in his line of portrait, which differed chiefly in the

back ground. The fine gentleman at his levee, in the Rake’s Progress, is

also a complete model of a person of rank and fortune, surrounded by

needy and worthless adventurers, fiddlers, poetasters and virtuosi, as

was the custom in those days. Lord Chesterfield himself would not have

been disgraced by sitting for it. I might multiply examples to shew that

Hogarth was not characteristically deficient in that kind of elegance

which arises from an habitual attention to external appearance and

deportment. I will only add as instances, among his women, the two

_élégantes_ in the Bedlam scene, which are dressed (allowing for the

difference of not quite a century) in the manner of Ackerman’s dresses

for May; and among the men, the Lawyer in Modern Midnight Conversation,

whose gracious significant leer and sleek lubricated countenance exhibit

all the happy finesse of his profession, when a silk gown has been

added, or is likely to be added to it; and several figures in the

Cockpit, who are evidently, at the first glance, gentlemen of the old

school, and where the mixture of the blacklegs with the higher character

is a still further test of the discriminating skill of the painter.

Again, Hogarth had not only a perception of fashion, but a sense of

natural beauty. There are as many pleasing faces in his pictures as in

Sir Joshua. Witness the girl picking the Rake’s pocket in the Bagnio

scene, whom we might suppose to be ‘the Charming Betsy Careless;’ the

Poet’s wife, handsomer than falls to the lot of most poets, who are

generally more intent upon the idea in their own minds than on the image

before them, and are glad to take up with Dulcineas of their own

creating; the theatrical heroine in the Southwark Fair, who would be an

accession to either of our play-houses; the girl asleep, ogled by the

clerk in church time, and the sweetheart of the Good Apprentice in the

reading desk in the second of that series, almost an ideal face and

expression; the girl in her cap selected for a partner by the footman in

the print of Morning, very handsome; and many others equally so,

scattered like ‘stray-gifts of love and beauty’ through these pictures.

Hogarth was not then exclusively the painter of deformity. He painted

beauty or ugliness indifferently, as they came in his way; and was not

by nature confined to those faces which are painful and disgusting, as

many would have us believe.

Again, neither are we to look for the solution of the difficulty in the

difference between the comic and the tragic, between loose laughter and

deep passion. For Mr. Lamb has shewn unanswerably that Hogarth is quite

at home in scenes of the deepest distress, in the heart-rending

calamities of common life, in the expression of ungovernable rage,

silent despair, or moody madness, enhanced by the tenderest sympathy, or

aggravated by the frightful contrast of the most impenetrable and

obdurate insensibility, as we see strikingly exemplified in the latter

prints of the Rake’s Progress. To the unbeliever in Hogarth’s power over

the passions and the feelings of the heart, the characters there speak

like ‘the hand-writing on the wall.’ If Mr. Lamb has gone too far in

paralleling some of these appalling representations with Shakespear, he

was excusable in being led to set off what may be considered as a

staggering paradox against a rooted prejudice. At any rate, the

inferiority of Hogarth (be it what it may) did not arise from a want of

passion and intense feeling; and in this respect he had the advantage

over Fielding, for instance, and others of our comic writers, who

excelled only in the light and ludicrous. There is in general a

distinction, almost an impassable one, between the power of embodying

the serious and the ludicrous; but these contradictory faculties were

reconciled in Hogarth, as they were in Shakspeare, in Chaucer; and as it

is said that they were in another extraordinary and later instance,

Garrick’s acting.

None of these then will do: neither will the most masterly and entire

keeping of character lead us to an explanation of the grand and ideal

style; for Hogarth possessed the most complete and absolute mastery over

the truth and identity of expression and features in his subjects. Every

stroke of his pencil tells according to a preconception in his mind. If

the eye squints, the mouth is distorted; every feature acts, and is

acted upon by the rest of the face; even the dress and attitude are such

as could be proper to no other figure: the whole is under the influence

of one impulse, that of truth and nature. Look at the heads in the

Cockpit, already mentioned, one of the most masterly of his productions

in this way, where the workings of the mind are seen in every muscle of

the face; and the same expression, more intense or relaxed, of hope or

of fear, is stamped on each of the characters, so that you could no more

transpose any part of one countenance to another, than you could change

a profile to a front face. Hogarth was, in one sense, strictly an

historical painter: that is, he represented the manners and humours of

mankind in action, and their characters by varied expression. Every

thing in his pictures has life and motion in it. Not only does the

business of the scene never stand still, but every feature is put into

full play; the exact feeling of the moment is brought out, and carried

to its utmost height, and then instantly seized and stamped on the

canvass for ever. The expression is always taken _en passant_, in a

state of progress or change, and, as it were, at the salient point.

Besides the excellence of each individual face, the reflection of the

expression from face to face, the contrast and struggle of particular

motives and feelings in the different actors in the scene, as of anger,

contempt, laughter, compassion, are conveyed in the happiest and most

lively manner. His figures are not like the back-ground on which they

are painted: even the pictures on the wall have a peculiar look of their

own. All this is effected by a few decisive and rapid touches of the

pencil, careless in appearance, but infallible in their results; so that

one great criterion of the grand style insisted on by Sir Joshua

Reynolds, that of leaving out the details, and attending to general

character and outline, belonged to Hogarth. He did not indeed arrive at

middle forms or neutral expression, which Sir Joshua makes another test

of the ideal; for Hogarth was not insipid. That was the last fault with

which he could be charged. But he had breadth and boldness of manner, as

well as any of them; so that neither does that constitute the _ideal_.

What then does? We have reduced this to something like the last

remaining quantity in an equation, where all the others have been

ascertained. Hogarth had all the other parts of an original and

accomplished genius except this, but this he had not. He had an intense

feeling and command over the impressions of sense, of habit, of

character, and passion, the serious and the comic, in a word, of nature,

as it fell within his own observation, or came within the sphere of his

actual experience; but he had little power beyond that sphere, or

sympathy with that which existed only _in idea_. He was ‘conformed to

this world, not transformed.’ If he attempted to paint Pharaoh’s

daughter, and Paul before Felix, he lost himself. His mind had feet and

hands, but not wings to fly with. There is a mighty world of sense, of

custom, of every-day action, of accidents and objects coming home to us,

and interesting because they do so; the gross, material, stirring, noisy

world of common life and selfish passion, of which Hogarth was absolute

lord and master: there is another mightier world, that which exists only

in conception and in power, the universe of thought and sentiment, that

surrounds and is raised above the ordinary world of reality, as the

empyrean surrounds this nether globe, into which few are privileged to

soar with mighty wings outspread, and in which, as power is given them

to embody their aspiring fancies, to ‘give to airy nothing a local

habitation and a name,’ to fill with imaginary shapes of beauty or

sublimity, and make the dark abyss pregnant, bringing that which is

remote home to us, raising themselves to the lofty, sustaining

themselves on the refined and abstracted, making all things like not

what we know and feel in ourselves, in this ‘ignorant present’ time, but

like what they must be in themselves, at in our noblest idea of them,

and stamping that idea with reality, (but chiefly clothing the best and

the highest with grace and grandeur): this is the ideal in art, in

poetry, and in painting. There are things which are cognisable only to

sense, which interest only our more immediate instincts and passions;

the want of food, the loss of a limb, or a sum of money: there are

others that appeal to different and nobler faculties; the wants of the

mind, the hunger and thirst after truth and beauty; that is, to

faculties commensurate with objects greater and of greater refinement,

which to be grand must extend beyond ourselves to others, and our

interests in which must be refined in proportion as they do so.[24] The

interest in these subjects is in proportion to the power of conceiving

them and the power of conceiving them is in proportion to the interest

and affection for them, to the innate bias of the mind to elevate itself

above every thing low, and purify itself from every thing gross. Hogarth

only transcribes or transposes what was tangible and visible, not the

abstracted and intelligible. You see in his pictures only the faces

which you yourself have seen, or others like them; none of his

characters are thinking of any person or thing out of the picture: you

are only interested in the objects of their contention or pursuit,

because they themselves are interested in them. There is nothing remote

in thought, or comprehensive in feeling. The whole is intensely personal

and local: but the interest of the ideal and poetical style of art,

relates to more permanent and universal objects; and the characters and

forms must be such as to correspond with and sustain that interest, and

give external grace and dignity to it. Such were the subjects which

Raphael chose; faces imbued with unalterable sentiment, and figures,

that stand in the eternal silence of thought. He places before you

objects of everlasting interest, events of greatest magnitude, and

persons in them fit for the scene and action—warriors and kings, princes

and nobles, and, greater yet, poets and philosophers; and mightier than

these, patriarchs and apostles, prophets and founders of religion,

saints and martyrs, angels and the Son of God. We know their importance

and their high calling, and we feel that they do not belie it. We see

them as they were painted, with the eye of faith. The light which they

have kindled in the world, is reflected back upon their faces: the awe

and homage which has been paid to them, is seated upon their brow, and

encircles them like a glory. All those who come before them, are

conscious of a superior presence. For example, the beggars, in the Gate

Beautiful, are impressed with this ideal borrowed character. Would not

the cripple and the halt feel a difference of sensation, and express it

outwardly in such circumstances? And was the painter wrong to transfer

this sense of preternatural power and the confidence of a saving faith

to his canvass? Hogarth’s Pool of Bethesda, on the contrary, is only a

collection of common beggars receiving an alms. The waters may be

stirred, but the mind is not stirred with them. The fowls, again, in the

Miraculous Draught of Fishes, exult and clap their wings, and seem

lifted up with some unusual cause of joy. There is not the same

expansive, elevated principle in Hogarth. He has amiable and

praise-worthy characters, indeed, among his bad ones. The Master of the

Industrious and Idle Apprentice is a good citizen and a virtuous man;

but his benevolence is mechanical and confined: it extends only to his

shop, or, at most, to his ward. His face is not ruffled by passion, nor

is it inspired by thought. To give another instance, the face of the

faithful Female, fainting in the prison-scene in the Rake’s Progress, is

more one of effeminate softness than of distinguished tenderness, or

heroic constancy. But in the pictures of the Mother and Child, by

Raphael and Leonard da Vinci, we see all the tenderness purified from

all the weakness of maternal affection, and exalted by the prospects of

religious faith; so that the piety and devotion of future generations

seems to add its weight to the expression of feminine sweetness and

parental love, to press upon the heart, and breathe in the countenance.

This is the _ideal_, passion blended with thought and pointing to

distant objects, not debased by grossness, not thwarted by accident, nor

weakened by familiarity, but connected with forms and circumstances that

give the utmost possible expansion and refinement to the general

sentiment. With all my admiration of Hogarth, I cannot think him equal

to Raphael. I do not know whether, if the port-folio were opened, I

would not as soon look over the prints of Hogarth as those of Raphael;

but, assuredly, if the question were put to me, I would sooner never

have seen the prints of Hogarth than never have seen those of Raphael.

It is many years ago since I first saw the prints of the Cartoons

hanging round the old-fashioned parlour of a little inn in a remote part

of the country. I was then young: I had heard of the fame of the

Cartoons, but this was the first time I had ever been admitted face to

face into the presence of those divine guests. ‘How was I then

uplifted!’ Prophets and Apostles stood before me as in a dream, and the

Saviour of the Christian world, with his attributes of faith and power;

miracles were working on the walls; the hand of Raphael was there; and

as his pencil traced the lines, I saw godlike spirits and lofty shapes

descend and walk visibly the earth, but as if their thoughts still

lifted them above the earth. There I saw the figure of St. Paul,

pointing with noble fervour to ‘temples not made with hands, eternal in

the heavens;’ and that finer one of Christ in the boat, whose whole

figure seems sustained by meekness and love; and that of the same person

surrounded by his disciples, like a flock of sheep listening to the

music of some divine shepherd. I knew not how enough to admire

them.—Later in life, I saw other works of this great painter (with more

like them) collected in the Louvre: where Art, at that time, lifted up

her head, and was seated on her throne, and said, ‘All eyes shall see

me, and all knees shall bow to me!’ Honour was done to her and all hers.

There was her treasure, and there the inventory of all she had. There

she had gathered together her pomp, and there was her shrine, and there

her votaries came and worshipped as in a temple. The crown she wore was

brighter than that of kings. Where the struggles for human liberty had

been, there were the triumphs of human genius. For there, in the Louvre,

were the precious monuments of art:—There ‘stood the statue that

enchants the world;’ there was Apollo, the Laocoon, the Dying Gladiator,

the head of the Antinous, Diana with her Fawn, the Muses and the Graces

in a ring, and all the glories of the antique world:—

‘There was old Proteus coming from the sea,

And wreathed Triton blew his winding horn.’

There, too, were the two St. Jeromes, Correggio’s, and Domenichino’s;

there was Raphael’s Transfiguration; the St. Mark of Tintoret; Paul

Veronese’s Marriage of Cana; the Deluge of Poussin; and Titian’s St.

Peter Martyr. It was there that I learned to become an enthusiast of the

lasting works of the great painters, and of their names no less

magnificent; grateful to the heart as the sound of celestial harmony

from other spheres, waking around us (whether heard or not) from youth

to age; the stay, the guide, and anchor of our purest thoughts; whom,

having once seen, we always remember, and who teach us to see all things

through them; without whom life would be to begin again, and the earth

barren; of Raphael, who lifted the human form half way to heaven; of

Titian, who painted the mind in the face, and unfolded the soul of

things to the eye; of Rubens, around whose pencil gorgeous shapes

thronged numberless, startling us by the novel accidents of form and

colour, putting the spirit of motion into the universe, and weaving a

gay fantastic round and Bacchanalian dance with nature; of Rembrandt,

too, who ‘smoothed the raven down of darkness till it smiled,’ and

tinged it with a light like streaks of burning ore: of these, and more

than these, of whom the world was scarce worthy, and for the loss of

whom nothing could console me—not even the works of Hogarth!

LECTURE VIII

ON THE COMIC WRITERS OF THE LAST CENTURY

The question which has been often asked, _Why there are comparatively so

few good modern Comedies?_ appears in a great measure to answer itself.

It is because so many excellent comedies have been written, that there

are none written at present. Comedy naturally wears itself out—destroys

the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully

exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end

leaves itself nothing worth laughing at. It holds the mirror up to

nature; and men, seeing their most striking peculiarities and defects

pass in gay review before them, learn either to avoid or conceal them.

It is not the criticism which the public taste exercises upon the stage,

but the criticism which the stage exercises upon public manners, that is

fatal to comedy, by rendering the subject-matter of it tame, correct,

and spiritless. We are drilled into a sort of stupid decorum, and forced

to wear the same dull uniform of outward appearance; and yet it is

asked, why the Comic Muse does not point, as she was wont, at the

peculiarities of our gait and gesture, and exhibit the picturesque

contrasts of our dress and costume, in all that graceful variety in

which she delights. The genuine source of comic writing,

‘Where it must live, or have no life at all,’

is undoubtedly to be found in the distinguishing peculiarities of men

and manners. Now this distinction can subsist, so as to be strong,

pointed, and general, only while the manners of different classes are

formed almost immediately by their particular circumstances, and the

characters of individuals by their natural temperament and situation,

without being everlastingly modified and neutralized by intercourse with

the world—by knowledge and education. In a certain stage of society, men

may be said to vegetate like trees, and to become rooted to the soil in

which they grow. They have no idea of any thing beyond themselves and

their immediate sphere of action; they are, as it were, circumscribed,

and defined by their particular circumstances; they are what their

situation makes them, and nothing more. Each is absorbed in his own

profession or pursuit, and each in his turn contracts that habitual

peculiarity of manners and opinions which makes him the subject of

ridicule to others, and the sport of the Comic Muse. Thus the physician

is nothing but a physician, the lawyer is a mere lawyer, the scholar

degenerates into a pedant, the country squire is a different species of

being from the fine gentleman, the citizen and the courtier inhabit a

different world, and even the affectation of certain characters, in

aping the follies or vices of their betters, only serves to shew the

immeasurable distance which custom or fortune has placed between them.

