CHARLES LAMB.

1775-1834.

[The most charming of all English essayists was also a fine and sensitive critic. Lamb's short comments on Elizabethan poets are famous, especially those in his volume of dramatic selections. Here and there also in his essays we come upon scraps of criticism, the best of them too occasional and disconnected to be introduced here. His own verse is pleasant, not great; but in his prose the genuine and deep poetic note of the man is everywhere audible. When his mood is touched by an author, he has a strange art of making us feel what is there, by some phrase which interprets to our sensibilities even more than to our formal intelligence. In style, thought, and emotion Lamb is one of the original and creative writers of the century; and to be fond of his essays is one of the clearest proofs of a refined literary taste. He wrote but few pieces of systematic criticism. The first of the two selections that follow is from one of these, “On the Tragedies of Shakspere," a characteristically whimsical special pleading against seeing them on the stage, a pleading in which he himself perhaps only half believed. Two or three passages in the essay are written superbly, as this pargaraph upon Lear. The second selection is from the delightful essay" On Some of the Old Actors." Like much of Lamb's work, his thought here is affected by a poetical caprice that only partially investigates, for example, the steward's impulse in tossing the ring upon the ground,—and that leaves us with a one-sided impression. The sketch remains, however, one of the most admirable fragments of Shaksperian criticism

that we possess. The hard, matter-of-fact side we can see for ourselves: what we welcome is the writing that makes us sympathize. If we are forced to an alternative between a cold pragmatic accuracy in the appreciation of Malvolio, or any other figure in poetry, and a realization of the finer essence of the character, its hidden secrets, we might do well to choose the latter. But we are much less likely to miss the truthful fact after we have felt the truthful soul.]

From the Essay on the Fitness of Shakespeare's Plays for Representation.

So to see Lear acted-to see an old man tottering about the stage with a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters in a rainy night-has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting. We want to take him into shelter and relieve him. That is all the feeling which the acting of Lear ever produced in me. But the Lear of Shakspere cannot be acted. The contemptible machinery by which they mimic the storm which he goes out in, is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements, than any actor can be to represent Lear: they might more easily propose to personate the Satan of Milton upon a stage, or one of Michael Angelo's terrible figures. The greatness of Lear is not in corporal dimensions, but in intellectual: the explosions of his passion are terrible as a volcano: they are storms turning up and disclosing to the bottom that sea, his mind, with all its vast riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. This case of flesh and blood seems too insignificant to be thought on; even as he himself neglects it. On the stage we see

nothing but corporal infirmities and weakness, the impotence of rage; while we read it, we see not Lear, but we are Lear--we are in his mind, we are sustained by a grandeur which baffles the malice. of daughters and storms; in the aberrations of his reason we discover a mighty irregular power of reasoning immethodized from the ordinary purposes of life, but exerting its powers, as the wind blows where it listeth, at will upon the corruptions and abuses of mankind. What have looks or tones to do with that sublime identification of his age with that of the heavens themselves, when, in his reproaches to them for conniving at the injustice of his children, he reminds them that "they themselves are old"? What gestures shall we appropriate to this? What has the voice or the eye to do with such things? But the play is beyond all art, as the tamperings with it show: it is too hard and stony; it must have love-scenes, and a happy ending. It is not enough that Cordelia is a daughter: she must shine as a lover too. Tate has put his hook in the nostrils of this Leviathan, for Garrick and his followers, the showmen of the scene, to draw the mighty beast about more easily.

A happy ending! As if the living martyrdom that Lear had gone through--the flaying of his feelings alive-did not make a fair dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous thing for him. If he is to live and be happy after, if he could sustain this world's burden after, why all this pudder and preparation-why torment us with all this unneces

sary sympathy? As if the childish pleasure of getting his gilt robes and sceptre again could tempt him to act over again his misused station-as if at his years, and with his experience, anything was left but to die.

From the Essays of Elia : on Some of the Old Actors.

Malvolio is not essentially ludicrous. He becomes comic but by accident. He is cold, austere, repelling; but dignified, consistent, and, for what appears, rather of an overstretched morality.

Maria describes him as a sort of Puritan; and he might have worn his gold chain with honor in one of our old roundhead families, in the service of a Lambert or a Lady Fairfax. But his morality and his manners are misplaced in Illyria. He is opposed to the proper levities of the piece, and falls in the unequal contest. Still his pride, or his gravity (call it which you will), is inherent, and native to the man, not mock or affected, which latter only are the fit objects to excite laughter. His quality is at the best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor contemptible. His bearing is lofty, a little above his station, but probably not much above his deserts. We see no reason why he should not have been brave, honorable, accomplished. His careless committal of the ring to the ground (which he was commissioned to restore to Cesario) bespeaks a generosity of birth and feeling. His dialect on all occasions is that of a gentleman and a man of education. We must

not confound him with the eternal old, low steward of comedy. He is master of the household to a great princess,—a dignity probably conferred upon him for other respects than age or length of service. Olivia, at the first indication of his supposed madness, declares that she "would not have him miscarry for half of her dowry." Does this look as if the character was meant to appear little or insignificant? Once, indeed, she accuses him to his faceof what?—of being "sick of self-love," but with a gentleness and considerateness which could not have been, if she had not thought that this particular infirmity shaded some virtues. His rebuke to the knight and his sottish revellers is sensible and spirited; and when we take into consideration the unprotected condition of his mistress, and the strict regard with which her state of real or dissembled mourning would draw the eyes of the world upon her house affairs, Malvolio might feel the honor of the family in some sort in his keeping; as it appears not that Olivia had any more brothers or kinsmen to look to it,-for Sir Toby had dropped all such nice respects at the buttery-hatch. That Malvolio was meant to be represented as possessing estimable qualities, the expression of the Duke, in his anxiety to have him reconciled, almost infers: "Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace." Even in his abused state of chains and darkness a sort of greatness seems never to desert him. He argues highly and well with the supposed Sir Topas, and philosophizes