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 ^^
 
 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 PICTURES GRAVE AND GAY. 
 
 WILLIAM MAGINN, L.L.D. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 
 1859,
 
 LONDON : 
 
 FEINTED BY GEOEGE PHIPPS, 13 & 14, TOTHILL STREET, 
 
 WESTMINSTEE.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORJ 
 SANTA BAKBARA 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The following Papers first appeared iii Bentley's 
 Miscellany J and are now collected at the suggestion 
 of the many admirers of their gifted Author. 
 
 London, 
 
 September 1859.
 
 SHAKSPEAEE PAPEES: 
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF DE. MAGINN. 
 
 l- William Maginn is no more ! The bright spirit 
 whose "ffit "Was the delight of thousands, — whose 
 learning was the admiration of a quarter of a century, 
 — whose poetry could win the applause of Byron 
 himself, — and whose guileless simplicity and modesty 
 were the charm of all who knew him, has now some 
 years passed the portals of death, and his place 
 knoweth him no longer ! The drama is over — the last 
 scene of his eventful history has descended, and the 
 pictui'esque little village of Walton-on-Thames now 
 contains all that was mortal of one of the most 
 distinguished critics and scholars of the age. He died
 
 SHAKSPEAEE PAPEES : 
 
 in his forty-ninth year, August 1842, leaving a wife 
 and family to lament their irreparable loss. 
 
 Born in July 1794, the precocity of his talents 
 astonished all who knew him, and gave a cheering 
 presage of his future eminence. He entered college 
 in his tenth year, and passed through it with dis- 
 tinction, winning all the honours that dignify and 
 adorn an University career. For a few years he 
 assisted his father in conducting a large and cele- 
 brated academy in Cork ; but on the first appearance 
 of Blachvood' s Magazine he quitted Ireland, and edited 
 that journal in Edinburgh. His papers are eminently 
 original and fine; they attracted considerable atten- 
 tion, and would do honour to the loftiest name in 
 our literature. Having by his connection with this 
 periodical, and his contributions to the Quarterly 
 Review, fully established his name as a writer of 
 first-rate ability, he came to London, and was soon 
 appointed to the joint-editorship of the Standard with 
 the amiable and learned Dr. Giffard. On the estab- 
 lishment of Bentleifs Miscellany, Dr. Maginn became 
 a contributor to its pages. To him the public are in- 
 debted for the able series of articles entitled The 
 Shaksjyeare Papers, (contained in this volume,) which 
 have Ijcen so justly admired.
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 6 
 
 The following sketches of him, as he appeared about 
 this period, have been drawn by a man of no slight 
 talent, and with great powers of observation — the late 
 Dr. Macnish, better known by his assumed signature 
 of the Modern Pythagorean. 
 
 " I dined to-day at the Salopian with Dr. Maginn. 
 He is a most remarkable fellow. His flow of ideas 
 is incredibly quick, and his articulation so rapid, that 
 it is difficult to follow him. He is altogether a person 
 of vast acuteness, celerity of apprehension, and inde- 
 fatigable activity both of body and mind. He is about 
 my own height ; but I could allow him an inch round 
 the chest. His forehead is very finely developed, his 
 organ of language and ideality large, and his reason- 
 ing faculties excellent. His hair is quite grey, although 
 he does not look more than forty. I imagined he was 
 much older-looking, and that he wore a wig. While 
 conversing, his eye is never a moment at rest ; in fact 
 his whole body is in motion, and he keeps scrawling 
 grotesque figures upon the paper before him, and rub- 
 bing them out again as fast as he draws them. He 
 and Giffard are, as you know, joint editors of the 
 Standard. 
 
 " I had some queer chat with O'Doherty. I did not 
 
 measure Maginn's chest, but I examined his head. 
 
 b3
 
 SHAKSPEAKE PAPEBS : 
 
 He lias a very fine development of the intellectual 
 powers, especially ideality and "wit, which are both 
 unusually large. His language is also large, and he 
 has much firmness and destructiveness, which latter 
 accounts fiar the satirical bent of his genius. That 
 beautiful tale, The City of the Demons^ he informed 
 me, he wrote quite oif-hand. He writes with vast 
 rapidity, and can do so at any time. He speaks 
 French, Italian, and German fluently ; these, together 
 with a first-rate knowledge of Latin, Greek, and 
 English, make him master of six languages, so that 
 you can allow him one. He is altogether a very re- 
 markable man. Indeed, I consider him quite equal to 
 Swift ; and had his genius, like Swift's, been concen- 
 trated in separate works, instead of being squandered 
 with wasteful prodigality in newspapers, magazines, 
 &c., I have no doubt it would have been considered 
 equally original and wonderful. He was much tickled 
 with the apotheosis which I recited to him. I told 
 him you were master of seven languages. Had you 
 been present, I would have confined your abilities to a 
 smaller number, lest he had taken it into his head to 
 try you with the others. The letter-press of the Qal- 
 lerij of Literary Portraits he hit ofi" at a moment's 
 notice, and in the course of a few minutes."
 
 PICTURES, GEAVE AND GAY. 
 