Hence the earlier comic writers, taking advantage of this mixed and

solid mass of ignorance, folly, pride, and prejudice, made those deep

and lasting incisions into it,—have given those sharp and nice touches,

that bold relief to their characters,—have opposed them in every variety

of contrast and collision, of conscious self-satisfaction and mutual

antipathy, with a power which can only find full scope in the same rich

and inexhaustible materials. But in proportion as comic genius succeeds

in taking off the mask from ignorance and conceit, as it teaches us

‘To see ourselves as others see us,’—

in proportion as we are brought out on the stage together, and our

prejudices clash one against the other, our sharp angular points wear

off; we are no longer rigid in absurdity, passionate in folly, and we

prevent the ridicule directed at our habitual foibles by laughing at

them ourselves.

If it be said, that there is the same fund of absurdity and prejudice in

the world as ever—that there are the same unaccountable perversities

lurking at the bottom of every breast,—I should answer, Be it so: but at

least we keep our follies to ourselves as much as possible; we palliate,

shuffle, and equivocate with them; they sneak into bye-corners, and do

not, like _Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims_, march along the high road,

and form a procession; they do not entrench themselves strongly behind

custom and precedent; they are not embodied in professions and ranks in

life; they are not organized into a system; they do not openly resort to

a standard, but are a sort of straggling non-descripts, that, like

_Wart_, ‘present no mark to the foeman.’ As to the gross and palpable

absurdities of modern manners, they are too shallow and barefaced, and

those who affect are too little _serious_ in them, to make them worth

the detection of the Comic Muse. They proceed from an idle, impudent

affectation of folly in general, in the dashing _bravura_ style, not

from an infatuation with any of its characteristic modes. In short, the

proper object of ridicule is _egotism_: and a man cannot be a very great

egotist, who every day sees himself represented on the stage. We are

deficient in comedy, because we are without characters in real life—as

we have no historical pictures, because we have no faces proper for

them.

It is, indeed, the evident tendency of all literature to generalise and

_dissipate_ character, by giving men the same artificial education, and

the same common stock of ideas; so that we see all objects from the same

point of view, and through the same reflected medium;—we learn to exist,

not in ourselves, but in books;—all men become alike mere

readers—spectators, not actors in the scene, and lose their proper

personal identity. The templar, the wit, the man of pleasure, and the

man of fashion, the courtier and the citizen, the knight and the squire,

the lover and the miser—_Lovelace_, _Lothario_, _Will Honeycomb_, and

_Sir Roger de Coverley_, _Sparkish_ and _Lord Foppington_, _Western_ and

_Tom Jones_, _My Father_ and _My Uncle Toby_, _Millamant_ and _Sir

Sampson Legend_, _Don Quixote_ and _Sancho_, _Gil Blas_ and _Guzman

d’Alfarache_, _Count Fathom_ and _Joseph Surface_,—have met and

exchanged common-places on the barren plains of the _haute

littérature_—toil slowly on to the temple of science, ‘seen a long way

off upon a level,’ and end in one dull compound of politics, criticism,

and metaphysics!

We cannot expect to reconcile opposite things. If, for example, any of

us were to put ourselves into the stage-coach from Salisbury to London,

it is more than probable we should not meet with the same number of odd

accidents, or ludicrous distresses on the road, that befel _Parson

Adams_; but why, if we get into a common vehicle, and submit to the

conveniences of modern travelling, should we complain of the want of

adventures? Modern manners may be compared to a modern stage-coach; our

limbs may be a little cramped with the confinement, and we may grow

drowsy, but we arrive safe, without any very amusing or very sad

accident, at our journey’s end.

In this theory I have, at least, the authority of Sterne and the Tatler

on my side, who attribute the greater variety and richness of comic

excellence in our writers, to the greater variety and distinctness of

character among ourselves; the roughness of the texture and the sharp

angles not being worn out by the artificial refinements of intellect, or

the frequent collision of social intercourse.—It has been argued on the

other hand, indeed, that this circumstance makes against me; that the

suppression of the grosser indications of absurdity ought to stimulate

and give scope to the ingenuity and penetration of the comic writer who

is to detect them; and that the progress of wit and humour ought to keep

pace with critical distinctions and metaphysical niceties. Some

theorists, indeed, have been sanguine enough to expect a regular advance

from grossness to refinement on the stage and in real life, marked on a

graduated scale of human perfectibility, and have been hence led to

imagine that the best of our old comedies were no better than the coarse

jests of a set of country clowns—a sort of _comedies bourgeoises_,

compared with the admirable productions which might, but have not, been

written in our times. I must protest against this theory altogether,

which would go to degrade genteel comedy from a high court lady into a

literary prostitute. I do not know what these persons mean by refinement

in this instance. Do they find none in Millamant and her morning dreams,

in Sir Roger de Coverley and his widow? Did not Etherege, Wycherley, and

Congreve, approach tolerably near

‘——the ring

Of mimic statesmen and their merry king?’

Is there no distinction between an Angelica and a Miss Prue, a

Valentine, a Tattle, and a Ben? Where, in the annals of modern

literature, shall we find any thing more refined, more deliberate, more

abstracted in vice, than the nobleman in Amelia? Are not the compliments

which Pope paid to his friends equal in taste and elegance to any which

have been paid since? Are there no traits in Sterne? Is not Richardson

minute enough? Must we part with Sophia Western and her muff, and

Clarissa Harlowe’s ‘preferable regards’ for the loves of the plants and

the triangles? Or shall we say that the Berinthias and Alitheas of

former times were little rustics, because they did not, like our modern

belles, subscribe to circulating libraries, read Beppo, prefer Gertrude

of Wyoming to the Lady of the Lake, or the Lady of the Lake to Gertrude

of Wyoming, differ in their sentiments on points of taste or systems of

mineralogy, and deliver dissertations on the arts with Corinna of Italy?

They had something else to do and to talk about. They were employed in

reality, as we see them on the stage, in setting off their charms to the

greatest advantage, in mortifying their rivals by the most pointed

irony, and trifling with their lovers with infinite address. The height

of comic elegance and refinement is not to be found in the general

diffusion of knowledge and civilization, which tends to level and

neutralize, but in the pride of individual distinction, and the contrast

between the conflicting pretensions of different ranks in society.

For this reason I conceive that the alterations which have taken place

in conversation and dress, in consequence of the change of manners in

the same period, have been by no means favourable to comedy. The present

prevailing style of conversation is not _personal_, but critical and

analytical. It consists almost entirely in the discussion of general

topics, in ascertaining the merits of authors and their works: and

Congreve would be able to derive no better hints from the conversations

of our toilettes or drawing-rooms, for the exquisite raillery or

poignant repartee of his dialogues, than from a deliberation of the

Royal Society. In manner, the extreme simplicity and graceful uniformity

of modern dress, however favourable to the arts, has certainly stript

comedy of one of its richest ornaments and most expressive symbols. The

sweeping pall and buskin, and nodding plume, were never more serviceable

to tragedy, than the enormous hoops and stiff stays worn by the belles

of former days, were to the intrigues of comedy. They assisted

wonderfully in heightening the mysteries of the passion, and adding to

the intricacy of the plot. Wycherley and Vanbrugh could not have spared

the dresses of Vandyke. These strange fancy-dresses, perverse disguises,

and counterfeit shapes, gave an agreeable scope to the imagination.

‘That sevenfold fence’ was a sort of foil to the lusciousness of the

dialogue, and a barrier against the sly encroachments of _double

entendre_. The greedy eye and bold hand of indiscretion were repressed,

which gave a greater license to the tongue. The senses were not to be

gratified in an instant. Love was entangled in the folds of the swelling

handkerchief, and the desires might wander for ever round the

circumference of a quilted petticoat, or find a rich lodging in the

flowers of a damask stomacher. There was room for years of patient

contrivance, for a thousand thoughts, schemes, conjectures, hopes,

fears, and wishes. There seemed no end of obstacles and delays; to

overcome so many difficulties was the work of ages. A mistress was an

angel, concealed behind whalebone, flounces, and brocade. What an

undertaking to penetrate through the disguise! What an impulse must it

give to the blood, what a keenness to the invention, what a volubility

to the tongue! ‘Mr. Smirk, you are a brisk man,’ was then the most

significant commendation; but now-a-days—a woman can be _but

undressed_!—Again, the character of the fine gentleman is at present a

little obscured on the stage, nor do we immediately recognise it

elsewhere, for want of the formidable _insignia_ of a bag-wig and sword.

Without these outward credentials, the public must not only be unable to

distinguish this character intuitively, but it must be ‘almost afraid to

know itself.’ The present simple disguise of a gentleman is like the

_incognito_ of kings. The opinion of others affects our opinion of

ourselves; and we can hardly expect from a modern man of fashion that

air of dignity and superior gracefulness of carriage, which those must

have assumed who were conscious that all eyes were upon them, and that

their lofty pretensions continually exposed them either to public scorn

or challenged public admiration. A lord who should take the wall of the

plebeian passengers without a sword by his side, would hardly have his

claim of precedence acknowledged; nor could he be supposed to have that

obsolete air of self-importance about him, which should alone clear the

pavement at his approach. It is curious how an ingenious actor of the

present day (Mr. Farren) should play Lord Ogleby so well as he does,

having never seen any thing of the sort in reality. A nobleman in full

costume, and in broad day, would be a phenomenon like the lord mayor’s

coach. The attempt at getting up genteel comedy at present is a sort of

Galvanic experiment, a revival of the dead.[25]

I have observed in a former Lecture, that the most spirited æra of our

comic drama was that which reflected the conversation, tone, and manners

of the profligate, but witty age of Charles II. With the graver and more

business-like turn which the Revolution probably gave to our minds,

comedy stooped from her bolder and more fantastic flights; and the

ferocious attack made by the nonjuring divine, Jeremy Collier, on the

immorality and profaneness of the plays then chiefly in vogue, nearly

frightened those unwarrantable liberties of wit and humour from the

stage, which were no longer countenanced at court nor copied in the

city. Almost the last of our writers who ventured to hold out in the

prohibited track, was a female adventurer, Mrs. Centlivre, who seemed to

take advantage of the privilege of her sex, and to set at defiance the

cynical denunciations of the angry puritanical reformist. Her plays have

a provoking spirit and volatile salt in them, which still preserves them

from decay. Congreve is said to have been jealous of their success at

the time, and that it was one cause which drove him in disgust from the

stage. If so, it was without any good reason: for these plays have great

and intrinsic merit in them, which entitled them to their popularity

(and it is only spurious and undeserved popularity which should excite a

feeling of jealousy in any well-regulated mind): and besides, their

merit was of a kind entirely different from his own. The Wonder and the

Busy Body are properly comedies of intrigue. Their interest depends

chiefly on the intricate involution and artful _denouement_ of the plot,

which has a strong tincture of mischief in it, and the wit is seasoned

by the archness of the humour and sly allusion to the most delicate

points. They are plays evidently written by a very clever woman, but

still by a woman: for I hold, in spite of any fanciful theories to the

contrary, that there is a distinction discernible in the minds of women

as well as in their faces. The Wonder is one of the best of our acting

plays. The passion of jealousy in Don Felix is managed in such a way as

to give as little offence as possible to the audience, for every

appearance combines to excite and confirm his worst suspicions, while

we, who are in the secret, laugh at his groundless uneasiness and

apprehensions. The ambiguity of the heroine’s situation, which is like a

continued practical _equivoque_, gives rise to a quick succession of

causeless alarms, subtle excuses, and the most hair-breadth ‘scapes. The

scene near the end, in which Don Felix, pretending to be drunk, forces

his way out of Don Manuel’s house, who wants to keep him a prisoner, by

producing his marriage-contract in the shape of a pocket-pistol, with

the terrors and confusion into which the old gentleman is thrown by this

sort of _argumentum ad hominem_, is one of the richest treats the stage

affords, and calls forth incessant peals of laughter and applause.

Besides the two principal characters (Violante and Don Felix) Lissardo

and Flippanta come in very well to carry on the under-plot; and the airs

and graces of an amorous waiting-maid and conceited man-servant, each

copying after their master and mistress, were never hit off with more

natural volubility or affected _nonchalance_ than in this enviable

couple. Lissardo’s playing off the diamond ring before the eyes of his

mortified Dulcinea, and aping his master’s absent manner while

repeating—‘Roast me these Violantes,’ as well as the jealous quarrel of

the two waiting-maids, which threatens to end in some very extraordinary

discoveries, are among the most amusing traits in this comedy. Colonel

Breton, the lover of Clara, is a spirited and enterprising soldier of

fortune; and his servant Gibby’s undaunted, incorrigible blundering,

with a dash of nationality in it, tells in a very edifying way.—The Busy

Body is inferior, in the interest of the story and characters, to the

Wonder; but it is full of bustle and gaiety from beginning to end. The

plot never stands still; the situations succeed one another like the

changes of machinery in a pantomime. The nice dove-tailing of the

incidents, and cross-reading in the situations, supplies the place of

any great force of wit or sentiment. The time for the entrance of each

person on the stage is the moment when they are least wanted, and when

their arrival makes either themselves or somebody else look as foolish

as possible. The laughableness of this comedy, as well as of the Wonder,

depends on a brilliant series of mistimed exits and entrances. Marplot

is the whimsical hero of the piece, and a standing memorial of unmeaning

vivacity and assiduous impertinence.

The comedies of Steele were the first that were written expressly with a

view not to imitate the manners, but to reform the morals of the age.

The author seems to be all the time on his good behaviour, as if writing

a comedy was no very creditable employment, and as if the ultimate

object of his ambition was a dedication to the queen. Nothing can be

better meant, or more inefficient. It is almost a misnomer to call them

comedies; they are rather homilies in dialogue, in which a number of

very pretty ladies and gentlemen discuss the fashionable topics of

gaming, of duelling, of seduction, of scandal, &c. with a sickly

sensibility, that shews as little hearty aversion to vice, as sincere

attachment to virtue. By not meeting the question fairly on the ground

of common experience, by slubbering over the objections, and varnishing

over the answers, the whole distinction between virtue and vice (as it

appears in evidence in the comic drama) is reduced to verbal

professions, and a mechanical, infantine goodness. The sting is, indeed,

taken out of what is bad; but what is good, at the same time, loses its

manhood and nobility of nature by this enervating process. I am

unwilling to believe that the only difference between right and wrong is

mere cant, or _make-believe_; and I imagine, that the advantage which

the moral drama possesses over mere theoretical precept or general

declamation is this, that by being left free to imitate nature as it is,

and not being referred to an ideal standard, it is its own voucher for

the truth of the inferences it draws, for its warnings, or its examples;

that it brings out the higher, as well as lower principles of action, in

the most striking and convincing points of view; satisfies us that

virtue is not a mere shadow; clothes it with passion, imagination,

reality, and, if I may so say, translates morality from the language of

theory into that of practice. But Steele, by introducing the artificial

mechanism of morals on the stage, and making his characters act, not

from individual motives and existing circumstances, the truth of which

every one must feel, but from vague topics and general rules, the truth

of which is the very thing to be proved in detail, has lost that fine

‘vantage ground which the stage lends to virtue; takes away from it its

best grace, the grace of sincerity; and, instead of making it a test of

truth, has made it an echo of the doctrine of the schools—and ‘the one

cries _Mum_, while t’other cries _Budget_!’ The comic writer, in my

judgment, then, ought to open the volume of nature and the world for his

living materials, and not take them out of his ethical common-place

book; for in this way, neither will throw any additional light upon the

other. In all things there is a division of labour; and I am as little

for introducing the tone of the pulpit or reading-desk on the stage, as

for introducing plays and interludes in church-time, according to the

good old popish practice. It was a part, indeed, of Steele’s plan, ‘by

the politeness of his style and the genteelness of his expressions,’[26]

to bring about a reconciliation between things which he thought had

hitherto been kept too far asunder, to wed the graces to the virtues,

and blend pleasure with profit. And in this design he succeeded

admirably in his Tatler, and some other works; but in his comedies he

has failed. He has confounded, instead of harmonising—has taken away its

gravity from wisdom, and its charm from gaiety. It is not that in his

plays we find ‘some soul of goodness in things evil;’ but they have no

soul either of good or bad. His Funeral is as trite, as tedious, and

full of formal grimace, as a procession of mutes and undertakers. The

characters are made either affectedly good and forbearing, with ‘all the

milk of human kindness;’ or purposely bad and disgusting, for the others

to exercise their squeamish charities upon them. The Conscious Lovers is

the best; but that is far from good, with the exception of the scene

between Mr. Thomas and Phillis, who are fellow-servants, and commence

lovers from being set to clean the window together. We are here once

more in the company of our old friend, Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. Indiana

is as listless, and as insipid, as a drooping figure on an Indian

screen; and Mr. Myrtle and Mr. Bevil only just disturb the still life of

the scene. I am sorry that in this censure I should have Parson Adams

against me; who thought the Conscious Lovers the only play fit for a

Christian to see, and as good as a sermon. For myself, I would rather

have read, or heard him read, one of his own manuscript sermons: and if

the volume which he left behind him in his saddlebags was to be had in

print, for love or money, I would at any time walk ten miles on foot

only to get a sight of it.

