For the benefit of readers unacquainted with Morgann's Essay I reproduce
here, with additions, some remarks omitted from the lecture for want of
time. 'Maurice Morgann, Esq. the ingenious writer of this work,
descended from an antient and respectable family in Wales; he filled the
office of under Secretary of State to the late Marquis of Lansdown,
during his first administration; and was afterwards Secretary to the
Embassy for ratifying the peace with America, in 1783. He died at his
house in Knightsbridge, in the seventy-seventh year of his age, on the
28th March, 1802' (Preface to the edition of 1825). He was a remarkable
and original man, who seems to have written a good deal, but, beyond
this essay and some pamphlets on public affairs, all or nearly all
anonymous, he published nothing, and at his death he left orders that
all his papers should be destroyed. The _Essay on the Dramatic Character
of Sir John Falstaff_ was first published in 1777. It arose out of a
conversation in which Morgann expressed his belief that Shakespeare
never meant Falstaff for a coward. He was challenged to explain and
support in print what was considered an extraordinary paradox, and his
essay bears on its title-page the quotation, 'I am not John of Gaunt,
your grandfather: but yet no coward, Hal'--one of Falstaff's few serious
sentences. But Morgann did not confine himself to the question of
Falstaff's cowardice; he analysed the whole character, and incidentally
touched on many points in Shakespearean criticism. 'The reader,' he
observes, 'will not need to be told that this inquiry will resolve
itself of course into a critique on the genius, the arts, and the
conduct, of Shakespeare: for what is Falstaff, what Lear, what Hamlet,
or Othello, but different modifications of Shakespeare's thought? It is
true that this inquiry is narrowed almost to a single point; but general
criticism is as uninstructive as it is easy: Shakespeare deserves to be
considered in detail;--a task hitherto unattempted.'
The last words are significant. Morgann was conscious that he was
striking out a new line. The Eighteenth Century critics had done much
for Shakespeare in the way of scholarship; some of them had praised him
well and blamed him well; but they had done little to interpret the
process of his imagination from within. This was what Morgann attempted.
His attitude towards Shakespeare is that of Goethe, Coleridge, Lamb,
Hazlitt. The dangers of his method might be illustrated from the Essay,
but in his hands it yielded most valuable results. And though he did not
attempt the eloquence of some of his successors, but wrote like a
cultivated ironical man of the world, he wrote delightfully; so that in
all respects his Essay, which has long been out of print, deserves to be
republished and better known. [It was republished in Mr. Nichol Smith's
excellent _Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare_, 1903; and, in
1912, by itself, with an introduction by W. A. Gill.]
Readers of Boswell (under the year 1783) will remember that Morgann, who
once met Johnson, favoured his biographer with two most characteristic
anecdotes. Boswell also records Johnson's judgment of Morgann's Essay,
which, says Mr. Swinburne, elicited from him 'as good a jest and as bad
a criticism as might have been expected.' Johnson, we are told, being
asked his opinion of the Essay, answered: 'Why, Sir, we shall have the
man come forth again; and as he has proved Falstaff to be no coward, he
may prove Iago to be a very good character.' The following passage from
Morgann's _Essay_ (p. 66 of the 1825 edition, p. 248 of Mr. Nichol
Smith's book) gives, I presume, his opinion of Johnson. Having referred
to Warburton, he adds: 'Another has since undertaken the custody of our
author, whom he seems to consider as a sort of wild Proteus or madman,
and accordingly knocks him down with the butt-end of his critical staff,
as often as he exceeds that line of sober discretion, which this learned
Editor appears to have chalked out for him: yet is this Editor,
notwithstanding, "a man, take him for all in all," very highly
respectable for his genius and his learning.'