 Scarcely less flattering is the following picture, 
 drawn by the elegant pen of Dr. Moir of Mussel- 
 burgh, a distinguished poet, and a good man, of whom 
 Maginn always spoke, as he deserved, in the highest 
 terms : 
 
 " To a portion, and no inconsiderable one, of the 
 literary world, Dr. Maginn is known par excellence as 
 the Doctor ; in the same way as Professor Wilson is re- 
 cognized as the Professor. Nearly twenty years, eheu! 
 fugaces, Posthiime, lahuntur anni ! have glided over 
 since the Doctor and 1 were co-litterateurs ; and yet, 
 strange to say, we have never chanced to meet. By 
 every one capable of judging, the powers of Dr. 
 Maginn are acknowledged to be of the highest order. 
 Has he given the world assurance of this in the way 
 he might have done ? We doubt much ; but from The 
 City of the Demons, The 3Ian in the Bill, Colonel 
 Pride, TJie Shahspeare Papers, and many other things, 
 posterity will be able to appreciate him. Ex pede 
 Berc:' 
 
 Such was William Maginn as he appeared to these 
 two eminent men. And truly can it be said that the 
 portrait is not overdrawn ; or that if in any way un- 
 like, it is because it scarcely does justice to the merits 
 of its original. It is, to be sure, enviable praise to be
 
 SHAKSPEABE PAPERS 
 
 associated with so brilliant a name as Swift ; but, much 
 as we admire the writings of the Dean, we must in 
 justice say that they are far short of those of Maginn. 
 For Swift was morose, and cynical, and austere, — 
 Maginn was kind, and gentle, and child-like. Swift's 
 whole conversation was irony or sarcasm ; Maginn's 
 was entirely genial and anecdotical, and free from 
 bitterness. Like the lives of all literary men, that 
 of Dr. Maginn will be best found in the series of his 
 publications. We do not know a single individual to 
 whom the praise of Parr on Fox more perfectly applies, 
 and never do we peruse it that we do not almost fancy 
 it was written expressly for Maginn."^ 
 
 Can anything more exquisitely portray the kindli- 
 ness of his heart, and his devotion to his children, than 
 
 * If you bad been called upon to select a friend from tbe wbole 
 buman race, wbere could you bave found one endowed as be was 
 witb tbe guileless playfubiess of a cbild, and tbe most coiTect and 
 comprebensive knowledge of tbe world; or, distinguisbed as be 
 was by an elegant taste in tbe dead and living languages, by a 
 tborougb acquaintance 'svitb tbe most important events of past and 
 present times, by a profound skill in tbe bistory, and by a well- 
 founded and well-directed reverence for tbe constitution of bis 
 countiy, and by tbe keenest iieuetration into all tbe nearer and aU 
 tbe remoter consequences of public measures ? — Paek. Character 
 of Fox.
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 
 
 the following verses, inlaid in this place like pieces 
 of rich mosaic ? They are simple and homely ; but it 
 is the spirit they breathe for which we love them. 
 
 " TO MY DAUGHTERS. 
 
 " my darling little daughters ! 
 
 my daughters, lov'd so well ! 
 Who by Brighton's breezy waters 
 
 For a time have gone to dwell. 
 Here I come with spirit yearning. 
 
 With your sight my eyes to cheer, 
 When this sunny day returning 
 
 Brings my forty-second year. 
 
 " Knit to me in love and duty 
 
 Have you been, sweet pets of mine ! 
 
 Long in health, and joy, and beauty, 
 May it be your lot to shine ! 
 
 And at last, when God commanding, 
 
 1 shall leave you both behind. 
 May I feel with soul expanding 
 
 I shall leave you good and kind !
 
 8 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 " May I leave my Nan and Pigeon* 
 Mild of faith, of purpose true, 
 Full of faith and meek religion, 
 
 With many joys, and sorrows few ! 
 Now I part, with fond caressing, 
 
 Part you now, my daughters dear — 
 Take, then take your father's blessing, 
 In his forty-second year ! 
 
 W. M." 
 
 We hope it will not be found that the young and 
 interesting family of the great man, whose genius 
 reflects credit on our country, — whose single-hearted- 
 ness and benevolence were immediately observed by all 
 who approached him, — who, in the course of as diver- 
 sified a life as ever literary man led, never had but 
 one foe, — whose political principles swerved not from 
 their original path, but continued steady and firm to 
 the last, — whose intellect adorned every theme that he 
 touched, and whose only fault was to be too careless of 
 the morrow (that prime failing in men of the loftiest 
 minds), — we hope that this man's children will be pro- 
 vided for by the resources of such a country as ours. 
 Literary men too rarely leave fortunes to their 
 
 * A pet name for bis youngest daughter.
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 
 
 children ; but the present is, perhaps, the most dis- 
 tressing instance that has happened for many years in 
 England. — August 1842. 
 
 The following literary retrospect of Dr. Maginn will 
 be read with mterest : 
 
 Before I close my desk, as I sit in my moonlit 
 chamber this fine summer evening, let me recall one 
 sufierer, now at rest, — slightly known to me, indeed, 
 but remembered with a fearful distinctness — so slightly, 
 that if you were to ask me his Christian name I could 
 not tell it. A clear remembrance of his blanched 
 cheek and wandering eye dwells in my memory. Who 
 when I add the faltering voice, the symmetrical fea- 
 tures, the grey hair, even in comparative youth, — 
 the slashing reply, the sweet, good-natured smile, — 
 who will not recall the name of Dr. Maginn ? 
 