Addison’s Drummer, or the Haunted House, is a pleasant farce enough; but

adds nothing to our idea of the author of the Spectator.

Pope’s joint after-piece, called ‘An Hour after Marriage,’ was not a

successful attempt. He brought into it ‘an alligator stuff’d,’ which

disconcerted the ladies, and gave just offence to the critics. Pope was

too fastidious for a farce-writer; and yet the most fastidious people,

when they step out of their regular routine, are apt to become the

grossest. The smallest offences against probability or decorum are, to

their habitual scrupulousness, as unpardonable as the greatest. This was

the rock on which Pope probably split. The affair was, however, hushed

up; and he wreaked his discreet vengeance at leisure on the ‘odious

endeavours,’ and more odious success of Colley Cibber in the line in

which he had failed.

Gay’s ‘What-d’ye-call-it,’ is not one of his happiest things. His

‘Polly’ is a complete failure, which, indeed, is the common fate of

second parts. If the original Polly, in the Beggar’s Opera, had not had

more winning ways with her, she would hardly have had so many Countesses

for representatives as she has had, from her first appearance up to the

present moment.

Fielding was a comic writer, as well as a novelist; but his comedies are

very inferior to his novels: they are particularly deficient both in

plot and character. The only excellence which they have is that of the

style, which is the only thing in which his novels are deficient. The

only dramatic pieces of Fielding that retain possession of the stage

are, the Mock Doctor (a tolerable translation from Moliere’s _Médecin

malgré lui_), and his Tom Thumb, a very admirable piece of burlesque.

The absurdities and bathos of some of our celebrated tragic writers

could hardly be credited, but for the notes at the bottom of this

preposterous medley of bombast, containing his authorities and the

parallel passages. Dryden, Lee, and Shadwell, make no very shining

figure there. Mr. Liston makes a better figure in the text. His Lord

Grizzle is prodigious. What a name, and what a person! It has been said

of this ingenious actor, that ‘he is very great in Liston;’ but he is

even greater in Lord Grizzle. What a wig is that he wears! How flighty,

flaunting, and fantastical! Not ‘like those hanging locks of young

Apollo,’ nor like the serpent-hair of the Furies of Æschylus; but as

troublous, though not as tragical as the one—as imposing, though less

classical than the other. ‘_Que terribles sont ces cheveux gris_,’ might

be applied to Lord Grizzle’s most valiant and magnanimous curls. This

sapient courtier’s ‘fell of hair does at a dismal treatise rouse and

stir as if life were in’t.’ His wits seem flying away with the disorder

of his flowing locks, and to sit as loosely on our hero’s head as the

caul of his peruke. What a significant vacancy in his open eyes and

mouth! what a listlessness in his limbs! what an abstraction of all

thought or purpose! With what an headlong impulse of enthusiasm he

throws himself across the stage when he is going to be married, crying,

‘Hey for Doctor’s Commons,’ as if the genius of folly had taken

whole-length possession of his person! And then his dancing is equal to

the discovery of a sixth sense—which is certainly very different from

_common sense_! If this extraordinary personage cuts a great figure in

his life, he is no less wonderful in his death and burial. ‘From the

sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step;’ and this character

would almost seem to prove, that there is but one step from the

ridiculous to the sublime.—Lubin Log, however inimitable in itself, is

itself an imitation of something existing elsewhere; but the Lord

Grizzle of this truly original actor, is a pure invention of his own.

His Caper, in the Widow’s Choice, can alone dispute the palm with it in

incoherence and volatility; for that, too, ‘is high fantastical,’ almost

as full of emptiness, in as grand a gusto of insipidity, as profoundly

absurd, as elaborately nonsensical! Why does not Mr. Liston play in some

of Moliere’s farces? I heartily wish that the author of Love, Law, and

Physic, would launch him on the London boards in Monsieur Jourdain, or

Monsieur Pourceaugnac. The genius of Liston and Moliere together—

‘——Must bid a gay defiance to mischance.’

Mr. Liston is an actor hardly belonging to the present age. Had he

lived, unfortunately for us, in the time of Colley Cibber, we should

have seen what a splendid niche he would have given him in his Apology.

Cibber is the hero of the Dunciad; but it cannot be said of him, that he

was ‘by merit raised to that bad eminence.’ He was pert, not dull; a

coxcomb, not a blockhead; vain, but not malicious. Pope’s unqualified

abuse of him was mere spleen; and the most obvious provocation to it

seems to have been an excess of flippant vivacity in the constitution of

Cibber. That Cibber’s Birth-day Odes were dull, is true; but this was

not peculiar to him. It is an objection which may be made equally to

Shadwell’s, to Whitehead’s, to Warton’s, to Pye’s, and to all others,

except those which of late years have _not_ been written! In his Apology

for his own Life, Cibber is a most amusing biographer: happy in his own

good opinion, the best of all others; teeming with animal spirits, and

uniting the self-sufficiency of youth with the garrulity of age. His

account of his waiting as a page behind the chair of the old Duchess of

Marlborough, at the time of the Revolution, who was then in the bloom of

youth and beauty, which seems to have called up in him the secret homage

of ‘distant, enthusiastic, respectful love,’ fifty years after, and the

compliment he pays to her (then in her old age), ‘a great grandmother

without grey hairs,’ is as delightful as any thing in fiction or

romance; and is the evident origin of Mr. Burke’s celebrated apostrophe

to the Queen of France. Nor is the political confession of faith which

he makes on this occasion, without a suitable mixture of vanity and

sincerity: the vanity we may ascribe to the player, the sincerity to the

politician. The self-complacency with which he talks of his own success

both as a player and a writer, is not greater than the candour and

cordiality with which he does heaped justice to the merits of his

theatrical contemporaries and predecessors. He brings down the history

of the stage, either by the help of observation or tradition, from the

time of Shakspeare to his own; and quite dazzles the reader with a

constellation of male and female, of tragic and comic, of past and

present excellence. He gives portraits at full length of Kynaston, of

Betterton, of Booth, of Estcourt, of Penkethman and Dogget, of Mohun and

Wilks, of Nokes and Sandford, of Mrs. Montford, of Mrs. Oldfield, of

Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Bracegirdle, and of others of equal note; with

delectable criticisms on their several performances, and anecdotes of

their private lives, with scarcely a single particle of jealousy or

ill-nature, or any other motive than to expatiate in the delight of

talking of the ornaments of his art, and a wish to share his pleasure

with the reader. I wish I could quote some of these theatrical sketches;

but the time presses. The latter part of his work is less entertaining

when he becomes Manager, and gives us an exact statement of his

squabbles with the Lord Chamberlain, and the expense of his ground-rent,

his repairs, his scenery, and his dresses.—In his plays, his personal

character perhaps predominates too much over the inventiveness of his

Muse; but so far from being dull, he is every where light, fluttering,

and airy. His pleasure in himself made him desirous to please; but his

fault was, that he was too soon satisfied with what he did, that his

indolence or want of thought led him to indulge in the vein that flowed

from him with most ease, and that his vanity did not allow him to

distinguish between what he did best and worst. His Careless Husband is

a very elegant piece of agreeable, thoughtless writing; and the incident

of Lady Easy throwing her handkerchief over her husband, whom she finds

asleep in a chair by the side of her waiting-woman, was an admirable

contrivance, taken, as he informs us, from real life. His Double

Gallant, which has been lately revived, though it cannot rank in the

first, may take its place in the second or third class of comedies. It

abounds in character, bustle, and stage-effect. It belongs to what may

be called the composite style; and very happily mixes up the comedy of

intrigue, such as we see it in Mrs. Centlivre’s Spanish plots, with a

tolerable share of the wit and spirit of Congreve and Vanbrugh. As there

is a good deal of wit, there is a spice of wickedness in this play,

which was a privilege of the good old style of comedy, not altogether

abandoned in Cibber’s time. The luscious vein of the dialogue is stopped

short in many of the scenes of the revived play, though not before we

perceive its object—

‘——In hidden mazes running,

With wanton haste and giddy cunning.’

These imperfect hints of double meanings, however, pass off without any

marks of reprobation; for unless they are insisted on, or made pretty

broad, the audience, from being accustomed to the cautious purity of the

modern drama, are not very expert in decyphering the equivocal allusion,

for which they are not on the look-out. To what is this increased nicety

owing? Was it that vice, from being formerly less common (though more

fashionable) was less catching than at present? The first inference is

by no means in our favour: for though I think that the grossness of

manners prevailing in our fashionable comedies was a direct transcript

of the manners of the court at the time, or in the period immediately

preceding, yet the same grossness of expression and allusion existed

long before, as in the plays of Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, when there

was not this grossness of manners, and it has of late years been

gradually refining away. There is a certain grossness or freedom of

expression, which may arise as often from unsuspecting simplicity as

from avowed profligacy. Whatever may be our progress either in virtue or

vice since the age of Charles II. certain it is, that our manners are

not mended since the time of Elizabeth and Charles I. Is it, then, that

vice was formerly a thing more to be wondered at than imitated; that

behind the rigid barriers of religion and morality it might be exposed

freely, without the danger of any serious practical consequences—whereas

now that the safeguards of wholesome authority and prejudice are

removed, we seem afraid to trust our eyes or ears with a single

situation or expression of a loose tendency, as if the mere mention of

licentiousness implied a conscious approbation of it, and the extreme

delicacy of our moral sense would be debauched by the bare suggestion of

the possibility of vice? But I shall not take upon me to answer this

question. The characters in the Double Gallant are well kept up: At-All

and Lady Dainty are the two most prominent characters in this comedy,

and those into which Cibber has put most of his own nature and genius.

They are the essence of active impertinence and fashionable frivolity.

Cibber, in short, though his name has been handed down to us as a

bye-word of impudent pretension and impenetrable dulness by the

classical pen of his accomplished rival, who, unfortunately, did not

admit of any merit beyond the narrow circle of wit and friendship in

which he himself moved, was a gentleman and a scholar of the old school;

a man of wit and pleasantry in conversation, a diverting mimic, an

excellent actor, an admirable dramatic critic, and one of the best comic

writers of his age. His works, instead of being a _caput mortuum_ of

literature, had a great deal of the spirit, with a little too much of

the froth. His Nonjuror was taken from Moliere’s Tartuffe, and has been

altered to the Hypocrite. Love’s Last Shift appears to have been his own

favourite; and he received the compliments of Sir John Vanbrugh and old

Mr. Southern upon it:—the latter said to him, ‘Young man, your play is a

good one; and it will succeed, if you do not spoil it by your acting.’

His plays did not always take equally. It is ludicrous to hear him

complaining of the ill success of one of them, Love in a Riddle, a

pastoral comedy, ‘of a nice morality,’ and well spoken sentiments, which

he wrote in opposition to the Beggar’s Opera, at the time when its

worthless and vulgar rival was carrying every thing triumphantly before

it. Cibber brings this, with much pathetic _naïveté_, as an instance of

the lamentable want of taste in the town!

The Suspicious Husband by Hoadley, the Jealous Wife by Colman, and the

Clandestine Marriage by Colman and Garrick, are excellent plays of the

middle style of comedy; which are formed rather by judgment and

selection, than by any original vein of genius; and have all the parts

of a good comedy in degree, without having any one prominent, or to

excess. The character of Ranger, in the Suspicious Husband, is only a

variation of those of Farquhar, of the same class as his Sir Harry

Wildair and others, without equal spirit. A great deal of the story of

the Jealous Wife is borrowed from Fielding; but so faintly, that the

resemblance is hardly discernible till you are apprised of it. The

Jealous Wife herself is, however, a dramatic _chef-d’œuvre_, and worthy

of being acted as often, and better than it is. Sir Harry Beagle is a

true fox-hunting English squire. The Clandestine Marriage is nearly

without a fault; and has some lighter theatrical graces, which I suspect

Garrick threw into it. _Canton_ is, I should think, his; though this

classification of him among the ornamental parts of the play may seem

whimsical. Garrick’s genius does not appear to have been equal to the

construction of a solid drama; but he could retouch and embellish with

great gaiety and knowledge of the technicalities of his art. Garrick not

only produced joint-pieces and after-pieces, but often set off the plays

of his friends and contemporaries with the garnish, the _sauce piquant_,

of prologues and epilogues, at which he had an admirable knack.—The

elder Colman’s translation of Terence, I may here add, has always been

considered, by good judges, as an equal proof of the author’s knowledge

of the Latin language, and taste in his own.

Bickerstaff’s plays and comic operas are continually acted: they come

under the class of mediocrity, generally speaking. Their popularity

seems to be chiefly owing to the unaffected ease and want of pretension

with which they are written, with a certain humorous _naïveté_ in the

lower characters, and an exquisite adaptation of the music to the songs.

His Love in a Village is one of the most delightful comic operas on the

stage. It is truly pastoral; and the sense of music hovers over the very

scene like the breath of morning. In his alteration of the Tartuffe he

has spoiled the Hypocrite, but he has added Maw-worm.

Mrs. Cowley’s comedy of the Belles’ Stratagem, Who’s the Dupe, and

others, are of the second or third class: they are rather

_refaccimentos_ of the characters, incidents, and materials of former

writers, got up with considerable liveliness and ingenuity, than

original compositions, with marked qualities of their own.

Goldsmith’s Good-natured Man is inferior to She Stoops to Conquer; and

even this last play, with all its shifting vivacity, is rather a

sportive and whimsical effusion of the author’s fancy, a delightful and

delicately managed caricature, than a genuine comedy.

Murphy’s plays of All in the Wrong and Know Your Own Mind, are admirably

written; with sense, spirit, and conception of character: but without

any great effect of the humorous, or that truth of feeling which

distinguishes the boundary between the absurdities of natural character

and the gratuitous fictions of the poet’s pen. The heroes of these two

plays, Millamour and Sir Benjamin Constant, are too ridiculous in their

caprices to be tolerated, except in farce; and yet their follies are so

flimsy, so motiveless, and fine-spun, as not to be intelligible, or to

have any effect in their only proper sphere. Both his principal pieces

are said to have suffered by their similarity, first, to Colman’s

Jealous Wife, and next to the School for Scandal, though in both cases

he had the undoubted priority. It is hard that the fate of plagiarism

should attend upon originality: yet it is clear that the elements of the

School for Scandal are not sparingly scattered in Murphy’s comedy of

Know your own Mind, which appeared before the latter play, only to be

eclipsed by it. This brings me to speak of Sheridan.

