A leading Review lately contained a contribution entitled 'The Old
School of Classics and the New.' It was, as regards its literary form, a
'Dialogue of the Dead'--a discussion supposed to take place between the
famous scholars Bentley and Madvig, with a brief intervention on the
part of Euripides and Shakespeare. It was written with much smartness,
and one could wish that such lucubrations were more common nowadays than
they are. Not that they are by any means rare. It was only the other day
that Mr. Marion Crawford published a work which had the conventional
shape of fiction, but which was really little more than a series of
colloquies in which some famous men of the past took part, talking
throughout with a characteristic flavour which did the author
considerable credit. Dialogues of the dead, pure and simple, have also
been written of recent years by Mr. H. D. Traill, some of the best of
whose efforts were republished in a volume called 'The New Lucian.'
In the less immediate past, dialogue-writing after the fashion of the
witty and audacious Syrian was not very frequently adventured. Just
twenty years ago some writer or writers supplied to a weekly miscellany
a few imaginative conversations between deceased worthies; but these
were not particularly brilliant. They were in verse--in the heroic
couplet, to which a good deal of point might have been imparted; but
advantage was not taken of the opportunity. There was one 'dialogue' in
which Shakespeare, Thackeray, and a critic were supposed to be engaged,
and in the course of which Thackeray was made to say to the critic:
'Don't crack your jokes, but flit.'
To which the critic:
'Your pardon, sir; I took you for a wit.'
To which Thackeray again:
'Did you, indeed? Then, compliments to pass,
I took you just for what you are--an ass.'
But this, which one hesitates to pronounce Thackerayan, was surely even
trite. However, these dialogues at least remind us of what English
society was saying and doing in the year of grace 1868. Thus, Thackeray
tells Shakespeare that his dramas are played but scarcely acted:
'For I won't deny
That people now are tickled through the eye.
No one to thought a deep attention lends,
And if a play's successful it depends
Far less upon the language than the scene.'