 I saw him one evening — how well I remember it, 
 and with what throes and throbs the remembrance is 
 even now recalled ! — yes, even now. It was in an 
 evening-party where ; — but what has the world to do 
 with our private reminiscences? And what am /, a 
 stupid old man, (to night in one of my low-spirited
 
 10 SHAKSPEAEE PAPEBS : 
 
 seasons,) that I should aim at exciting the interest of 
 the bright-eyed, blooming creatures who will bend 
 over this page next month, perhaps as the travelling- 
 carriage carries them far from London and distraction, 
 to read the newspaper to papa, maybe, in some country 
 parsonage, or to listen to the recital of Brother Tom's 
 first essay in hunting and shooting, or to be the hand- 
 maiden of mamma's charities, or the happy repre- 
 sentative of Aunt Bountiful at the Sunday-school. 
 
 Let me return to Dr. Maginn ; and for an instant 
 mingle with the thoughts of him the recollections still 
 dear to this elderly heart. 
 
 It was a low, long, narrow room through which I 
 made my way into the throng of a party. That gentle 
 confusion prevailed which shows that all is " going off" 
 well. That Trophonius's-cave look which we sometimes 
 see on the faces of those who are coming out as you go 
 in, and which appears to proclaim that they are never 
 to smile again, was not to be observed. And yet there 
 was no singing, no dancing, no charades — and yet, — 
 it was that hateful assemblage known by the name of 
 a literary coterie. 
 
 I made my way into the very thick of the throng ; 
 elbowed a poetess to the right, trod upon the slipper of 
 a lady historian, touched the saintly shoulder of some
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 11 
 
 Charlotte-Elizabeth of the day, and oh! more for- 
 midable than all, brushed, may be, the sacred dust off 
 the sleeve of a Reviewer. All were standing, all were 
 listening to some one who sat in the middle of a group; 
 a low-seated man, short in stature, was uttering plea- 
 santries, and scattering witticism about him, with the 
 careless glee of his country — this was Maginn. His 
 articulation was impeded by a stutter, yet the sentences 
 that he stammered forth were brilliant repartees, ut- 
 tered without sharpness, and edged rather with humour 
 than with satire. His countenance was rather agree- 
 able than striking ; its expression sweet, rather than 
 bright. The grey hair, coming straight over his fore- 
 head, gave a singular appearance to a face still bearing 
 the attributes of youth. He was thirty or thereabouts, 
 (yes, saucy niece of mine, thirty is still young ;) but 
 his thoughtful brow, his hair, the paleness of his 
 complexion, gave him many of the attributes of age. 
 I am, however, a firm believer in the axiom, that age 
 can never be concealed upon a careful inspection, — we 
 may look older than we are, but we rarely, alas ! look 
 younger. True, the first impression may deceive ; but 
 there is always some line, some tell-tale change some- 
 where, which betrays the ugly truth. I looked on for 
 a moment, as the crew of authors, reviewers, play-
 
 13 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 Wrights, and novel-weavers paid homage to Dr. Maginn. 
 He was then in the zenith of his glory — the glory 
 which radiated from John Bull or sent forth a rich 
 stream of light from the pages of Fraser. His con- 
 versation was careless and off-hand, and, but for the 
 impediment of speech would have had the charm of a 
 rich comedy. His choice of words was such as I have 
 rarely met with in any of my contemporaries ; for, 
 indeed, in my day it has become the vogue to corrupt 
 English in many ways, to bring down your subject by 
 homely, if not coarse phrases, and to neglect all those 
 adjuncts to reasoning and to wit which a true use of 
 our language a^ffords. 
 
 ■ I passed on, the circle closed around Maginn, and 
 that evening I saw him no more. Henceforth his 
 career was a bright and perilous one, exercising a con- 
 siderable, though ephemeral influence on the age in 
 which he lived. No modern writer in periodicals has 
 ever given to satire a less repulsive form of personality. 
 No private venom seemed to direct the awful pen which 
 spared not affectation, and lashed presumption till she 
 bled to death. Why are not his essays collected ? 
 What holds them back from an expectant public ? He 
 wrote when our periodical literature was in its zenith ; 
 yet he bore away the palm ; and his clear, firm hand
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 13 
 
 miglit be discerned amid a host of inferior writers. 
 There was no mistaking that emphatic, pure, and stately 
 English of his — poor Maginn ! 
 
 The next time I saw this ill-starred son of genius 
 was in a friend's house, very early one morning, as 
 Dr. Maginn was going away to France. He and I 
 were for some minutes alone in a room together. It 
 was a dingy, London mornings and the room corre- 
 sponded to the day — a lodging-house room. It was not 
 dirty, to speak individually ; but a general air of 
 antiquity, of long-established dustiness, of confirmed, 
 ingrained, never-to-be-effaced uncleanliness sat upon 
 every article in the apartment, even tp the top of the 
 bell-ropes. The fire was not lighted — it was Sep- 
 tember ; the window was open sufficiently to chill the 
 susceptible frame of the great Reviewer as he paced to 
 and fro, never looking towards me, waiting for our 
 common friend. I shut the window. He looked to- 
 wards me for an instant, stammered out a "Thank 
 you." His face was then of a leaden, ashy hue ; his 
 grey hair had become thin ; his dress — but why ex- 
 patiate upon that ; — yet it looked sorrowful, and shat- 
 tered like its wearer, and / fancied it meant much. 
 
 Our friend came into the room. I heard Maginn 
 say, " I am going out of town ; " and even those few
 
 14 SHAKSPEAKE PAPERS: 
 
 words sounded ominous in my presaging mind — going 
 out of town ! Alas ! how many reasons are there for 
 whicli one may go out of town. Sorrow, sickness, 
 weariness of spirit, embarrassed circumstances, and a 
 long and mournful list of etceteras. I ran down the 
 dingy stairs with a mournful conviction that Adversity, 
 with her rapid strides had overtaken poor Maginn — 
 and I was not wrong ; perhaps he provoked the bel- 
 dam (whom Gray chooses to apostrophize as a nurse) 
 to follow him ; and follow him she did— to his grave. 
 