Mr. Sheridan has been justly called ‘a dramatic star of the first

magnitude:’ and, indeed, among the comic writers of the last century, he

‘shines like Hesperus among the lesser lights.’ He has left four several

dramas behind him, all different or of different kinds, and all

excellent in their way;—the School for Scandal, the Rivals, the Duenna,

and the Critic. The attraction of this last piece is, however, less in

the mock-tragedy rehearsed, than in the dialogue of the comic scenes,

and in the character of Sir Fretful Plagiary, which is supposed to have

been intended for Cumberland. If some of the characters in the School

for Scandal were contained in Murphy’s comedy of Know your own Mind (and

certainly some of Dashwoud’s detached speeches and satirical sketches

are written with quite as firm and masterly a hand as any of those given

to the members of the scandalous club, Mrs. Candour or Lady Sneerwell),

yet they were buried in it for want of grouping and relief, like the

colours of a well-drawn picture sunk in the canvass. Sheridan brought

them out, and exhibited them in all their glory. If that gem, the

character of Joseph Surface, was Murphy’s, the splendid and more

valuable setting was Sheridan’s. He took Murphy’s Malvil from his

lurking-place in the closet, and ‘dragged the struggling monster into

day’ upon the stage. That is, he gave interest, life, and action, or, in

other words, its dramatic being, to the mere conception and written

specimens of a character. This is the merit of Sheridan’s comedies, that

every thing in them _tells_; there is no labour in vain. His Comic Muse

does not go about prying into obscure corners, or collecting idle

curiosities, but shews her laughing face, and points to her rich

treasure—the follies of mankind. She is garlanded and crowned with roses

and vine-leaves. Her eyes sparkle with delight, and her heart runs over

with good-natured malice. Her step is firm and light, and her ornaments

consummate! The School for Scandal is, if not the most original, perhaps

the most finished and faultless comedy which we have. When it is acted,

you hear people all around you exclaiming, ‘Surely it is impossible for

any thing to be cleverer.’ The scene in which Charles sells all the old

family pictures but his uncle’s, who is the purchaser in disguise, and

that of the discovery of Lady Teazle when the screen falls, are among

the happiest and most highly wrought that comedy, in its wide and

brilliant range, can boast. Besides the wit and ingenuity of this play,

there is a genial spirit of frankness and generosity about it, that

relieves the heart as well as clears the lungs. It professes a faith in

the natural goodness, as well as habitual depravity of human nature.

While it strips off the mask of hypocrisy, it inspires a confidence

between man and man. As often as it is acted, it must serve to clear the

air of that low, creeping, pestilent fog of cant and mysticism, which

threatens to confound every native impulse, or honest conviction, in the

nauseous belief of a perpetual lie, and the laudable profession of

systematic hypocrisy.—The character of Lady Teazle is not well made out

by the author; nor has it been well represented on the stage since the

time of Miss Farren.—The Rivals is a play of even more action and

incident, but of less wit and satire than the School for Scandal. It is

as good as a novel in the reading, and has the broadest and most

palpable effect on the stage. If Joseph Surface and Charles have a smack

of Tom Jones and Blifil in their moral constitution, Sir Anthony

Absolute and Mrs. Malaprop remind us of honest Matthew Bramble and his

sister Tabitha, in their tempers and dialect. Acres is a distant

descendant of Sir Andrew Ague-cheek. It must be confessed of this

author, as Falstaff says of some one, that ‘he had damnable iteration in

him!’ The Duenna is a perfect work of art. It has the utmost sweetness

and point. The plot, the characters, the dialogue, are all complete in

themselves, and they are all his own; and the songs are the best that

ever were written, except those in the Beggar’s Opera. They have a

joyous spirit of intoxication in them, and a strain of the most melting

tenderness. Compare the softness of that beginning,

‘Had I heart for falsehood framed,’

with the spirited defiance to Fortune in the lines,

‘Half thy malice youth could bear,

And the rest a bumper drown.’

It would have been too much for the author of these elegant and classic

productions not to have had some drawbacks on his felicity and fame. But

even the applause of nations and the favour of princes cannot always be

enjoyed with impunity.—Sheridan was not only an excellent dramatic

writer, but a first-rate parliamentary speaker. His characteristics as

an orator were manly, unperverted good sense, and keen irony. Wit, which

has been thought a two-edged weapon, was by him always employed on the

same side of the question—I think, on the right one. His set and more

laboured speeches, as that on the Begum’s affairs, were proportionably

abortive and unimpressive: but no one was equal to him in replying, on

the spur of the moment, to pompous absurdity, and unravelling the web of

flimsy sophistry. He was the last accomplished debater of the House of

Commons.—His character will, however, soon be drawn by one who has all

the ability, and every inclination to do him justice; who knows how to

bestow praise and to deserve it; by one who is himself an ornament of

private and of public life; a satirist, beloved by his friends; a wit

and a patriot to-boot; a poet, and an honest man.

Macklin’s Man of the World has one powerfully written character, that of

Sir Pertinax Macsycophant, but it required Cooke’s acting to make it

thoroughly effectual.

Mr. Holcroft, in his Road to Ruin, set the example of that style of

comedy, in which the _slang_ phrases of jockey-noblemen and the humours

of the four-in-hand club are blended with the romantic sentiments of

distressed damsels and philosophic waiting-maids, and in which he has

been imitated by the most successful of our living writers, unless we

make a separate class for the school of Cumberland, who was almost

entirely devoted to the _comédie larmoyante_, and who, passing from the

light, volatile spirit of his West-Indian to the mawkish sensibility of

the Wheel of Fortune, linked the Muse of English comedy to the genius of

German tragedy, where she has since remained, like Christabel fallen

asleep in the Witch’s arms, and where I shall leave her, as I have not

the poet’s privilege to break the spell.

There are two other writers whom I have omitted to mention, but not

forgotten: they are our two immortal farce-writers, the authors of the

Mayor of Garratt and the Agreeable Surprise. If Foote has been called

our English Aristophanes, O’Keeffe might well be called our English

Moliere. The scale of the modern writer was smaller, but the spirit is

the same. In light, careless laughter, and pleasant exaggerations of the

humorous, we have had no one equal to him. There is no labour or

contrivance in his scenes, but the drollery of his subject seems to

strike irresistibly upon his fancy, and run away with his discretion as

it does with ours. His Cowslip and Lingo are Touchstone and Audrey

revived. He is himself a Modern Antique. His fancy has all the

quaintness and extravagance of the old writers, with the ease and

lightness which the moderns arrogate to themselves. All his pieces are

delightful, but the Agreeable Surprise is the most so. There are in this

some of the most felicitous blunders in situation and character that can

be conceived; and in Lingo’s superb replication, ‘A scholar! I was a

master of scholars,’ he has hit the height of the ridiculous. Foote had

more dry, sarcastic humour, and more knowledge of the world. His farces

are bitter satires, more or less personal, as it happened. Mother Cole,

in the Minor, and Mr. Smirk the Auctioneer, in Taste, with their

coadjutors, are rich cut-and-come-again, ‘pleasant, though wrong.’ But

the Mayor of Garratt is his _magnum opus_ in this line. Some comedies

are long farces: this farce is a comedy in little. It is also one of the

best acted farces that we have. The acting of Dowton and Russell, in

Major Sturgeon and Jerry Sneak, cannot be too much praised: Foote

himself would have been satisfied with it. The strut, the bluster, the

hollow swaggering, and turkey-cock swell of the Major; and Jerry’s

meekness, meanness, folly, good-nature, and hen-pecked air, are

assuredly done to the life. The latter character is even better than the

former, which is saying a bold word. Dowton’s art is only an imitation

of art, of an affected or assumed character; but in Russell’s Jerry you

see the very soul of nature, in a fellow that is ‘pigeon-livered and

lacks gall,’ laid open and anatomized. You can see that his heart is no

bigger than a pin, and his head as soft as a pippin. His whole aspect is

chilled and frightened, as if he had been dipped in a pond; and yet he

looks as if he would like to be snug and comfortable, if he durst. He

smiles as if he would be friends with you upon any terms; and the tears

come in his eyes because you will not let him. The tones of his voice

are prophetic as the cuckoo’s under-song. His words are made of

water-gruel. The scene in which he tries to make a confidant of the

Major is great; and his song of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ as melancholy as the

island itself. The reconciliation-scene with his wife, and his

exclamation over her, ‘to think that I should make my Molly _veep_!’ are

pathetic, if the last stage of human infirmity is so. This farce appears

to me to be both moral and entertaining; yet it does not take. It is

considered as an unjust satire on the city, and the country at large;

and there is a very frequent repetition of the word ‘nonsense’ in the

house, during the performance. Mr. Dowton was even hissed, either from

the upper boxes or gallery, in his speech recounting the marching of his

corps ‘from Brentford to Ealing, and from Ealing to Acton;’ and several

persons in the pit, who thought the whole _low_, were for going out.

This shows well for the progress of civilization. I suppose the manners

described in the Mayor of Garratt have, in the last forty years, become

obsolete, and the characters ideal: we have no longer either hen-pecked

or brutal husbands, or domineering wives; the Miss Molly Jollops no

longer wed Jerry Sneaks, or admire the brave Major Sturgeons on the

other side of Temple-bar; all our soldiers have become heroes, and our

magistrates respectable, and the farce of life is o’er.

One more name, and I have done. It is that of Peter Pindar. The

historian of Sir Joseph Banks and the Emperor of Morocco, of the

Pilgrims and the Peas, of the Royal Academy, and of Mr. Whitbread’s

brewing-vat, the bard in whom the nation and the king delighted, is old

and blind, but still merry and wise:—remembering how he has made the

world laugh in his time, and not repenting of the mirth he has given;

with an involuntary smile lighted up at the mad pranks of his Muse, and

the lucky hits of his pen—‘faint picture of those flashes of his spirit,

that were wont to set the table in a roar;’ like his own Expiring Taper,

bright and fitful to the last; tagging a rhyme or conning his own

epitaph; and waiting for the last summons, GRATEFUL and CONTENTED![27]

I have thus gone through the history of that part of our literature,

which I had proposed to myself to treat of. I have only to add, by way

of explanation, that in some few parts I had anticipated myself in

fugitive or periodical publications; and I thought it better to repeat

what I had already stated to the best of my ability, than alter it for

the worse. These parts bear, however, a very small proportion to the

whole; and I have used such diligence and care as I could, in adding to

them whatever appeared necessary to complete the general view of the

subject, or make it (as far as lay in my power) interesting to others.

End of LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH COMIC WRITERS

A VIEW OF THE ENGLISH STAGE

OR

A SERIES OF DRAMATIC CRITICISMS

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Published in one 8vo volume in 1818 with the following title-page: ‘A

View of the English Stage; or, a Series of Dramatic Criticisms. By

William Hazlitt. “For I am nothing if not critical.” London: Printed for

Robert Stodart, 81, Strand; Anderson and Chase, 40, West Smithfield; and

Bell and Bradfute, Edinburgh. 1818.’ The volume was printed by B.

M’Millan, Bow Street, Covent Garden. The work was re-issued in 1821 with

a fresh half-title, ‘Dramatic Criticisms,’ and a fresh title-page

bearing the imprint: ‘London: John Warren, Old Bond-Street, MDCCCXXI.’

Selections from the volume have been made and published along with other

dramatic criticisms of Hazlitt’s, but the entire work has never been

republished. See the notes at the end of this volume for particulars as

to these volumes of selections. It is sufficient to state here that the

so-called ‘second edition,’ published by the author’s son in 1851 under

the title of ‘Criticisms and Dramatic Essays, of the English Stage,’

contains only a selection from the essays published in _A View of the

English Stage_. The present edition is reprinted from that of 1818, with

the addition of a Table of Contents. For the sake of convenience the

name of the journal from which the essay is taken and the date of the

journal are printed at the beginning of each essay. Hazlitt himself gave

the dates (very inaccurately), but not the names of the journals. In

some cases he gave the name of the theatre at the head of an essay.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Preface 173

Mr. Kean’s Shylock 179

Mr. Kean’s Richard 180

Mr. Kean’s Hamlet 185

Mr. Kean’s Othello 189

Mr. Kean’s Iago 190

Antony and Cleopatra 190

Artaxerxes 192

The Beggar’s Opera 193

Richard Coeur de Lion 195

Didone Abandonnata 196

Miss O’Neill’s Juliet 198

Mr. Kean’s Richard 200

Mr. Kean’s Macbeth 204

Mr. Kean’s Romeo 208

Mr. Kean’s Iago 211

Mr. Kean’s Iago (_concluded_) 215

Mr. Kean’s Richard II. 221

The Unknown Guest 224

Mr. Kean’s Zanga 227

Mr. Bannister’s Farewell 229

Comus 230

Mr. Kean’s Leon 233

The Tempest 234

My Wife! What Wife? 237

Mr. Harley’s Fidget 239

Living in London 242

The King’s Proxy 243

The Maid and the Magpie 244

The Hypocrite 245

Mr. Edwards’s Richard III. 247

Lovers’ Vows 249

The School for Scandal 250

Mrs. Alsop’s Rosalind 252

John Du Bart 253

The Beggar’s Opera 254

Miss O’Neill’s Elwina 256

Where to find a Friend 258

Miss O’Neill’s Belvidera 261

The Merchant of Bruges 264

Smiles and Tears 266

George Barnwell 268

A New Way to Pay Old Debts 272

The Busy Body 270

The Midsummer Night’s Dream 274

Love for Love 278

The Anglade Family 279

Measure for Measure 281

Mr. Kean’s Sir Giles Overreach 284

The Recruiting Officer 285

The Fair Penitent 287

The Duke of Milan 289

Miss O’Neill’s Lady Teazle 291

Mr. Kean 292

Mr. Kean’s Shylock 294

The Oratorios 296

Richard III. 298

Romeo and Juliet 300

Mr. Kemble’s Sir Giles Overreach 302

Bertram 304

Adelaide, or the Emigrants 308

Every Man in his Humour 310

Mrs. Siddons 312

New English Opera House 314

The Jealous Wife 316

The Man of the World 318

Miss Merry’s Mandane 320

Exit by Mistake 321

The Italian Opera 324

Old Customs 327

My Landlady’s Night-Gown 328

Castle of Andalusia 329

Two Words 330

The Wonder 332

The Distressed Mother 334

Miss Boyle’s Rosalind 336

Mr. Macready’s Othello 338

Theatrical Debuts 341

Mr. Kemble’s Cato 342

The Iron Chest 342

Mr. Kemble’s King John 345

Coriolanus 347

The Man of the World 350

Jane Shore 352

The Humorous Lieutenant 353

Two New Ballets 353

Mr. Booth’s Duke of Gloster 354

Mr. Booth’s Iago 354

Mr. Booth’s Richard 357

Double Gallant 359

Don Juan 362

The Conquest of Taranto 366

The Touch-Stone 368

The Libertine 370

Barbarossa 372

Mrs. Siddons’s Lady Macbeth 373

Mr. Maywood’s Shylock 374

Mr. Kemble’s Retirement 374

PREFACE

The Stage is one great source of public amusement, not to say

instruction. A good play, well acted, passes away a whole evening

delightfully at a certain period of life, agreeably at all times; we

read the account of it next morning with pleasure, and it generally

furnishes one leading topic of conversation for the afternoon. The

disputes on the merits or defects of the last new piece, or of a

favourite performer, are as common, as frequently renewed, and carried

on with as much eagerness and skill, as those on almost any other

subject. Rochefoucault, I believe, it was, who said that the reason why

lovers were so fond of one another’s company was, that they were always

talking about themselves. The same reason almost might be given for the

interest we feel in talking about plays and players; they are ‘the brief

chronicles of the time,’ the epitome of human life and manners. While we

are talking about them, we are thinking about ourselves. They ‘hold the

mirror up to Nature’; and our thoughts are turned to the Stage as

naturally and as fondly as a fine lady turns to contemplate her face in

the glass. It is a glass too, in which the wise may see themselves; but

in which the vain and superficial see their own virtues, and laugh at

the follies of others. The curiosity which every one has to know how his

voice and manner can be mimicked, must have been remarked or felt by

most of us. It is no wonder then, that we should feel the same sort of

curiosity and interest, in seeing those whose business it is to ‘imitate

humanity’ in general, and who do it sometimes ‘abominably,’ at other

times admirably. Of these, some record is due to the world; but the

player’s art is one that perishes with him, and leaves no traces of

itself, but in the faint descriptions of the pen or pencil. Yet how

eagerly do we stop to look at the prints from Zoffany’s pictures of

Garrick and Weston! How much we are vexed, that so much of Colley

Cibber’s Life is taken up with the accounts of his own managership, and

so little with those inimitable portraits which he has occasionally

given of the actors of his time! How fortunate we think ourselves, when

we can meet with any person who remembers the principal performers of

the last age, and who can give us some distant idea of Garrick’s nature,

or of an Abington’s grace! We are always indignant at Smollett, for

having introduced a perverse caricature of the English Roscius, which

staggers our faith in his faultless excellence while reading it. On the

contrary, we are pleased to collect anecdotes of this celebrated actor,

which shew his power over the human heart, and enable us to measure his

genius with that of others by its effects. I have heard, for instance,

that once, when Garrick was acting Lear, the spectators in the front row

of the pit, not being able to see him well in the kneeling scene, where

he utters the curse, rose up, when those behind them, not willing to

interrupt the scene by remonstrating, immediately rose up too, and in

this manner, the whole pit rose up, without uttering a syllable, and so

that you might hear a pin drop. At another time, the crown of straw

which he wore in the same character fell off, or was discomposed, which

would have produced a burst of laughter at any common actor to whom such

an accident had happened; but such was the deep interest in the

character, and such the power of rivetting the attention possessed by

this actor, that not the slightest notice was taken of the circumstance,

but the whole audience remained bathed in silent tears. The knowledge of

circumstances like these, serves to keep alive the memory of past

excellence, and to stimulate future efforts. It was thought that a work

containing a detailed account of the Stage in our own times—a period not

unfruitful in theatrical genius—might not be wholly without its use.

