harder-working mantua-maker) after her I do not know a more heartless sight than long day's needle-toil, running far into mid- the reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy. night, when she has snatched an hour, illspared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out their enchanting contents! Who would have them a whit less soiled? What better condition could we desire to see them in? In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and all that class of perpetually self-reproductive volumes - Great Nature's Stereotypes -we see them individually perish with less regret, because we know the copies of them to be "eterne." But where a book is at once both good and rare where the individual is almost the species, and when that perishes, We know not where is that Promethean torch such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of Newcastle by his Duchess-no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel. Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem hopeless ever to be reprinted, but old editions of writers, such as Sir Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton in his prose works, Fuller of whom we have reprints, yet the books themselves, though they go about, and are talked of here and there, we know have not endenizened themselves (nor possibly ever will) in the national heart, so as to become stock books-it is good to possess these in durable and costly covers. I do not eare for a First Folio of Shakspeare. I rather prefer the common editions of Rowe and Tonson, without notes, and with plates, which, being so execrably bad, serve as maps or modest remembrancers, to the text; and without pretending to any supposable emulation with it, are so much better than the Shakspeare gallery engravings, which did. I have a community of feeling with my countrymen about his Plays, and I like those editions of him best which have been oftenest tumbled about and handled. On the contrary, I cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but in Folio. The Octavo editions are painful to look at. I have no sympathy with them. If they were as much read as the current editions of the other poet, I should prefer them in that shape to the older one. What need was there of unearthing the bones of that fantastic old great man, to expose them in a winding-sheet of the newest fashion to modern censure? what hapless stationer could dream of Burton ever becoming popular? The wretched Malone could not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Stratford church to let him whitewash the painted effigy of old Shakspeare, which stood there, in rude but lively fashion depicted, to the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, hair, the very dress he used to wear- the only authentic testimony we had, however imperfect, of these curious parts and parcels of him. They covered him over with a coat of white paint. By —, if I had been a justice of peace for Warwickshire, I would have clapt both commentator and sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair of meddling sacrilegious varlets. I think I see them at their work — these sapient trouble-tombs. Shall I be thought fantastical, if I confess, that the names of some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish to the ear— to mine, at least-than that of Milton or of Shakspeare? It may be that the latter are more staled and rung upon in common discourse. The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the mention, are, Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley, Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Fairy Queen for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes' Sermons? Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, and purged ears. Winter evenings- the world shut outwith less of ceremony the gentle Shakspeare enters. At such a season the Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud-to yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person listening. More than one and it degenerates into an audience. Books of quick interest that hurry on for went away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture, whether the blush (for there was one between us) was the property of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. From me you shall never get the secret. incidents, are for the eye to glide over only. | book to make a man seriously ashamed at It will not do to read them out. I could the exposure; but as she seated herself down never listen to even the better kind of by me, and seemed determined to read in We read on very modern novels without extreme irksomeness. company, I could have wished it had been -any other book. A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In some of the Bank offices it is the custom (to sociably for a few pages; and, not finding save so much individual time) for one of the the author much to her taste, she got up, and clerks - who is the best scholar-to commence upon the "Times," or the "Chronicle," and recite its entire contents aloud pro bono publico. With every advantage of lungs and In elocution, the effect is singularly vapid. barbers' shops and public-houses a fellow will get up and spell out a paragraph, which he communicates as some discovery. Another follows with his selection. So the entire journal transpires at length by piece-meal. Seldom-readers are slow readers, and, without this expedient, no one in the company would probably ever travel through the contents of a whole paper. Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment. I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I cannot settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minister, who was generally to be seen upon Snow-hill (as yet Skinner'sstreet was not), between the hours of ten and eleven in the morning, studying a volume of Lardner. I own this to have been a strain of abstraction beyond my reach. I used to admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of An illiterate encounter a bread-basket, secular contacts. with a porter's knot, or would have quickly put to flight all the theology I am master of, and have left me worse than indifferent to the five points. What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at Nando's, keeps the paper! I am There is a class of street readers, whom I sick of hearing the waiter bawling out incescan never contemplate without affection santly, "The Chronicle' is in hand, Sir." Coming into an inn at night-having the poor gentry, who, not having wherewhat can be more de- withal to buy or hire a book, filch a little ordered your supper lightful than to find lying in the window- learning at the open stalls the owner, with seat, left there time out of mind by the care- his hard eye, casting envious looks at them lessness of some former guest-two or three all the while, and thinking when they will numbers of the old Town and Country have done. Venturing tenderly, page after Magazine, with its amusing tête-à-tête pictures page, expecting every moment when he shall ;" interpose his interdict, and yet unable to "the Royal Lover and Lady Gdeny themselves the gratification, they "The Melting Platonic and the old Beau," and such-like antiquated scandal? Would you exchange it at that time, and in that place for a better book? 66 - Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it so much for the weightier kinds of reading the Paradise Lost, or Comus, he could have read to him—but he missed the pleasure of skimming over with his own eye a magazine, or a light pamphlet. I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues of some cathedral alone, and reading Candide. more whimsical I do not remember a - by surprise than having been once detected a familiar damsel-reclining at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Cythera), reading-Pamela. There was nothing in the 28 snatch a fearful joy." Martin B—, in this way, by daily fragments, got through two volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition, by asking him (it was in his younger days) whether he meant to purchase the work. M. declares, that under no circumstances in his life did he ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction which he took in those uneasy snatches. A quaint poetess of our day has moralised upon this subject in two very touching but homely stanzas. I saw a boy with eager eye STAGE ILLUSION. A PLAY is said to be well or ill acted, in coward as we took him for? We saw all proportion to the scenical illusion produced. the common symptoms of the malady upon Whether such illusion can in any case be him; the quivering lip, the cowering knees, perfect, is not the question. The nearest the teeth chattering; and could have sworn approach to it, we are told, is, when the actor" that man was frightened." But we forgot appears wholly unconscious of the presence all the while- or kept it almost a secret to of spectators. In tragedy in all which is ourselves - that he never once lost his selfto affect the feelings this undivided atten- possession; that he let out, by a thousand tion to his stage business seems indispens- droll looks and gestures-meant at us, and able. Yet it is, in fact, dispensed with every not at all supposed to be visible to his fellows day by our cleverest tragedians; and while in the scene, that his confidence in his own these references to an audience, in the shape resources had never once deserted him. Was of rant or sentiment, are not too frequent or this a genuine picture of a coward; or not palpable, a sufficient quantity of illusion for rather a likeness, which the clever artist the purposes of dramatic interest may be said contrived to palm upon us instead of an to be produced in spite of them. But, tragedy original; while we secretly connived at the apart, it may be inquired whether, in certain delusion for the purpose of greater pleasure, characters in comedy, especially those which than a more genuine counterfeiting of the are a little extravagant, or which involve imbecility, helplessness, and utter self-desome notion repugnant to the moral sense, sertion, which we know to be concomitants it is not a proof of the highest skill in the of cowardice in real life, could have given us? comedian when, without absolutely appealing to an audience, he keeps up a tacit understanding with them: and makes them, unconsciously to themselves, a party in the scene. The utmost nicety is required in the mode of doing this; but we speak only of the great artists in the profession. Why are misers so hateful in the world, and so endurable on the stage, but because the skilful actor, by a sort of sub-reference, rather than direct appeal to us, disarms the character of a great deal of its odiousness, by seeming to engage our compassion for the insecure tenure by which he holds his moneyThe most mortifying infirmity in human bags and parchments? By this subtle vent nature, to feel in ourselves, or to contemplate half of the hatefulness of the character-the in another, is, perhaps, cowardice. To see a self-closeness with which in real life it coils coward done to the life upon a stage would itself up from the sympathies of menproduce anything but mirth. Yet we most evaporates. The miser becomes sympathetic: of us remember Jack Bannister's cowards. i. e. is no genuine miser. Here again a Could anything be more agreeable, more diverting likeness is substituted for a very pleasant? We loved the rogues. How was disagreeable reality. this effected but by the exquisite art of the actor in a perpetual sub-insinuation to us, the spectators, even in the extremity of the shaking fit, that he was not half such a