 I got into the street — what a sensible difference in 
 the atmosphere. How well De Balzac, in bis Pere 
 Croriot, describes the atmosphere of a boarding-house — 
 that ineffable, unventilated atmosphere. After enu- 
 merating all its compound attributes, how admirably 
 he finishes the description, by saying it is impossible 
 to sum it up I — it is — it is, in fact, the boarding-house 
 atmosphere, and he cannot say more. 
 
 The lodging-house left much the same conviction on 
 my mind — that no one could describe the sensations 
 which are produced by its peculiar atmosphere. By 
 the way, how is it that in this great metropolis there 
 are no good lodgings to be had ? Nothing on a good 
 system — everything so dirty, so faded, so dear — every- 
 body so imposing, such wretched lodging-house looks,
 
 PICTUKES, GKAVE AND GAT. 15 
 
 such infamous little boys to wait at the street door, 
 such drabs of housemaids, beds which one loathes, sofas 
 which soil one's pantaloons, carpets old in the sin of dirt, 
 and windows which you may look through if you can. 
 In winter a tea-spoonful of coal in your fire-place ; in 
 summer abaking hot atmosphere ; no ventilation, no good 
 cleanings to refresh the apartments ; suffocating nights 
 and days ; if you are a lover of cleanliness, you are 
 wretched. Why are we so far behind all other places for 
 the season (for London is now little else than a great 
 watering-place, without mineral springs) in these essen- 
 tial comforts? I beg pardon for flying away from Dr. 
 Maginn into the unwholesome air of lodging-houses. 
 
 Says a friend to me one day, " Come and meet 
 Maginn ; there shall be none save him, our own family, 
 and yourself. You will see him to advantage." It 
 was now two years since I had seen Maginn. Time, 
 which ambles withal to many, had galloped with him. 
 His grey hair was now very thin, and scattered over 
 an anxious brow; the sweet mildness of his eye 
 was gone, his speech was more faltering than ever ; 
 many moments elapsed before he could begin a word, 
 for natural defect was heightened by nervous debility, 
 and the approach of his last fatal disease. Still, bro- 
 ken up, impaired as he was, there were genuine bursts
 
 16 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 of humour, a scholar-like nicety of expression ; above 
 all, a humbled, and perhaps chastened spirit was ap- 
 parent. We had a day of talk of the sterling and 
 standard writers of England; themes fitted for the 
 Augustan age flowed freely. Swift was, perhaps, the 
 model of Maginn, certainly he was the object of his 
 adoration ; and, as he aptly quoted him, true Irish 
 humour played upon the features of the modern satirist. 
 It was not long since the town had rung with con- 
 versation respecting the famous article in Fraser—^ 
 the demolition of a certain aristocratic author — the 
 unmanly and brutal revenge upon the most amiable of 
 booksellers — the trial — the duel between Maginn and 
 the assailant — the slow and cruel death of the beaten 
 and affrighted publisher — the immunity which the 
 offender had enjoyed — for fashion had lent her shield 
 to the votary. I did then consider, and I still do con- 
 sider, Maginn' s article on the work in question one of 
 his strongest and his best: strong, because hatred of 
 vice lent it power ; good, because written from the im- 
 pulse of a mind which, however sullied by excess, was 
 originally high-toned and fearless. Of course I ab- 
 stained scrupulously from the subject, and was surprised 
 at the readiness with which Maginn entered into it. 
 He gave me the whole history of the duel from first to
 
 PICTUKES, GKAVE AND GAY. 17 
 
 last ; spoke of the gentlemanlj bearing of his antago- 
 nist, and seemed to me to take an absolute pleasure in 
 recounting the whole. But when he touched upon the 
 sufferings of the injured and innocent publisher, his 
 lip quivered, his frame writhed, a tear dimmed his eye, 
 he walked hastily to and fro, and, when he returned to 
 his seat, spoke of the subject no more. I longed to 
 glean more from him ; to gather up his real opinions of 
 men and things ; to draw him forth from the mask 
 which the periodical writer must needs wear ; to enjoy 
 the true sentiment which lay beneath the satire, like 
 sweet, crushed water-plants beneath the ice. But the 
 limits of a London party are all too short, and tea came, 
 and eleven o'clock came, and I rushed into the street, 
 thence to mingle among many who would repudiate me 
 if they thought I had any of the contamination of 
 literatui'e about me. 
 
 I saw Maginn no more, I was not surprised when I 
 learned that slow disease had wasted his limbs and 
 brought him to the brink of the grave, but had left his 
 intellect bright and clear to the last. That was a won- 
 derful mind which could stand the wear and tear to 
 which poor Maginn subjected it. His last thoughts, 
 as they are recorded, were of literature and of Homer. 
 May we not hope that the pure ray of reason thus
 
 18 SHAKSPEAKE PAPERS : 
 
 spared, was ofttimes, perhaps in the silence of the 
 sleepless night, employed in holy and hopeful reflections 
 — that the things of this life had a fitful and partial 
 influence over his spirit — that the solemn expectation 
 of eternity had the noblest and the greatest share of 
 that mind, so vigorous in its close ? 
 