The volume here offered to the public, is a collection of Theatrical

Criticisms which have appeared with little interruption, during the last

four years, in different newspapers—the _Morning Chronicle_, the

_Champion_, the _Examiner_, and lastly, the _Times_. How I came to be

regularly transferred from one of these papers to the other, sometimes

formally and sometimes without ceremony, till I was forced to quit the

last-mentioned by want of health and leisure, would make rather an

amusing story, but that I do not chuse to tell ‘the secrets of the

prison-house.’ I would, however, advise any one who has an ambition to

write, and to write _his best_, in the periodical press, to get if

possible ‘a situation’ in the _Times_ newspaper, the Editor of which is

a man of business, and not of letters. He may write there as long and as

good articles as he can, without being turned out for it,—unless he

should be too prolix on the subject of the Bourbons, and in that case he

may set up an opposition paper on his own account—as ‘one who loved not

wisely but too well.’

The first, and (as I think) the best articles in this series, appeared

originally in the _Morning Chronicle_. They are those relating to Mr.

Kean. I went to see him the first night of his appearing in Shylock. I

remember it well. The boxes were empty, and the pit not half full: ‘some

quantity of barren spectators and idle renters were thinly scattered to

make up a show.’ The whole presented a dreary, hopeless aspect. I was in

considerable apprehension for the result. From the first scene in which

Mr. Kean came on, my doubts were at an end. I had been told to give as

favourable an account as I could: I gave a true one. I am not one of

those who, when they see the sun breaking from behind a cloud, stop to

ask others whether it is the moon. Mr. Kean’s appearance was the first

gleam of genius breaking athwart the gloom of the Stage, and the public

have since gladly basked in its ray, in spite of actors, managers, and

critics. I cannot say that my opinion has much changed since that time.

Why should it? I had the same eyes to see with that I have now, the same

ears to hear with, and the same understanding to judge with. Why then

should I not form the same judgment? My opinions have been sometimes

called singular: they are merely sincere. I say what I think: I think

what I feel. I cannot help receiving certain impressions from things;

and I have sufficient courage to declare (somewhat abruptly) what they

are. This is the only singularity I am conscious of. I do not shut my

eyes to extraordinary merit because I hate it, and refuse to open them

till the clamours of others make me, and then affect to wonder

extravagantly at what I have before affected hypocritically to despise.

I do not make it a common practice, to think nothing of an actor or an

author, because all the world have not pronounced in his favour, and

after they have, to persist in condemning him, as a proof not of

imbecility and ill-nature, but of independence of taste and spirit. Nor

do I endeavour to communicate the infection of my own dulness,

cowardice, and spleen to others, by chilling the coldness of their

constitutions by the poisonous slime of vanity or interest, and setting

up my own conscious inability or unwillingness to form an opinion on any

one subject, as the height of candour and judgment.—I did not endeavour

to persuade Mr. Perry that Mr. Kean was an actor that would not last,

merely because he had not lasted; nor that Miss Stephens knew nothing of

singing, because she had a sweet voice. On the contrary, I did all I

could to counteract the effect of these safe, not very sound,

insinuations, and ‘screw the courage’ of one principal organ of public

opinion ‘to the sticking-place.’ I do not repent of having done so.

With respect to the spirit of partisanship in which the controversy

respecting Mr. Kean’s merits as an actor was carried on, there were two

or three things remarkable. One set of persons, out of the excess of

their unbounded admiration, furnished him with all sorts of excellences

which he did not possess or pretend to, and covered his defects from the

wardrobe of their own fancies. With this class of persons,

‘Pritchard’s genteel, and Garrick’s six feet high!’

I never enlisted in this corps of Swiss bodyguards; I was even suspected

of disloyalty and _leze-majesté_, because I did not cry out—_Quand

meme!_—to all Mr. Kean’s stretches of the prerogatives of genius, and

was placed out of the pale of theatrical orthodoxy, for not subscribing

implicitly to all the articles of belief imposed upon my senses and

understanding. If you had not been to see the little man twenty times in

Richard, and did not deny his being hoarse in the last act, or admire

him for being so, you were looked on as a lukewarm devotee, or half an

infidel. On the other hand, his detractors constantly argued not from

what he was, but from what he was not. ‘He was not tall. He had not a

fine voice. He did not play at Covent-Garden. He was not John Kemble.’

This was all you could get from them, and this they thought quite

sufficient to prove that he was not any thing, because he was not

something quite different from himself. They did not consider that an

actor might have the eye of an eagle with the voice of a raven, a ‘pigmy

body,’ and ‘a fiery soul that o’er-informed its tenement’; that he might

want grace and dignity, and yet have enough nature and passion in his

breast to set up a whole corps of regular stagers. They did not enquire

whether this was the case with respect to Mr. Kean, but took it for

granted that it was not, for no other reason, than because the question

had not been settled by the critics twenty or thirty years ago, and

admitted by the town ever since, that is, before Mr. Kean was born. A

royal infant may be described as ‘un haut et puissant prince, agé d’un

jour,’[28] but a great and powerful actor cannot be known till he

arrives at years of discretion, and he must be first a candidate for

theatrical reputation before he can be a veteran. This is a truism, but

it is one that our prejudices constantly make us not only forget, but

frequently combat with all the spirit of martyrdom. I have (as it will

be seen in the following pages) all along spoken freely of Mr. Kean’s

faults, or what I considered such, physical as well as intellectual; but

the balance inclines decidedly to the favourable side, though not more I

think than his merits exceed his defects. It was also the more necessary

to dwell on the claims of an actor to public support, in proportion as

they were original, and to the illiberal opposition they unhappily had

to encounter. I endeavoured to prove (and with some success), that he

was not ‘the very worst actor in the world.’ His Othello is what appears

to me his master-piece. To those who have seen him in this part, and

think little of it, I have nothing farther to say. It seems to me, as

far as the mind alone is concerned, and leaving the body out of the

question, fully equal to any thing of Mrs. Siddons’s. But I hate such

comparisons; and only make them on strong provocation.

Though I do not repent of what I have said in praise of certain actors,

yet I wish I could retract what I have been obliged to say in

reprobation of others. Public reputation is a lottery, in which there

are blanks as well as prizes. The Stage is an arduous profession,

requiring so many essential excellences and accidental advantages, that

though it is an honour and a happiness to succeed in it, it is only a

misfortune, and not a disgrace, to fail in it. Those who put themselves

upon their trial, must, however, submit to the verdict; and the critic

in general does little more than prevent a lingering death, by

anticipating, or putting in immediate force, the sentence of the public.

The victims of criticism, like the victims of the law, bear no good will

to their executioners; and I confess I have often been heartily tired of

so thankless an office. What I have said of any actor, has never arisen

from private pique of any sort. Indeed the only person on the stage with

whom I have ever had any personal intercourse, is Mr. Liston, and of him

I have not spoken ‘with the malice of a friend.’ To Mr. Conway and Mr.

Bartley my apologies are particularly due: I have accused the one of

being tall, and the other of being fat. I have also said that Mr. Young

plays not only like a scholar, but like ‘a master of scholars’; that

Miss O’Neill shines more in tragedy than comedy; and that Mr. Mathews is

an excellent mimic. I am sorry for these disclosures, which were

extorted from me, but I cannot retract them. There is one observation

which has been made, and which is true, that public censure hurts actors

in a pecuniary point of view; but it has been forgotten, that public

praise assists them in the same manner. Again, I never understood that

the applauded actor thought himself personally obliged to the newspaper

critic; the latter was merely supposed to do his duty. Why then should

the critic be held responsible to the actor whom he _damns_ by virtue of

his office? Besides, as the mimic caricatures absurdity off the Stage,

why should not the critic sometimes caricature it on the Stage? The

children of Momus should not hold themselves sacred from ridicule.

Though the colours may be a little heightened, the outline may be

correct; and truth may be conveyed, and the public taste improved, by an

alliteration or a quibble that wounds the self-love of an individual.

Authors must live as well as actors; and the _insipid_ must at all

events be avoided as that which the public abhors most.

I am not aware of any thing necessary to be added to this Preface, but

to apologize for some repetitions to be found in the work; I mean some

passages and criticisms that have been transferred to other

publications, such as the account of the Beggar’s Opera, Coriolanus, &c.

In fact, I have come to this determination in my own mind, that a work

is as good as _manuscript_, and is invested with all the same

privileges, till it appears in a second edition—a rule which leaves me

at liberty to make what use I please of what I have hitherto written,

with the single exception of THE CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEAR’S PLAYS.

W. HAZLITT.

_April 24, 1818._

A VIEW OF THE ENGLISH STAGE

MR. KEAN’S SHYLOCK

_The Morning Chronicle._

_January 27, 1814._

Mr. Kean (of whom report had spoken highly) last night made his

appearance at Drury-Lane Theatre in the character of Shylock. For voice,

eye, action, and expression, no actor has come out for many years at all

equal to him. The applause, from the first scene to the last, was

general, loud, and uninterrupted. Indeed, the very first scene in which

he comes on with Bassanio and Antonio, shewed the master in his art, and

at once decided the opinion of the audience. Perhaps it was the most

perfect of any. Notwithstanding the complete success of Mr. Kean in the

part of Shylock, we question whether he will not become a greater

favourite in other parts. There was a lightness and vigour in his tread,

a buoyancy and elasticity of spirit, a fire and animation, which would

accord better with almost any other character than with the morose,

sullen, inward, inveterate, inflexible malignity of Shylock. The

character of Shylock is that of a man brooding over one idea, that of

its wrongs, and bent on one unalterable purpose, that of revenge. In

conveying a profound impression of this feeling, or in embodying the

general conception of rigid and uncontroulable self-will, equally proof

against every sentiment of humanity or prejudice of opinion, we have

seen actors more successful than Mr. Kean; but in giving effect to the

conflict of passions arising out of the contrasts of situation, in

varied vehemence of declamation, in keenness of sarcasm, in the rapidity

of his transitions from one tone and feeling to another, in propriety

and novelty of action, presenting a succession of striking pictures, and

giving perpetually fresh shocks of delight and surprise, it would be

difficult to single out a competitor. The fault of his acting was (if we

may hazard the objection), an over-display of the resources of the art,

which gave too much relief to the hard, impenetrable, dark groundwork of

the character of Shylock. It would be endless to point out individual

beauties, where almost every passage was received with equal and

deserved applause. We thought, in one or two instances, the pauses in

the voice were too long, and too great a reliance placed on the

expression of the countenance, which is a language intelligible only to

a part of the house.

The rest of the play was, upon the whole, very respectably cast. It

would be an equivocal compliment to say of Miss Smith, that her acting

often reminds us of Mrs. Siddons. Rae played Bassanio; but the abrupt

and harsh tones of his voice are not well adapted to the mellifluous

cadences of Shakespear’s verse.

_The Morning Chronicle._

_February 2, 1814._

Mr. Kean appeared again in Shylock, and by his admirable and expressive

manner of giving the part, fully sustained the reputation he had

acquired by his former representation of it, though he laboured under

the disadvantage of a considerable hoarseness. He assumed a greater

appearance of age and feebleness than on the first night, but the

general merit of his playing was the same. His style of acting is, if we

may use the expression, more significant, more pregnant with meaning,

more varied and alive in every part, than any we have almost ever

witnessed. The character never stands still; there is no vacant pause in

the action; the eye is never silent. For depth and force of conception,

we have seen actors whom we should prefer to Mr. Kean in Shylock; for

brilliant and masterly execution, none. It is not saying too much of

him, though it is saying a great deal, that he has all that Mr. Kemble

_wants_ of perfection. He reminds us of the descriptions of the

‘far-darting eye’ of Garrick. We are anxious to see him in Norval and

Richard, and anticipate more complete satisfaction from his performance

of the latter part, than from the one in which he has already stamped

his reputation with the public.

Miss Smith played Portia with much more animation than the last time we

saw her, and in delivering the fine apostrophe on Mercy, in the

trial-scene, was highly impressive.

MR. KEAN’S RICHARD

_The Morning Chronicle._

_February 15, 1814._

Mr. Kean’s manner of acting this part has one peculiar advantage; it is

entirely his own, without any traces of imitation of any other actor. He

stands upon his own ground, and he stands firm upon it. Almost every

scene had the stamp and freshness of nature. The excellences and defects

of his performance were in general the same as those which he discovered

in Shylock; though, as the character of Richard is the most difficult,

so we think he displayed most power in it. It is possible to form a

higher conception of this character (we do not mean from seeing other

actors, but from reading Shakespear) than that given by this very

admirable tragedian; but we cannot imagine any character represented

with greater distinctness and precision, more perfectly _articulated_ in

every part. Perhaps, indeed, there is too much of this; for we sometimes

thought he failed, even from an exuberance of talent, and dissipated the

impression of the character by the variety of his resources. To be

perfect, it should have a little more solidity, depth, sustained, and

impassioned feeling, with somewhat less brilliancy, with fewer glancing

lights, pointed transitions, and pantomimic evolutions.

The Richard of Shakespear is towering and lofty, as well as aspiring;

equally impetuous and commanding; haughty, violent, and subtle; bold and

treacherous; confident in his strength, as well as in his cunning;

raised high by his birth, and higher by his genius and his crimes; a

royal usurper, a princely hypocrite, a tyrant, and a murderer of the

House of Plantagenet.

‘But I was born so high;

Our airy buildeth in the cedar’s top,

And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.’

The idea conveyed in these lines (which are omitted in the miserable

medley acted for Richard III.) is never lost sight of by Shakespear, and

should not be out of the actor’s mind for a moment. The restless and

sanguinary Richard is not a man striving to be great, but to be greater

than he is; conscious of his strength of will, his powers of intellect,

his daring courage, his elevated station, and making use of these

advantages, as giving him both the means and the pretext to commit

unheard-of crimes, and to shield himself from remorse and infamy.

If Mr. Kean does not completely succeed in concentrating all the lines

of the character, as drawn by Shakespear, he gives an animation, vigour,

and relief to the part, which we have never seen surpassed. He is more

refined than Cooke; more bold, varied, and original than Kemble, in the

same character. In some parts, however, we thought him deficient in

dignity; and particularly in the scenes of state business, there was not

a sufficient air of artificial authority. The fine assumption of

condescending superiority, after he is made king—‘Stand all apart—Cousin

of Buckingham,’ &c. was not given with the effect which it might have

received. There was also at times, a sort of tip-toe elevation, an

enthusiastic rapture in his expectations of obtaining the crown, instead

of a gloating expression of sullen delight, as if he already clutched

the bauble, and held it within his grasp. This was the precise

expression which Mr. Kean gave with so much effect to the part where he

says, that he already feels

‘The golden rigol bind his brows.’