Spleen, irritability-the pitiable infirmities of old men, which produce only pain to behold in the realities, counterfeited upon a stage, divert not altogether for the comic STAGE ILLUSION. appendages to them, but in part from an inner conviction that they are being acted before us; that a likeness only is going on, and not the thing itself. They please by being done under the life, or beside it; not to the life. When Gattie acts an old man, is he angry indeed? or only a pleasant counterfeit, just enough of a likeness to recognise, without pressing upon us the uneasy sense of a reality? was Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, may be too natural. It was the case with a late actor. Nothing could be more earnest or true than the manner of Mr. Emery; this told excellently in his Tyke, and characters of a tragic cast. But when he carried the same rigid exclusiveness of attention to the stage business, and wilful blindness and oblivion of everything before the curtain into his comedy, it produced a harsh and dissonant effect. He was out of keeping with the rest of the Persona Dramatis. There was as little link between him and them, as betwixt himself and the audience. He was a third estate, Indry, repulsive, and unsocial to all. dividually considered, his execution masterly. But comedy is not this unbending thing; for this reason, that the same degree of credibility is not required of it as to serious scenes. The degrees of credibility demanded to the two things, may be illustrated by the different sort of truth which we expect when a man tells us a mournful or a merry story. If we suspect the former of falsehood in any one tittle, we reject it altogether. Our tears refuse to flow at suspected imposition. But the teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth. 'Tis the same with dramatic illusion. We confess we love in comedy to see an audience naturalised behind the scenes, taken into the interest of the drama, welcomed as bystanders however. There is something ungracious in a comic actor holding himself aloof from all participation or concern with those who are come to be diverted by him. Macbeth must see the dagger, and no ear but his own be told of it; but an old fool in farce may think he sees something, and by a conscious words and looks express it, as Many instances would be tedious; these TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. JOYOUSEST of once embodied spirits, whither at length hast thou flown? to what genial region are we permitted to conjecture that thou hast flitted? Art thou sowing thy WILD OATS yet (the harvest time was still to come with thee) upon casual sands of Avernus? or art thou enacting ROVER (as we would gladlier think) by wandering Elysian streams. This mortal frame, while thou didst play thy brief antics amongst us, was in truth anything but a prison to thee, as the vain Platonist dreams of this body to be no better than a county gaol, forsooth, or some house of durance vile, whereof the five senses are the fetters. Thou knowest better than to be in a hurry to cast off those gyves; and had notice to quit, I fear, before thou wert quite ready to abandon this fleshy tenement. It was thy Pleasure-House, thy Palace of Dainty Devices: thy Louvre, or thy WhiteHall. What new mysterious lodgings dost thou tenant now? or when may we expect thy aerial house-warming? Tartarus we know, and we have read of the Blessed Shades; now cannot I intelligibly fancy thee in either. In Green Rooms, impervious to mortal eye, the muse beholds thee wielding posthumous empire. Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) circle thee in endlessly, and still their song is Fie on sinful Phantasy! Magnificent were thy capriccios on this globe of earth, ROBERT WILLIAM ELLISTON ! for as yet we know not thy new name in heaven. It irks me to think, that, stript of thy regalities, thou shouldst ferry over, a poor forked shade, in crazy Stygian wherry. Methinks I hear the old boatman, paddling by the weedy wharf, with raucid voice, bawling "SCULLS, SCULLS:" to which, with waving hand, and majestic action, thou deignest no reply, other than in two curt monosyllables, "No: Oars." But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference between king, and cobbler; manager, and call-boy; and, if haply your dates of life were conterminant, you are quietly taking your passage, cheek by cheek (0 ignoble levelling of Death) with the shade of some recently departed candlesnuffer. But mercy! what strippings, what tearing off of histrionic robes, and private vanities! what denudations to the bone, before the surly Ferryman will admit you to set a foot within his battered lighter. Is it too much to hazard a conjecture, that (as the schoolmen admitted a receptacle apart for Patriarchs and un-chrisom babes) there may exist - not far perchance from that store-house of all vanities, which Milton Crowns, sceptres; shield, sword, and saw in vision -a LIMBO somewhere for truncheon; thy own coronation robes (for PLAYERS? and that Up thither like aerial vapours fly Both all Stage things, and all that in Stage things Play, Opera, Farce, with all their trumpery.— thou hast brought the whole propertyman's wardrobe with thee, enough to sink a navy); the judge's ermine: the coxcomb's wig; the snuff-box à la Foppington-all must overboard, he positively swears-and that Ancient Mariner brooks no denial; for, since the tiresome monodrame of There, by the neighbouring moon (by the old Thracian Harper, Charon, it is some not improperly supposed thy Regent to be believed, hath shown small taste for Planet upon earth), mayst thou not still be theatricals. acting thy managerial pranks, great disembodied Lessee? but Lessee still, and still a manager. Ay, now 'tis done. You are just boatweight; pura et puta anima. But, bless me, how little you look! |