 When I review, in my own study, the difierent 
 literary circles which I have seen, I admire at the 
 contrast between my setting out and the end of my 
 journey as a pedestrian through the walks of life. I 
 marvel at the various phases which the polite world 
 has assumed, as it has shone upon me ; the various 
 aspects which certain cliques of men, all following the 
 same pursuits, have worn. How like a dream it now 
 seems, to suppose Maginn the soul and centre of a 
 certain circle, who hung upon his applause, and adulated 
 his talents ! And now, how the memory of his brief, 
 feverish existence has passed away, revived only by^ 
 the accents of compassion, or adduced to " point a 
 moral." To " adorn a tale " he never was intended. 
 How completely was his fame limited to a certain circle ! 
 how un-English was his reputation ! how non-European 
 his celebrity ! The circle that surrounded him is grad- 
 ually melting away ; it is broken up ; one by one the 
 leaves of the book have been snatched out by death :
 
 PIGTUEES, GRAVE AND GAT. 19 
 
 the ears that listened to him are even already dulled ; 
 the eyes which gazed on him are closed in death. The 
 very bookseller who suffered for his aggression upon the 
 literary merits of Mr. Grantley Berkeley has sunk, 
 after slow disease, to an untimely grave. Men of 
 letters in the present day, live fast : the words of the 
 Psalmist, applicable to all, to them are peculiarly appro- 
 priate. As soon as they arrive at theu' zenith, so soon 
 does the canker-worm of disease undermine the root, 
 and poison the sap that nourishes the tree : they pass 
 away, to borrow from the sublimest of all human wri- 
 ters, " even as a sleep ; they fade away suddenly like 
 grass." 
 
 When last I saw Maginn, there gazed upon his soft 
 but restless eye, there hung upon his words, a pale 
 young man, himself a genius of the purest ray, adulat- 
 ing the genius of another. I knew him not; his 
 manner was unobtrusive ; the circle who stood around 
 Maginn had scarcely heard his name. He stood be- 
 hind in a retired part of the room. Unseen, he went 
 away — no one missed him. No one alluded to the 
 young Irishman : the name of Gerald Griffin was not 
 so much as uttered in that noisy chamber. As he 
 passed me, the grave and melancholy aspect, the lean 
 form, and anxious countenance arrested my attention. 
 
 c3
 
 20 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 Amid the heads which were bowed down to listen to 
 the fancies of Maginn, was a face then fresh, and 
 youthful, and beaming. A dark, quick searching eye — 
 a smile full of sweetness — a brow on which sat the 
 innocence of youth — a gentle deportment, and the uni- 
 versal love and sympathy of all around him, proclaimed 
 the presence of Laman Blanchard. I dare not prolong 
 the theme — I will not linger on a remembrance too 
 recent to be recalled without intense regret, a sorrow 
 too fresh for consolation. The biographer, and the 
 subject of his pen, the reviewer and the reviewed, alike 
 sleep in the tomb. How hurried was their destiny ! 
 how brief their summer's day ! how few the years that 
 were allotted them to delight or to instruct mankind. 
 I return to my first proposition — men of letters live 
 fast : it was not so of yore. Formerly they attained 
 old age : their occupation was not a killing one. Let 
 me throw aside my pen and muse on things that have 
 been — and recall, like the sexagenarian of old, the dif- 
 ferent aspects of the lettered world : — the coteries of 
 the published and the publisher. 
 
 We cannot close this sketch better than by ap- 
 pending the following exquisite lines, which illustrate 
 the versatile genius of the late Dr. Maginn :
 
 PICTUEES, OEAVE AND GAY. 31 
 
 "THE MOCKINGS OF THE SOLDIERS. 
 
 "PEOM ST. MATTHEW. 
 
 " Plant a crown upon his head, 
 Royal robe around him spread ; 
 See that his imperial hand 
 Grasps as fit the sceptral wand : 
 Then before him bending low, 
 As becomes his subjects, bow ; 
 Fenced within our armed ring. 
 Hail him, hail him, as our King ! 
 
 " Platted was of thorns the crown. 
 Trooper's cloak was royal gown ; 
 If his passive hand, indeed, 
 Grasp'd a sceptre, 'twas a reed. 
 He was bound to feel and hear 
 Deeds of shame, and words of jeer ; 
 For he whom king in jest they call 
 Was a doomed captive scoff d by all.
 
 fm 
 
 SHAKSPEARB PAPERS. 
 
 " But the brightest crown of gold, 
 Or the robe of rarest fold, 
 Or the sceptre which the mine 
 Of Golconda makes to shine, 
 Or the lowliest homage given 
 By all mankind under heaven, 
 Were prized by him no more than scorn, 
 Sceptre of reed or crown of thorn. 
 
 " Of the stars his crown is made, 
 In the sun he is array'd. 
 He the lightning of the spheres 
 As a flaming sceptre bears : 
 Bend in rapture before him 
 Banks of glowing seraphim ; 
 And we, who spum'd him, trembling stay 
 The judgment of his coming day. 
 
 W. M.
 
 SHAISPEAEE PAPERS.
 
 I. Sir John Falstaff. 
 
 II. Jaques. 
 
 III. PiOMEO. 
 
 rV. Midsummer Night's Dream — Bottom the 
 Weaver. 
 
 V. His Ladies — Lady Macbeth. 
 
 VI. TiMON OF Athens. 
 
 VII. POLONIUS. 
 
 VIII. Iago.
 
 35 
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF. 
 
 " For those who read aright are well aware 
 That Jaques, sighing in the forest green, 
 Oft on his heart felt less the load of care 
 Than Falstaff, revelling his rough mates between." 
 
 3IS. penes me. 
 