In one who _dares_ so much, there is little indeed to blame. The only

two things which appeared to us decidedly objectionable, were the sudden

letting down of his voice when he says of Hastings, ‘chop off his head,’

and the action of putting his hands behind him, in listening to

Buckingham’s account of his reception by the citizens. His courtship

scene with Lady Anne was an admirable exhibition of smooth and smiling

villainy. The progress of wily adulation, of encroaching humility, was

finely marked throughout by the action, voice, and eye. He seemed, like

the first tempter, to approach his prey, certain of the event, and as if

success had smoothed the way before him. We remember Mr. Cooke’s manner

of representing this scene was more violent, hurried, and full of

anxious uncertainty. This, though more natural in general, was, we

think, less in character. Richard should woo not as a lover, but as an

actor—to shew his mental superiority, and power to make others the

playthings of his will. Mr. Kean’s attitude in leaning against the side

of the stage before he comes forward in this scene, was one of the most

graceful and striking we remember to have seen. It would have done for

Titian to paint. The opening scene in which Richard descants on his own

deformity, was conceived with perfect truth and character, and delivered

in a fine and varied tone of natural recitation. Mr. Kean did equal

justice to the beautiful description of the camps the night before the

battle, though, in consequence of his hoarseness, he was obliged to

repeat the whole passage in an under-key.[29] His manner of bidding his

friends good night, and his pausing with the point of his sword, drawn

slowly backward and forward on the ground, before he retires to his

tent, received shouts of applause. He gave to all the busy scenes of the

play the greatest animation and effect. He filled every part of the

stage. The concluding scene, in which he is killed by Richmond, was the

most brilliant. He fought like one drunk with wounds: and the attitude

in which he stands with his hands stretched out, after his sword is

taken from him, had a preternatural and terrific grandeur, as if his

will could not be disarmed, and the very phantoms of his despair had a

withering power.

_The Morning Chronicle._

_February 21, 1814._

The house was crowded at an early hour in every part, to witness Mr.

Kean’s second representation of Richard. His admirable acting received

that meed of applause, which it so well deserved. His voice had not

entirely recovered its tone and strength; and when (after the curtain

had dropped, amidst a tumult of approbation), Mr. Rae came forward to

announce the play for Monday, cries of ‘No, no,’ from every part of the

house, testified the sense entertained by the audience, of the

impropriety of requiring the repetition of this extraordinary effort,

till every physical disadvantage had been completely removed.

We have little to add to our former remarks, for Mr. Kean went through

the part nearly as before, and we saw no reason to alter our opinion.

The dying scene was the most varied, and, we think, for the worse. In

pronouncing the words in Richard’s soliloquy, ‘I am myself alone,’ Mr.

Kean gave a quick and hurried movement to his voice, as if it was a

thought that suddenly struck him, or which he wished to pass over;

whereas it is the deep and rooted sentiment of his breast. The

reduplication of the words in Shakespear points out the manner in which

the voice should dwell upon, and as it were, brood over the feeling,

loth to part with the bitter consolation. Where he says to Buckingham,

‘I am not i’ the vein,’ the expression should, we imagine, be that of

stifled hatred, and cold contempt, instead of sarcastic petulance. The

scene tells for itself, without being pointed by the manner. In general,

perhaps, if Mr. Kean were to give to the character less of the air of an

ostentatious hypocrite, of an intelligible villain, it would be more

correct, and would accord better with Shakespear’s idea of the part. The

description which he has put into the mouth of Hastings, is a perfect

study for the actor.

‘His grace looks cheerfully and smooth this morning:

There’s some conceit or other likes him well,

When that he bids good-morrow with such spirit.

I think there’s ne’er a man in Christendom

Can lesser hide his hate or love than he,

For by his face straight shall you know his heart.’

In the scene with Lady Anne, in the sudden alteration of his manner to

the messenger who brings him the news of Edward’s illness, in the

interview with Buckingham, where he desires the death of the children,

in his infinitely spirited expostulation with Lord Stanley, in his

triumph at the death of Buckingham, in the parting scene with his

friends before the battle, in his treatment of the paper sent to

Norfolk, and in all the tumult and glowing interest of the last scenes

of the play, we had fresh cause for admiration. It were in vain,

however, to point out particular beauties; for the research, the

ingenuity, and the invention manifested throughout the character are

endless. We have said before, and we still think so, that there is even

too much effect given, too many significant hints, too much appearance

of study. There is a tone in acting, as well as in painting, which is

the chief and master excellence. Our highest conception of an actor is,

that he shall assume the character once for all, and be it throughout,

and trust to this conscious sympathy for the effect produced. Mr. Kean’s

manner of acting is, on the contrary, rather a perpetual assumption of

his part, always brilliant and successful, almost always true and

natural, but yet always a distinct effort in every new situation, so

that the actor does not seem entirely to forget himself, or to be

identified with the character. The extreme elaboration of the parts

injures the broad and massy effect; the general impulse of the machine

is retarded by the variety and intricacy of the movements. But why do we

try this actor by an ideal theory? Who is there that will stand the same

test? It is, in fact, the last forlorn hope of criticism, for it shews

that we have nothing else to compare him with. ‘Take him for all in

all,’ it will be long, very long, before we ‘look upon his like again,’

if we are to wait as long as we _have_ waited.

We wish the introduction of the ghosts through the trap-doors of the

stage were altogether omitted. The speeches, which they address to

Richard, might be delivered just as well from behind the scenes. These

sort of exhibitions are only proper for a superstitious age; and in an

age not superstitious, excite ridicule instead of terror. Mr. Wroughton

makes a very substantial ghost, and Miss Boyce retains the same ruddy

appearance of flesh and blood, and the same graceful _embonpoint_, which

so well became her in the scene where she was wooed by Richard. Mrs.

Glover’s Queen was more natural and impressive than on the first night,

because it was less turbulent; and if she would use still less

vociferation, she would produce a still greater effect—‘For in the very

torrent and whirlwind of the passion, you should acquire a temperance

that may give it smoothness.’

Mr. Kean’s acting in Richard, as we before remarked in his Shylock,

presents a perpetual succession of striking pictures. He bids fair to

supply us with the best Shakespear Gallery we have had!

MR. KEAN’S HAMLET

_The Morning Chronicle._

_March 14, 1814._

That which distinguishes the dramatic productions of Shakespear from all

others, is the wonderful variety and perfect individuality of his

characters. Each of these is as much itself, and as absolutely

independent of the rest, as if they were living persons, not fictions of

the mind. The poet appears for the time being, to be identified with the

character he wishes to represent, and to pass from one to the other,

like the same soul, successively animating different bodies. By an art

like that of the ventriloquist, he throws his imagination out of

himself, and makes every word appear to proceed from the very mouth of

the person whose name it bears. His plays alone are properly expressions

of the passions, not descriptions of them. His characters are real

beings of flesh and blood; they speak like men, not like authors. One

might suppose that he had stood by at the time, and had overheard what

passed. Each object and circumstance seems to exist in his mind as it

existed in nature; each several train of thought and feeling goes on of

itself without effort or confusion; in the world of his imagination

every thing has a life, a place and being of its own.

These remarks are, we think, as applicable to Hamlet, as to any of

Shakespear’s tragedies. It is, if not the finest, perhaps the most

inimitable of all his productions. Lear is first, for the profound

intensity of the passion: Macbeth, for the wildness of the imagination,

and the glowing rapidity of the action: Othello, for the progressive

interest, and rapid alternations of feeling: Hamlet, for perfect

dramatic truth, and the unlooked-for development of sentiment and

character. Shakespear has in this play shewn more of the magnanimity of

genius, than in any other. There is no attempt to force an interest, but

every thing is left to time and circumstances. The interest is excited

without premeditation or effort, the events succeed each other as

matters of course, the characters think, and speak and act just as they

would do, if they were left to themselves. The whole play is an exact

transcript of what might have taken place at the Court of Denmark five

hundred years ago, before the modern refinements in morality and

manners.

The character of Hamlet is itself a pure effusion of genius. It is not a

character marked by strength of passion or will, but by refinement of

thought and feeling. Hamlet is as little of the hero as a man can well

be; but he is ‘a young and princely novice,’ full of high enthusiasm and

quick sensibility—the sport of circumstances, questioning with fortune,

and refining on his own feelings, and forced from the natural bias of

his character, by the strangeness of his situation. He seems incapable

of deliberate action, and is only hurried into extremities on the spur

of the occasion, when he has no time to reflect, as in the scene where

he kills Polonius, and where he alters the letters which Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern take with them. At other times, he remains puzzled,

undecided, and sceptical, dallies with his purposes till the occasion is

lost, and always finds some reason to relapse into indolence and

thoughtfulness again. For this reason he refuses to kill the King when

he is at his prayers, and by a refinement in malice, which is only an

excuse for his own want of resolution, defers his revenge to some more

fatal opportunity, when he shall be engaged in some act ‘that has no

relish of salvation in it.’ So he scruples to trust the suggestions of

the Ghost, contrives the scene of the play to have surer proof of his

uncle’s guilt, and then rests satisfied with this confirmation of his

suspicions, and the success of his experiment, instead of acting upon

it. The moral perfection of this character has been called in question.

It is more natural than conformable to rules; and if not more amiable,

is certainly more dramatic on that account. Hamlet is not, to be sure, a

Sir Charles Grandison. In general, there is little of the drab-coloured

quakerism of morality in the ethical delineations of ‘that noble and

liberal casuist,’ as Shakespear has been well called. He does not set

his heroes in the stocks of virtue, to make mouths at their own

situation. His plays are not transcribed from the Whole Duty of Man! We

confess, we are a little shocked at the want of refinement in those, who

are shocked at the want of refinement in Hamlet. The want of punctilious

exactness of behaviour either partakes of the ‘license of the time,’ or

belongs to the very excess of intellectual refinement in the character,

which makes the common rules of life, as well as his own purposes, sit

loose upon him. He may be said to be amenable only to the tribunal of

his own thoughts, and is too much occupied with the airy world of

contemplation, to lay as much stress as he ought on the practical

consequences of things. His habitual principles of action are unhinged,

and ‘out of joint’ with the time.

This character is probably of all others the most difficult to personate

on the stage. It is like the attempt to embody a shadow.

‘Come then, the colours and the ground prepare,

Dip in the rainbow, trick her off in air,

Chuse a firm cloud, before it falls, and in it

Catch, ‘ere she change, the Cynthia of a minute.’

Such nearly is the task which the actor imposes on himself in the part

of Hamlet. It is quite remote from hardness and dry precision. The

character is spun to the finest thread, yet never loses its continuity.

It has the yielding flexibility of ‘a wave of the sea.’ It is made up of

undulating lines, without a single sharp angle. There is no set purpose,

no straining at a point. The observations are suggested by the passing

scene—the gusts of passion come and go, like the sounds of music borne

on the wind. The interest depends not on the action, but on the

thoughts—on ‘that within which passeth shew.’ Yet, in spite of these

difficulties, Mr. Kean’s representation of the character had the most

brilliant success. It did not indeed come home to our feelings, as

Hamlet (that very Hamlet whom we read of in our youth, and seem almost

to remember in our after-years), but it was a most striking and animated

rehearsal of the part.

High as Mr. Kean stood in our opinion before, we have no hesitation in

saying, that he stands higher in it (and, we think, will in that of the

public), from the powers displayed in this last effort. If it was less

perfect as a whole, there were parts in it of a higher cast of

excellence than any part of his Richard. We will say at once, in what we

think his general delineation of the character wrong. It was too strong

and pointed. There was often a severity, approaching to virulence, in

the common observations and answers. There is nothing of this in Hamlet.

He is, as it were, wrapped up in the cloud of his reflections, and only

_thinks aloud_. There should therefore be no attempt to impress what he

says upon others by any exaggeration of emphasis or manner, no talking

_at_ his hearers. There should be as much of the gentleman and scholar

as possible infused into the part, and as little of the actor. A pensive

air of sadness should sit unwillingly upon his brow, but no appearance

of fixed and sullen gloom. He is full of ‘weakness and melancholy,’ but

there is no harshness in his nature. Hamlet should be the most amiable

of misanthropes. There is no one line in this play, which should be

spoken like any one line in Richard; yet Mr. Kean did not appear to us

to keep the two characters always distinct. He was least happy in the

last scene with Guildenstern and Rosencrantz. In some of these more

familiar scenes he displayed more energy than was requisite; and in

others where it would have been appropriate, did not rise equal to the

exigency of the occasion. In particular, the scene with Laertes, where

he leaps into the grave, and utters the exclamation, ‘’Tis I, Hamlet the

Dane,’ had not the tumultuous and overpowering effect we expected from

it. To point out the defects of Mr. Kean’s performance of the part, is a

less grateful but a much shorter task, than to enumerate the many

striking beauties which he gave to it, both by the power of his action

and by the true feeling of nature. His surprise when he first sees the

Ghost, his eagerness and filial confidence in following it, the

impressive pathos of his action and voice in addressing it, ‘I’ll call

thee Hamlet, _Father_, Royal Dane,’ were admirable.

Mr. Kean has introduced in this part a _new reading_, as it is called,

which we think perfectly correct. In the scene where he breaks from his

friends to obey the command of his father, he keeps his sword pointed

behind him, to prevent them from following him, instead of holding it

before him to protect him from the Ghost. The manner of his taking

Guildenstern and Rosencrantz under each arm, under pretence of

communicating his secret to them, when he only means to trifle with

them, had the finest effect, and was, we conceive, exactly in the spirit

of the character. So was the suppressed tone of irony in which he

ridicules those who gave ducats for his uncle’s picture, though they

would ‘make mouths at him,’ while his father lived. Whether the way in

which Mr. Kean hesitates in repeating the first line of the speech in

the interview with the player, and then, after several ineffectual

attempts to recollect it, suddenly hurries on with it, ‘The rugged

Pyrrhus,’ &c. is in perfect keeping, we have some doubts: but there was

great ingenuity in the thought; and the spirit and life of the execution

was beyond every thing. Hamlet’s speech in describing his own

melancholy, his instructions to the players, and the soliloquy on death,

were all delivered by Mr. Kean in a tone of fine, clear, and natural

recitation. His pronunciation of the word ‘contumely’ in the last of

these, is, we apprehend, not authorized by custom, or by the metre.

Both the closet scene with his mother, and his remonstrances to Ophelia,

were highly impressive. If there had been less vehemence of effort in

the latter, it would not have lost any of its effect. But whatever nice

faults might be found in this scene, they were amply redeemed by the

manner of his coming back after he has gone to the extremity of the

stage, from a pang of parting tenderness to press his lips to Ophelia’s

hand. It had an electrical effect on the house. It was the finest

commentary that was ever made on Shakespear. It explained the character

at once (as he meant it), as one of disappointed hope, of bitter regret,

of affection suspended, not obliterated, by the distractions of the

scene around him! The manner in which Mr. Kean acted in the scene of the

Play before the King and Queen was the most daring of any, and the force

and animation which he gave to it, cannot be too highly applauded. Its

extreme boldness ‘bordered on the verge of all we hate,’ and the effect

it produced, was a test of the extraordinary powers of this

extraordinary actor.

We cannot speak too highly of Mr. Raymond’s representation of the Ghost.

It glided across the stage with the preternatural grandeur of a spirit.

His manner of speaking the part was not equally excellent. A spirit

should not whine or shed tears.

Mr. Dowton’s Polonius was unworthy of so excellent an actor. The part

was mistaken altogether. Polonius is not exceedingly wise, but he is not

quite a fool; or if he is, he is at the same time a courtier, and a

courtier of the old school. Mr. Dowton made nothing, or worse than

nothing, of the part.

MR. KEAN’S OTHELLO

_The Morning Chronicle._

_May 6, 1814._

Othello was acted at Drury-Lane last night, the part of Othello by Mr.

Kean. His success was fully equal to the arduousness of the undertaking.

In general, we might observe that he displayed the same excellences and

the same defects as in his former characters. His voice and person were

not altogether in consonance with the character, nor was there

throughout, that noble tide of deep and sustained passion, impetuous,

but majestic, that ‘flows on to the Propontic, and knows no ebb,’ which

raises our admiration and pity of the lofty-minded Moor. There were,

however, repeated bursts of feeling and energy which we have never seen

surpassed. The whole of the latter part of the third act was a

master-piece of profound pathos and exquisite conception, and its effect

on the house was electrical. The tone of voice in which he delivered the

beautiful apostrophe, ‘Then, oh farewell!’ struck on the heart and the

imagination like the swelling notes of some divine music. The look, the

action, the expression of voice, with which he accompanied the

exclamation, ‘Not a jot, not a jot;’ the reflection, ‘I felt not

_Cassio’s kisses_ on her lips;’ and his vow of revenge against Cassio,

and abandonment of his love for Desdemona, laid open the very tumult and

agony of the soul. In other parts, where we expected an equal interest

to be excited, we were disappointed; and in the common scenes, we think

Mr. Kean’s manner, as we have remarked on other occasions, had more

point and emphasis than the sense or character required.[30]

The rest of the play was by no means judiciously cast; indeed, almost

every individual appeared to be out of his proper place.

MR. KEAN’S IAGO

_The Morning Chronicle._

_May 9, 1814._

The part of Iago was played at Drury-Lane on Saturday by Mr. Kean, and

played with admirable facility and effect. It was the most faultless of

his performances, the most consistent and entire. Perhaps the

accomplished hypocrite was never so finely, so adroitly pourtrayed—a

gay, light-hearted monster, a careless, cordial, comfortable villain.

The preservation of character was so complete, the air and manner were

so much of a piece throughout, that the part seemed more like a detached

scene or single _trait_, and of shorter duration than it usually does.

The ease, familiarity, and tone of nature with which the text was

delivered, were quite equal to any thing we have seen in the best comic

acting. It was the least overdone of all his parts, though full of

point, spirit, and brilliancy. The odiousness of the character was in

fact, in some measure, glossed over by the extreme grace, alacrity and

rapidity of the execution. Whether this effect were ‘a consummation of

the art devoutly to be wished,’ is another question, on which we

entertain some doubts. We have already stated it as our opinion, that

Mr. Kean is not a literal transcriber of his author’s text; he

translates his characters with great freedom and ingenuity into a

language of his own; but at the same time we cannot help preferring his

liberal and spirited dramatic versions, to the dull, literal,

common-place monotony of his competitors. Besides, after all, in the

conception of the part, he may be right, and we may be wrong. We have

before complained that Mr. Kean’s Richard was not gay enough, and we

should now be disposed to complain that his Iago is not grave enough.

Mr. Sowerby’s Othello, we are sorry to add, was a complete failure, and

the rest of the play was very ill got up.

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

_The Morning Chronicle._

_Nov. 16, 1813._

Shakespear’s tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra was brought out last night

at Covent-Garden with alterations, and with considerable additions from

Dryden’s All for Love. The piece seems to have been in some measure got

up for the occasion, as there are several claptraps in the speeches,

which admit of an obvious allusion to passing characters and events, and

which were eagerly seized by the audience. Of the execution of the task

which the compiler has imposed upon himself, we cannot speak in terms of

much praise. Almost all the transpositions of passages which he has

attempted, are, we think, injudicious and injurious to the effect. Thus

the rich and poetical description of the person of Cleopatra, in the

beginning of the second act—‘The barge she sat in, like a burnished

throne, burnt on the water,’ &c. which prepares the way for, and almost

seems to justify the subsequent infatuation of Antony, is here postponed

till near the catastrophe, where it answers no end, and excites little

interest. It would also have been much better, if the author had

contented himself merely with omitting certain passages, which he might

deem objectionable to a modern audience, without encumbering either the

plot or dialogue with any foreign interpolation. He might have separated

the gold of Shakespear from the alloy which at times accompanies it, but

he ought not to have mixed it up with the heavy tinsel of Dryden. We

cannot approve of the attempt to effect ‘an amalgamation of the

wonderful powers’ of these writers, who are, in the preface to the

printed play, classed together as ‘two of England’s greatest poets.’

There is not the slightest comparison between them, either in kind or

degree. There is all the difference between them, that can subsist

between artificial and natural passion. Dryden never goes out of

himself: he is a man of strong sense and powerful feeling, reasoning

upon what he should feel in certain situations, and expressing himself

in studied declamation, in general topics, expanding and varying the

stock of his own ideas, so as to produce a tolerable resemblance to

those of mankind in different situations, and building up, by the aid of

logic and rhetoric—that is, by means of certain truths and images,

generally known and easily applied, a stately and impressive poem.

Whereas Shakespear does not suppose himself to be others, but at once

_becomes_ them. His imagination passes out of himself into them, and as

it were, transmits to him their feelings and circumstances. Nothing is

made out by inference and analogy, by climax and antithesis, but all

comes immediately from nature—the thoughts, the images, the very words

are hers. His plays can only be compared with Nature—they are unlike

every thing else.

Antony and Cleopatra, though not in the first order of Shakespear’s

productions, is one of the best of his historical plays. It is every

where full of that pervading comprehensive power, by which the poet

seemed to identify himself with time and nature. The pomp and voluptuous

charms of Cleopatra are displayed in all their force and lustre, as well

as the effeminate grandeur of the soul of Mark Antony. The repentance of

Enobarbus after his treachery to his master, the most beautiful and

affecting part of the play, is here, for some reason, entirely omitted.

Nothing can have more local truth and perfect character than the passage

in which Cleopatra is represented as conjecturing what were the

employments of Antony in his absence. ‘He’s speaking now, or

murmuring—where’s my serpent of old Nile?’ Or again, when she says to

Antony, after the defeat of Actium, and his resolution to risk another

fight—‘It is my birth-day; I had thought to have held it poor, but since

my Lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.’ The transition, in the

present compilation, from these flashes of genius which lay open the

inmost soul, to the forced mechanical style and architectural dialogue

of Dryden, is abrupt and painful.

The play was got up with every advantage of external pomp and

decoration. Mr. Young, as Mark Antony, exhibited a just and impressive

picture of the Roman hero, struggling between the dictates of his love

and honour. Mrs. M’Gibbon was a respectable and interesting

representative of Octavia. Mrs. Faucit’s Cleopatra conveyed at least a

reflex image of the voluptuous magnificence of the Queen of Egypt. In

the ironical scenes with Antony, her manner sometimes bordered too much

on the affected levity of a modern fine lady, and wanted the passion and

dignity of the enamoured and haughty sovereign. In the part of

Ventidius, we are sorry to say, that we think Mr. Terry was by no means

successful. His manner had all the turbulent ferocity of a gloomy

savage, none of the lofty firmness of the Roman Senator. The expression

of the passion was every where too coarse and too physical; his muscles

assumed a preternatural rigidity, and the mode in which he articulated

every sentence was distinct, almost to dislocation. The house, however,

seemed to be of a different opinion; for, in the several scenes with Mr.

Young, he was loudly and tumultuously applauded.

ARTAXERXES

_The Morning Chronicle._

_Oct. 18, 1813._

Miss Stephens made her appearance again on Saturday at Covent-Garden, as

Mandane, in Artaxerxes. She becomes more and more a favourite with the

public. Her singing is delicious; but admired as it is, it is not yet

admired as it ought to be. Oh, if she had been wafted to us from

Italy!—A voice more sweet, varied, and flexible, was perhaps never heard

on an English stage. In ‘The Soldier tired,’ her voice, though it might

be said to cleave the very air, never once lost its sweetness and

clearness. ‘Let not rage thy bosom firing’ was deservedly and

rapturously encored. But if we were to express a preference, it would be

to her singing the lines, ‘What was my pride is now my shame,’ &c. in

which the notes seemed to fall from her lips like the liquid drops from

the bending flower, and her voice fluttered and died away with the

expiring conflict of passion in her bosom. We know, and have felt the

divine power and impassioned tones of Catalani—the lightning of her

voice and of her eye—but we doubt whether she would give the ballad

style of the songs in Artaxerxes, simple but elegant, chaste but full of

expression, with equal purity, taste, and tenderness.

Mr. Liston’s acting in Love, Law, and Physic, was as excellent as it

always is. It is hard to say, whether the soul of Mr. Liston has passed

into Mr. Lubin Log, or that of Mr. Lubin Log into Mr. Liston:—but a most

wonderful congeniality and mutual good understanding there is between

them. A more perfect personation we never witnessed. The happy compound

of meanness, ignorance, vulgarity, and conceit, was given with the

broadest effect, and with the nicest discrimination of feeling. Moliere

would not have wished for a richer representative of his _Gentilhomme

Bourgeois_. We insist the more on this point, because of all imitations

we like the imitation of nature best. The marked _cockneyism_ of

pronouncing the V for the W, was the only circumstance to which we could

object, and this is an interpolation on the part since we first saw it,

suggested (we suppose) by friends. It is a hackneyed and cheap way of

producing a laugh, unworthy of the true comic genius of Liston.

THE BEGGAR’S OPERA

_The Morning Chronicle._

_Oct. 23, 1813._

The Beggar’s Opera was acted at Covent-Garden last night, for the

purpose of introducing Miss Stephens in the character of Polly. The play

itself is among the most popular of our dramas, and one which the public

are always glad to have some new excuse for seeing acted again. Its

merits are peculiarly its own. It not only delights, but instructs us,

without our knowing how, and though it is at first view equally

offensive to good taste and common decency. The materials, indeed, of

which it is composed, the scenes, characters, and incidents, are in

general of the lowest and most disgusting kind; but the author, by the

sentiments and reflections which he has put into the mouths of

highwaymen, turnkeys, their wives and daughters, has converted the

motley group into a set of fine gentlemen and ladies, satirists, and

philosophers. What is still more extraordinary, he has effected this

transformation without once violating probability, or ‘o’erstepping the

modesty of nature.’ In fact, Gay has in this instance turned the tables

on the critics; and by the assumed license of the mock-heroic style, has

enabled himself to _do justice to nature_, that is, to give all the

force, truth, and locality of real feeling to the thoughts and

expressions, without being called to the bar of false taste, and

affected delicacy. We might particularly refer to Polly’s description of

the death of her lover, and to the song, ‘Woman is like the fair flower

in its lustre,’ the extreme beauty and feeling of which are only

equalled by their characteristic propriety and _naivete_. Every line of

this sterling Comedy sparkles with wit, and is fraught with the keenest

and bitterest invective.

It has been said by a great moralist, ‘There is some soul of goodness in

things evil;’ and The Beggar’s Opera is a good-natured, but severe

comment on this text. The poet has thrown all the gaiety and sunshine of

the imagination, the intoxication of pleasure, and the vanity of

despair, round the short-lived existence of his heroes, while Peachum

and Lockitt are seen in the back ground, parcelling out their months and

weeks between them. The general view of human life is of the most

refined and abstracted kind. With the happiest art, the author has

brought out the good qualities and interesting emotions almost

inseparable from humanity in the lowest situations, and with the same

penetrating glance, has detected the disguises which rank and

circumstance lend to exalted vice. It may be said that the moral of the

piece (which some respectable critics have been at a loss to discover),

_is to shew the vulgarity of vice_; or that the sophisms with which the

great and powerful palliate their violations of integrity and decorum,

are, in fact, common to them with the vilest, most abandoned and

contemptible of the species. What can be more galling than the arguments

used by these would-be politicians, to prove that in hypocrisy,

selfishness, and treachery, they are far behind some of their betters?

The exclamation of Mrs. Peachum, when her daughter marries Macheath,

‘Hussey, hussey, you will be as ill used and as much neglected as if you

had married a Lord,’ is worth all Miss Hannah More’s laboured invectives

on the laxity of the manners of high life!

The innocent and amiable Polly found a most interesting representative

in Miss Stephens. Her acting throughout was simple, unaffected,

graceful, and full of tenderness. Her tones in speaking, though low, and

suited to the gentleness of the character, were distinct, and varied

with great flexibility. She will lose by her performance of this part,

none of the reputation she has gained in Mandane. The manner in which

she gave the song in the first act, ‘But he so teazed me,’ &c. was

sweetness itself: the notes undulated through the house, amidst murmurs

of rapturous applause. She gave equal animation and feeling to the

favourite air, ‘Cease your funning.’ To this, however, as well as to

some other of the songs, a more dramatic effect might perhaps be given.

There is a severity of feeling, and a plaintive sadness, both in the

words and music of the songs in this Opera, on which too much stress

cannot be laid.

_Oct. 30._

Miss Stephens made her appearance again last night at Covent-Garden, in

Polly, with additional lustre. Her timidity was overcome, and her voice

was exerted in all its force and sweetness. We find so much real taste,

elegance, and feeling, in this very delightful singer, that we cannot

help repeating our praise of her, though, perhaps, by so doing, we shall

only irritate the sullen fury of certain formidable critics, at the

appearance of a new favourite of the public. We are aware that there is

a class of connoisseurs whose envy it might be prudent to disarm, by

some compromise with their perverted taste; who are horror-struck at

grace and beauty, and who can only find relief and repose in the

consoling thoughts of deformity and defect; whose blood curdles into

poison at deserved reputation, who shudder at every temptation _to

admire_, as an unpardonable crime, and shrink from whatever gives

delight to others, with more than monkish self-denial. These kind of

critics are well described by Molière, as displaying, on all occasions,

an invincible hatred for what the rest of the world admire, and an

inconceivable partiality for those perfections which none but themselves

can discover. The secret both of their affection and enmity is the

same—their pride is mortified with whatever can give pleasure, and

soothed with what excites only pity or indifference. They search out

with scrupulous malice, the smallest defect or excess of every kind: it

is only when it becomes painfully oppressive to every one else, that

they are reconciled to it. A critic of this order is dissatisfied with

the _embonpoint_ of Miss Stephens; while his eye reposes with perfect

self-complacency on the little round graces of Mrs. Liston’s person!

RICHARD CŒUR DE LION

_The Morning Chronicle._

_May 27, 1814._

Richard Cœur de Lion was brought out last night at Covent-Garden, in

which Miss Stephens made her appearance in the character of Matilda. She

looked and spoke the part well, but the favourite pathetic air of ‘Oh,

Richard! oh, my love,’ was omitted, we suppose in consequence of

indisposition.

The new farce, called ‘Tricking’s fair in Love,’ followed, but with

little success; for after being heard out with great fairness, it was

decidedly condemned at last, notwithstanding some inimitable acting by

Liston as Count Hottentot. We never saw his face in a state of higher

keeping. It was quite rich and unctuous.

A young lady (Miss Foote) afterwards made her first appearance in

Amanthis. Her face and figure excited the liveliest interest as soon as

she appeared; which her manner of executing the part did not diminish,

but increased as she proceeded. Her voice possesses great clearness and

sweetness, and her enunciation is exceedingly distinct and articulate,

without any appearance of labour. Her features are soft and regular. She

perfectly answered to the idea which we form of youth, beauty, grace,

and artless innocence in the original character. She seemed to be,

indeed, the Child of Nature, such as

‘Youthful poets fancy when they love.’

Her reception throughout was flattering in the highest degree.

DIDONE ABANDONNATA

_The Champion._

_August 14, 1814._

The Opera closed for the season on Saturday last. We attended on this

farewell occasion, without any strong feelings of regret for the past,

or of sanguine expectations for the future. The Opera, from its constant

and powerful appeals to the senses, by imagery, by sound, and motion, is

well calculated to amuse or stimulate the intellectual languor of those

classes of society, on whose support it immediately depends. This is its

highest aim, and its appropriate use. But, without the aid of luxurious

pomp, what can there be to interest in this merely artificial vehicle of

show, and dance, and song, which is purposely constructed so as to lull

every effort of the understanding and feeling of the heart in the soft,

soothing effeminacy of sensual enjoyment? The Opera Muse is not a

beautiful virgin who can hope to charm by simplicity and sensibility;

but a tawdry courtesan, who, when her paint and patches, her rings and

jewels are stripped off, can excite only disgust and ridicule. This is

the state to which she has been reduced by dissentions among her keepers

for the last season.—Nothing could be more unpleasant than the

impression produced on our minds by the exhibition of Saturday last.