 "Jack Falstaff to my familiars!" — By that 
 name, therefore, must he be known by all persons, 
 for all are now the familiars of Falstaff. The title of 
 "Sir John Falstaff to all Europe" is but secondary 
 and parochial. He has long since far exceeded the 
 limit by which he bounded the knowledge of his 
 knighthood; and in wide -spreading territories, which 
 in the day of his creation were untrodden by human 
 foot, and in teeming realms where the very name 
 of England was then unheard of. Jack Falstaff is 
 known as familiarly as he was to the wonderful court 
 of princes, beggars, judges, swindlers, heroes, bullies, 
 gentlemen, scoundrels, justices, thieves, knights, tap- 
 sters, and the rest whom he drew about him. 
 
 It is indeed Jiis court. He is lord paramount, the 
 suzerain to whom all pay homage. Prince Hal may 
 delude himself into the notion that he, the heir of
 
 26 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 England, with all the swelling emotions of soul that 
 rendered him afterwards the conqueror of France, 
 makes a butt of the ton of man that is his compa- 
 nion. The parts are exactly reversed. In the pecu- 
 liar circle in which they live, the prince is the butt 
 of the knight. He knows it not, — he would repel 
 it with scorn if it were asserted ; but it is never- 
 theless the fact that he is subdued. He calls the 
 course of life which he leads, the unyoked humour 
 of his idleness ; but he mistakes. In all the paths 
 where his journey lies with FalstaflF, it is the hard- 
 yoked servitude of his obedience. In the soliloquies 
 put into his mouth he continually pleads that his 
 present conduct is but that of the moment, that he 
 is ashamed of his daily career, and that the time 
 is ere long to come which will show him different 
 from what he seems. As the dramatic character of 
 Henry V. was conceived and executed by a man who 
 knew how genius in any department of human in- 
 tellect would work, — to say nothing of the fact that 
 Shakspeare wrote with the whole of the prince's career 
 before him, — we may consider this subjugation to 
 Falstaff as intended to represent the transition state 
 from spoiled youth to energetic manhood. It is useless 
 to look for minute traces of the historical Henry
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AXD GAT. " 37 
 
 in these dramas. Tradition and the chronicles had 
 handed him down to Shakspeare's time as a prince 
 dissipated in youth, and freely sharing in the rough 
 debaucheries of the metropolis. The same vigour 
 " that did affright the air at Agincourt," must have 
 marked his conduct and bearing in any tumult in 
 which he happened to be engaged. I do not know 
 on what credible authority the story of his having 
 given Gascoigne a box on the ear for committing 
 one of his friends to prison may rest, and shall not 
 at present take the trouble of inquiring. It is highly 
 probable that the chief justice amply deserved the cuf- 
 fing, and I shall always assume the liberty of doubting 
 that he committed the prince. That, like a " sensible 
 lord," he should have hastened to accept any apology 
 which should have relieved him from a collision with 
 the ruling powers at court, I have no doubt at all, from 
 a long consideration of the conduct and history of 
 chief justices in general. 
 
 More diligent searchers into the facts of that ob- 
 scure time have seen reason to disbelieve the stories 
 of any serious dissipations of Henry. Engaged as 
 he was from his earliest youth in affairs of gi-eat 
 importance, and with a mind trained to the prospect 
 of powerfully acting in the most serious questions
 
 28 
 
 SHAKSPEAKE PAPERS 
 
 that could agitate his time, — a disputed succession, 
 a rising hostility to the church, divided nobility, tur- 
 bulent commons, an internecine war with France im- 
 possible of avoidance, a web of European diplomacy 
 just then beginning to develope itself, in consequence 
 of the spreading use of the pen and inkhorn so 
 pathetically deplored by Jack Cade, and forerunning 
 the felonious invention, " contrary to the king's crown 
 and dignity," of the printing-press, denounced with 
 no regard to chronology by that illustrious agitator : 
 — in these circumstances, the heir of the house of 
 Lancaster, the antagonist of the Lollards, — a matter 
 of accident in his case, though contrary to the general 
 principles of his family, — and at the same time 
 suspected by the churchmen of dangerous designs 
 against their property, — the pretender on dubious 
 title, but not at the period appearing so decidedly 
 defective as it seems in ours, to the throne of France, 
 — the aspirant to be arbiter or master of all that 
 he knew of Europe, — could not have wasted all his 
 youth in riotous living. In fact, his historical cha- 
 racter is stern and severe ; but with that we have 
 here nothing to do. It is not the Henry of battles, 
 and treaties, and charters, and commissions, and par-
 
 PICTURKS, GRAVE AND GAY. 39 
 
 liaments, we are now dealing with ; — we look to the 
 Henrj of Shakspeare. 
 
 That Henry, I repeat, is subject and vassal of 
 Falstaff. He is bound by the necromancy of genius 
 to the " white-bearded Satan," who he feels is leading 
 him to perdition. It is in vain that he thinks it 
 utterly unfitting that he should engage in such an 
 enterprise as the robbery at Gadshill ; for, in spite 
 of all protestations to the contrary, he joins the ex- 
 pedition merely to see how his master will get throuo-h 
 his difficulty. He struggles hard, but to no purpose. 
 Go he must, and he goes accordingly. A sense of 
 decorum keeps him from participating in the actual 
 robbery; but he stands close by, that his resistless 
 sword may aid the dubious valour of his master's 
 associates. Joining with Poins in the jest of scat- 
 tering them and seizing their booty, not only is no 
 harm done to Falstaff, but a sense of remorse seizes on 
 the prince for the almost treasonable deed — 
 
 " Falstaff sweats to death, 
 And lards tlie lean earth as he walks along ; 
 ' Wer't not for laughing, I should pity him." 
 
 At their next meeting, after detecting and exposing
 
 80 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 the stories related by the knight, how different is the 
 result from what had been predicted by Poins when 
 laying the plot ! " The virtue of this jest will be, 
 the incomprehensible lies that this same fat rogue 
 will tell us when we meet at supper : how thirty, at 
 least, he fought with ; what wards, what blows, what 
 extremities he endured ; and in the reproof of this 
 lies the jest." Reproof indeed ! All is detected and 
 confessed. Does Poins reprove him, interpret the 
 word as we will ? Poins indeed ! That were lese- 
 majesie. Does the prince ? Why, he tries a jest, 
 but it breaks down ; and Falstaff victoriously orders 
 sack and merriment with an accent of command not 
 to be disputed. In a moment after he is selected 
 to meet Sir John Bracy, sent special with the vil- 
 lainous news of the insurrection of the Percies ; and 
 in another moment he is seated on his joint-stool, the 
 mimic King of England, lecturing with a mixture of 
 jest and earnest the real Prince of Wales. 
 
 Equally inevitable is the necessity of screening the 
 master from the consequences of his delinquencies, 
 even at the expense of a very close approximation to 
 saying the thing that is not ; and impossible does Hal 
 find it not to stand rebuked when the conclusion of 
 his joke of taking the tavern- bills from the sleeper
 
 PICTUEES, GRAVE AND GAT. 31 
 
 behind the arras is the enforced confession of being a 
 pickpocket. Before the austere king his father, John 
 his sober-blooded brother, and other persons of gravity 
 or consideration, if Falstaff be in presence, the prince 
 is constrained by his star to act in defence and pro- 
 tection of the knight. Conscious of the carelessness 
 and corruption which mark all the acts of his guide, 
 philosopher, and friend, it is yet impossible that he 
 should not recommend him to a command in a civil 
 war which jeopardied the very existence of his dynasty. 
 In the heat of the battle and the exultation of victory 
 he is obliged to yield to the fraud that represents 
 Falstaff as the actual slayer of Hotspur. Prince 
 John quietly remarks, that the tale of Falstaff is the 
 strangest that he ever heard: his brother, who has 
 won the victory, is content with saying that he who 
 has told it is the strangest of fellows. Does he betray 
 the cheat? Certainly not, — it would have been an 
 act of disobedience ; but in privy council he suggests 
 to his prince in a whisper, 
 
 " Come, bring your luggage [the body of Hotspur] noUy — " 
 
 nobly — as becomes your rank in our court, so as to do 
 the whole of your followers, myself included, honour 
 by the apnearance of their master —
 
 33 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 " Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back : 
 For my part, if a lie may do thee grace, 
 I'll gild it with the hapjjiest terms I have." 
 
 Tribute, this, from the future Henry V. ! Deeper 
 tribute, however, is paid in the scene in which state 
 necessity induces the renunciation of the fellow with 
 the great belly who had misled him. Poins Had pre- 
 pared us for the issue. The prince had been grossly 
 abused in the reputable hostelrie of the Boar's Head 
 while he was thought to be out of hearing. When he 
 comes forward with the intention of rebuking the 
 impertinence, Poins, well knowing the command to 
 which he was destined to submit, exclaims, " My lord, 
 he will drive you out of your revenge, and turn all to 
 merriment, if you take not the heat." Vain caution ! 
 The scene, again, ends by the total forgetfulness of 
 Falstaff's offence, and his being sent for to court. 
 When, therefore, the time had come that considera- 
 tions of the highest importance required that Henry 
 should assume a iliore dignified character, and shake 
 ofi" his dissolute companions, his own experience and 
 the caution of Poins instruct him that if the thing 
 be not done on the heat — if the old master-spirit 
 be allowed one moment's ground of vantage — the game 
 is up, the good resolutions dissipated into thin air,
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 33 
 
 the grave rebuke turned all into laughter, and thoughts 
 of anger or prudence put to flight by the restored 
 supremacy of Falstaff. Unabashed and unterrified he 
 has heard the severe rebuke of the king — " I know 
 thee not, old man," &c., until an opportunity offers for 
 a repartee : 
 
 " Know, the grave doth gape 
 For thee thrice wider than for other men." 
 
 Some joke on the oft-repeated theme of his unwieldy 
 figure was twinkling in Falstaff 's eye, and ready to 
 leap from his tongue. The king saw his danger : had 
 he allowed a word, he was undone. Hastily, therefore, 
 does he check that word ; 
 
 " Eeply not to me with a fool-horn jest ;" 
 
 forbidding, by an act of eager authority, — what he 
 must also have felt to be an act of self-control, — the out- 
 pouring of those magic sounds which, if uttered, would, 
 instead of a prison becoming the lot of Falstaff, have 
 conducted him to the coronation dinner, and established 
 him as chief depository of what in after-days was known 
 by the name of backstairs influence. 
 
 In this we find the real justification of what has 
 generally been stigmatized as the harshness of Henry.
 