Tattered hanging fragments of curtains, disjointed machinery, silver

pannels turned black, a few thinly scattered lamps badly lighted, were

among the various circumstances which threw a damp over our spirits.

Bankruptcy every where stared us in the face. The general _coup d’œil_

of the theatre had no affinity with gaiety or grandeur. The whole had

the melancholy appearance, without any of the sublimity, of some relic

of eastern magnificence.

The Opera was Didone Abandonnata, in which Madame Grassini performed the

part of the unfortunate Queen, and Signor Tramezzani (appearing for the

last time on the English stage), that of the faithless Æneas. During the

greater part of the first act, there was hardly any body in the pit, and

nobody in the boxes. The performance evidently partook of the apathy of

the public. We do not know otherwise how to account for the undress

manner in which Madame Grassini acted the part of Dido. She walked

through it with the most perfect indifference, or as if she had been at

a morning rehearsal before empty benches. The graceful dignity of the

character never left her, but it was the habitual grace of a queen

surrounded by her maids of honour, not the impassioned energy of a queen

enamoured of the son of a goddess, and courted by Numidian kings. Even

after the desertion of Æneas, and when the flames of her capital were

surrounding her, the terror and agitation she displayed did not amount

to the anxiety of a common assignation-scene; her trills and quavers

very artfully mimicked the uncertain progress of the tremulous flames;

and she at last left the stage, not as if rushing in an agony of despair

to her fate, but with the hurry and alarm of a person who is afraid of

being detected in a clandestine correspondence. In some passages,

however, both of the recitative and the songs, the beauty of the

movement or the force of the sentiment drew from her tones of mingled

grace and energy, which ‘might create a soul under the ribs of death.’

This effect seemed to be purely involuntary, and not to proceed from any

desire to gratify the audience, or to do justice to the part she had to

sustain.

The same objections cannot be applied to the acting of Signor

Tramezzani, in which there was no want of animation or effort. We are

not among this gentleman’s enthusiastic admirers; at the same time we

would not wish to speak of him more contemptuously than he deserves.

There is, we think, in general, considerable propriety in his

conception, and great spirit in his execution; but it is almost

universally carried into grimace and caricature. His heroes have the

fierceness of bullies; his lovers are the fondest creatures;—his frowns

and his smiles seem alike fated to kill. We object most to the latter.

Signor Tramezzani is really too prodigal of his physical

accomplishments: his acting is quite of the amatory kind. We see no

reason why Æneas, because Dido takes him by the hand, should ogle the

sweet heavens with such tender glances, nor why his lips should feed on

the imagination of a kiss, as if he had tasted marmalade. Signor

Tramezzani’s amorous raptures put us in mind of the pious ardours of a

female saint, who sighs out her soul at some divine man at a

conventicle. We hate such fulsome fooleries.

After the Opera ‘God save the King’ was sung. The first verse was given

by Madame Grassini, with that ease and simplicity which are natural to

her. The second was torn to tatters by Signor Tramezzani with every

preposterous accompaniment of imitative action. Into the homely couplet,

‘Scatter his enemies,

And make them fall,’

he introduced as much heroic action, as if Jove, in the first line, had

had to shake a thousand thunderbolts from his hand, and in the next to

transfix the giants to the earth. The bow with which this celebrated

actor quitted the stage was endless and inimitable. The Genius of

Scotland would have turned pale with envy at the sight! Of the other

performers we shall say nothing. M. Vestris made an able-bodied

representative of Zephyr in the ballet.

MISS O’NEILL’S JULIET

_The Champion._

_Oct. 16, 1814._

We occasionally see something on the stage that reminds us a little of

Shakespear. Miss O’Neill’s Juliet, if it does not correspond exactly

with our idea of the character, does not degrade it. We never saw

Garrick; and Mrs. Siddons was the only person who ever embodied our idea

of high tragedy. Her mind and person were both fitted for it. The effect

of her acting was greater than could be conceived before-hand. It

perfectly filled and overpowered the mind. The first time of seeing this

great artist was an epoch in every one’s life, and left impressions

which could never be forgotten. She appeared to belong to a superior

order of beings, to be surrounded with a personal awe, like some

prophetess of old, or Roman matron, the mother of Coriolanus or the

Gracchi. Her voice answered to her form, and her expression to both. Yet

she was a pantomime actress. Her common recitation was faulty. It was in

bursts of indignation, or grief, in sudden exclamations, in apostrophes

and inarticulate sounds, that she raised the soul of passion to its

height, or sunk it in despair.

We remember her manner in the Gamester, when Stukeley, (it was then

played by Palmer), declares his love to her. The look, first of

incredulity and astonishment, then of anger, then passing suddenly into

contempt, and ending in bitter scorn, and a convulsive burst of

laughter, all given in a moment, and laying open every movement of the

soul, produced an effect which we shall never forget. Her manner of

rubbing her hands, in the night scene in Macbeth, and of dismissing the

guests at the banquet, were among her finest things. We have, many years

ago, wept outright during the whole time of her playing Isabella, and

this we take to have been a higher employment of the critical faculties

than doubling down the book in dog-ears to make out a regular list of

critical common-places. To the tears formerly shed on such occasions, we

may apply the words of a modern dashing orator, ‘Sweet is the dew of

their memory, and pleasant the balm of their recollection.’

We have, we believe, been betrayed into this digression, because Miss

O’Neill, more than any late actress, reminded us in certain passages,

and in a faint degree, of Mrs. Siddons. This young lady, who will

probably become a favourite with the public, is rather tall; and though

not _of the first order of fine forms_, her figure is of that

respectable kind, which will not interfere with the characters she

represents. Her deportment is not particularly graceful: there is a

heaviness, and want of firmness about it. Her features are regular, and

the upper part of her face finely expressive of terror or sorrow. It has

that mixture of beauty and passion which we admire so much in some of

the antique statues. The lower part of her face is not equally good.

From a want of fulness or flexibility about the mouth, her laugh is not

at any time pleasing, and where it is a laugh of terror, is distorted

and painful. Her voice, without being musical, is distinct, powerful,

and capable of every necessary exertion. Her action is impressive and

simple. She looks the part she has to perform, and fills up the pauses

in the words, by the varied expression of her countenance or gestures,

without any thing artificial, pointed, or far-fetched.

In the silent expression of feeling, we have seldom witnessed any thing

finer than her acting, where she is told of Romeo’s death, her listening

to the Friar’s story of the poison, and her change of manner towards the

Nurse, when she advises her to marry Paris. Her delivery of the speeches

in the scenes where she laments Romeo’s banishment, and anticipates her

waking in the tomb, marked the fine play and undulation of natural

sensibility, rising and falling with the gusts of passion, and at last

worked up into an agony of despair, in which imagination approaches the

brink of frenzy. Her actually screaming at the imaginary sight of

Tybalt’s ghost, appeared to us the only instance of extravagance or

caricature. Not only is there a distinction to be kept up between

physical and intellectual horror, (for the latter becomes more general,

internal, and absorbed, in proportion as it becomes more intense), but

the scream, in the present instance, startled the audience, as it

preceded the speech which explained its meaning. Perhaps the emphasis

given to the exclamation, ‘_And Romeo banished_,’ and to the description

of Tybalt, ‘_festering in his shroud_,’ was too much in that

epigrammatic, pointed style, which we think inconsistent with the severe

and simple dignity of tragedy.

In the last scene, at the tomb with Romeo, which, however, is not from

Shakespear, though it tells admirably on the stage, she did not produce

the effect we expected. Miss O’Neill seemed least successful in the

former part of the character, in the garden scene, &c. The expression of

tenderness bordered on hoydening, and affectation. The character of

Juliet is a pure effusion of nature. It is as serious, and as much in

earnest, as it is frank and susceptible. It has all the exquisite

voluptuousness of youthful innocence.—There is not the slightest

appearance of coquetry in it, no sentimental languor, no meretricious

assumption of fondness to take her lover by surprise. She ought not to

laugh, when she says, ‘I have forgot why I did call thee back,’ as if

conscious of the artifice, nor hang in a fondling posture over the

balcony. Shakespear has given a fine idea of the composure of the

character, where he first describes her at the window, leaning her cheek

upon her arm. The whole expression of her love should be like the breath

of flowers.

Mr. Jones’s Mercutio was lively farce. Of Mr. Conway’s Romeo, we cannot

speak with patience. He bestrides the stage like a Colossus, throws his

arms into the air like the sails of a windmill, and his motion is as

unwieldy as that of a young elephant. His voice breaks in thunder on the

ear like Gargantua’s, but when he pleases to be soft, he is ‘the very

beadle to an amorous sigh.’ Mr. Coates’s absurdities are tame and

trifling in comparison.—_Quere_, Why does he not marry?

MR. KEAN’S RICHARD.

_The Champion._

_Oct. 9, 1814._

We do not think Mr. Kean at all improved by his Irish expedition. As

this is a point in which we feel a good deal of interest, both on Mr.

Kean’s account and our own, we shall state briefly our objections to

some alterations in his mode of acting, which appear to us for the

worse. His pauses are twice as long as they were, and the rapidity with

which he hurries over other parts of the dialogue is twice as great as

it was. In both these points, his style of acting always bordered on the

very verge of extravagance; and we suspect it has at present passed the

line. There are, no doubt, passages in which the pauses can hardly be

too long, or too marked;—these must be, however, of rare occurrence, and

it is in the finding out these exceptions to the general rule, and in

daring to give them all their effect, that the genius of an actor

discovers itself. But the most common-place drawling monotony is not

more mechanical or more offensive, than the converting these exceptions

into a general rule, and making every sentence an alternation of dead

pauses and rapid transitions.[31] It is not in extremes that dramatic

genius is shewn, any more than skill in music consists in passing

continually from the highest to the lowest note. The quickness of

familiar utterance with which Mr. Kean pronounced the anticipated doom

of Stanley, ‘chop off his head,’ was quite ludicrous. Again, the manner

in which, after his nephew said, ‘I fear no uncles dead,’ he suddenly

turned round, and answered, ‘And I hope none living, sir,’ was, we

thought, quite out of character. The motion was performed, and the

sounds uttered, in the smallest possible time in which a puppet could be

made to mimic or gabble the part. For this we see not the least reason;

and can only account for it, from a desire to give excessive effect by a

display of the utmost dexterity of execution.

It is almost needless to observe, that executive power in acting, as in

all other arts, is only valuable as it is made subservient to truth and

nature. Even some want of mechanical skill is better than the perpetual

affectation of shewing it. The absence of a quality is often less

provoking than its abuse, because less voluntary.

The part which was least varied was the scene with Lady Anne. This is,

indeed, nearly a perfect piece of acting. In leaning against the pillar

at the commencement of the scene, Mr. Kean did not go through exactly

the same regular evolution of graceful attitudes, and we regretted the

omission. He frequently varied the execution of many of his most

striking conceptions, and the attempt in general failed, as it naturally

must do. We refer particularly to his manner of resting on the point of

his sword before he retires to his tent, to his treatment of the letter

sent to Norfolk, and to his dying scene with Richmond.

Mr. Kean’s _bye-play_ is certainly one of his greatest excellences, and

it might be said, that if Shakespear had written marginal directions to

the players, in the manner of the German dramatists, he would often have

directed them to do what Mr. Kean does. Such additions to the text are,

however, to be considered as lucky hits, and it is not to be supposed

that an actor is to provide an endless variety of these running

accompaniments, which he is not in strictness bound to provide at all.

In general, we think it a rule, that an actor ought to vary his part as

little as possible, unless he is convinced that his former mode of

playing it is erroneous. He should make up his mind as to the best mode

of representing the part, and come as near to this standard as he can,

in every successive exhibition. It is absurd to object to this

mechanical uniformity as studied and artificial. All acting is studied

or artificial. An actor is no more called upon to vary his gestures or

articulation at every new rehearsal of the character, than an author can

be required to furnish various readings to every separate copy of his

work. To a new audience it is quite unnecessary; to those who have seen

him before in the same part, it is worse than useless. They may at least

be presumed to have come to a second representation, because they

approved of the first, and will be sure to be disappointed in almost

every alteration. The attempt is endless, and can only produce

perplexity and indecision in the actor himself. He must either return

perpetually in the same narrow round, or if he is determined to be

always new, he may at last fancy that he ought to perform the part

standing on his head instead of his feet. Besides, Mr. Kean’s style of

acting is not in the least of the unpremeditated, _improvisatori_ kind:

it is throughout elaborate and systematic, instead of being loose,

off-hand, and accidental. He comes upon the stage as little unprepared

as any actor we know. We object particularly to his varying the original

action in the dying scene. He at first held out his hands in a way which

can only be conceived by those who saw him—in motionless despair,—or as

if there were some preternatural power in the mere manifestation of his

will:—he now actually fights with his doubled fists, after his sword is

taken from him, like some helpless infant.

We have been quite satisfied with the attempts we have seen to ape Mr.

Kean in this part, without wishing to see him ape himself in it. There

is no such thing as trick in matters of genius. All poetical licenses,

however beautiful in themselves, by being parodied, instantly become

ridiculous. It is because beauties of this kind have no clue to them,

and are reducible to no standard, that it is the peculiar province of

genius to detect them; by making them common, and reducing them to a

rule, you make them perfectly mechanical, and perfectly absurd into the

bargain.

To conclude our hypercritical remarks: we really think that Mr. Kean

was, in a great many instances, either too familiar, too emphatical, or

too energetic. In the latter scenes, perhaps his energy could not be too

great; but he gave the energy of action alone. He merely gesticulated,

or at best vociferated the part. His articulation totally failed him. We

doubt, if a single person in the house, not acquainted with the play,

understood a single sentence that he uttered. It was ‘inexplicable dumb

show and noise.’—We wish to throw the fault of most of our objections on

the managers. Their conduct has been marked by one uniform character, a

paltry attention to their own immediate interest, a distrust of Mr.

Kean’s abilities to perform more than the character he had succeeded in,

and a contempt for the wishes of the public. They have spun him

tediously out in every character, and have forced him to display the

variety of his talents in the same, instead of different characters.

They kept him back in Shylock, till he nearly failed in Richard from a

cold. Why not bring him out in Macbeth, which was at one time got up for

him? Why not bring him out at once in a variety of characters, as the

Dublin managers have done? It does not appear that either they or he

suffered by it. It seems, by all we can find, that versatility is,

perhaps, Mr. Kean’s greatest excellence. Why, then, not give him his

range? Why tantalize the public? Why extort from them their last

shilling for the twentieth repetition of the same part, instead of

letting them make their election for themselves, of what they like best?

It is really very pitiful.

Ill as we conceive the London managers have treated him, the London

audiences have treated him well, and we wish Mr. Kean, for some years at

least, to stick to them. They are his best friends; and he may assuredly

account us, who have made these sorry remarks upon him, not among his

worst. After he has got through the season here well, we see no reason

why he should make himself hoarse with performing Hamlet at twelve

o’clock, and Richard at six, at Kidderminster. At his time of life, and

with his prospects, the improvement of his fortune is not the principal

thing. A training under Captain Barclay would do more towards

strengthening his mind and body, his fame and fortune, than sharing

bumper receipts with the Dublin managers, or carousing with the whole

Irish bar. Or, if Mr. Kean does not approve of this rough regimen, he

might devote the summer vacation to the Muses. To a man of genius,

leisure is the first of benefits, as well as of luxuries; where, ‘with

her best nurse, Contemplation,’ the mind

‘Can plume her feathers, and let grow her wings,

That in the various bustle of resort

Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impaired.’

It was our first duty to point out Mr. Kean’s excellences to the public,

and we did so with no sparing hand; it is our second duty to him, to

ourselves, and the public, to distinguish between his excellences and

defects, and to prevent, if possible, his excellences from degenerating

into defects.

MR. KEAN’S MACBETH

_The Champion._

_Nov. 13, 1814._

The genius of Shakespear was as much shewn in the subtlety and nice