 34 SHAKSPEAKE PAPERS: 
 
 Dr. Johnson, with some indignation, asks "why should 
 Falstaff be sent to the Fleet? — he had done nothing 
 since the king's accession to deserve it. I answer, he 
 •was sent to the Fleet for the same reason that he was 
 banished ten miles from court, on pain of death. 
 Henry thought it necessary that the walls of a prison 
 should separate him from the seducing influence of one 
 than whom he knew many a better man, but none whom 
 it was so hard to miss. He felt that he could not, in 
 his speech of predetermined severity, pursue to the end 
 the tone of harshness towards his old companion. He 
 had the nerve to begin by rebuking him in angry terms 
 as a surfeit-swelled, profane old man, — as one who, 
 instead of employing in prayer the time which his 
 hoary head indicated was not to be of long duration in 
 this world, disgraced his declining years by assuming the 
 unseemly occupations of fool and jester, — as one whom 
 he had known in a dream, but had awakened to despise, — 
 as one who, on the verge of the gaping grave, occupied 
 himself in the pursuits of such low debauchery as ex- 
 cluded him from the society of those who had respect for 
 themselves or their character. But he cannot so con- 
 tinue ; and the last words he addresses to him whom 
 he had intended to have cursed altogether, hold forth a 
 promise of advancement, with an affectionate assurance
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 35 
 
 that it will be such as is suitable to his " strength and 
 qualities." If in public he could scarce master his 
 speech, how could he hope in private to master his 
 feelings ? No. His only safety was in utter separa- 
 tion : it should be done, and he did it. He was eman- 
 cipated by violent effort; did he never regret the 
 ancient thraldom ? Shakspeare is silent : but may we 
 not imagine that he who sate crowned with the golden 
 rigol of England, cast, amid all his splendours, many a 
 sorrowful thought upon that old familiar face which he 
 had sent to gaze upon the iron bars of the Fleet ? 
 
 As for the chief justice, he never appears in Falstaff's 
 presence, save as a butt. His grave lordship has many 
 solemn admonitions, nay, serious threats to deliver ; 
 but he departs laughed at and baffled. Coming to 
 demand explanation of the affair at Gadshill, the con- 
 versation ends with his being asked for the loan of 
 a thousand pounds. Interposing to procure payment 
 of the debt to Dame Quickly, he is told that she goes 
 about the town saying that her eldest son resembles 
 him. Fang and Snare, his lordship's officers, are not 
 treated with less respect, or shaken off with less cere- 
 mony. As for the other followers of the knight, — 
 Pistol, Nym, Bardolph, — they are, by office, his obse- 
 quious dependents. But it is impossible that they could 
 
 D3
 
 36 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS! 
 
 long hang about him -without contracting, unknown 
 even to themselves, other feelings than those arising 
 from the mere advantages they derived from his service. 
 Death is the test of all ; and when that of Falstaff 
 approaches, the dogged Nym reproaches the king for 
 having run bad humours on the knight ; and Pistol in 
 swelling tone, breathing a sigh over his heart " fracted 
 and corroborate," hastens to condole with him. Bardolph 
 wishes that he was with him wheresoever he has gone, 
 whether to heaven or hell : he has followed him all his 
 life, — why not follow him in death ? The last jest has 
 been at his own expense ; but what matters it now ? 
 In other times Bardolph could resent the everlasting 
 merriment at the expense of his nose — he might wish 
 it in the belly of the jester; but that's past. The 
 dying knight compares a flea upon his follower's nose 
 to a black soul burning in hell-fire; and no remon- 
 strance is now made. "Let him joke as he likes," 
 says and thinks Bardolph with a sigh, " the fuel is 
 gone that maintained that fire. He never will supply 
 it more ; nor will it, in return, supply fuel for his wit. 
 I wish that it could." And Quickly, whom he had for 
 nine and twenty years robbed and cheated, — pardon 
 me, I must retract the words, — from whom he had, for 
 the space of a generation, levied tax and tribute as
 
 PICTUEKS, GRAVE AND GAT. 37 
 
 matter of right and due, — she hovers anxiously over his 
 djing bed, and, with a pathos and a piety well befitting 
 her calling, soothes his departing moments by the con- 
 solatory assurance, when she hears him uttering the 
 unaccustomed appeal to God, that he had no necessity 
 for yet troubling himself with thoughts to which he had 
 been unused during the whole length of their acquaint- 
 ance. Blame her not for leaving unperformed the duty 
 of a chaplain : it was not her vocation. She consoled 
 him as she could, — and the kindest of us can do no 
 more. 
 
 Of himself, the centre of the circle, I have, perhaps, 
 delayed too long to speak ; but the effect which he im- 
 presses upon all the visionary characters around, marks 
 Shakspeare's idea that he was to make a similar impres- 
 sion on the real men to whom he was transmitting him. 
 The temptation to represent the gross fat man upon the 
 stage as a mere buffoon, and to turn the attention of 
 the spectators to the corporal qualities and the prac- 
 tical jests of which he is the object, could hardly be 
 resisted by the players ; and the popular notion of the 
 Falstaff of the stage is, that he is no better than an 
 upper-class Scapin. A proper consideration, not merely 
 of the character of his mind as displayed in the lavish 
 abundance of ever ready wit, and the sound good sense
 
 38 SHAKSPEAKE PAPER8 : 
 
 of his searching observation, but of the position which 
 he always held in society, should have freed the Falstaflf 
 of the cabinet from such an imputation. It has not 
 generally done so. Nothing can be more false, nor, 
 'pace tanti viri, more unphilosophical, than Dr. John- 
 son's critique upon his character. According to him. 
 ** Falstaff is a character loaded with faults, and with 
 those faults which naturally produce contempt. He is 
 a thief and a glutton, a coward and a boaster, always 
 ready to cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor; to 
 terrify the timorous, and insult the defenceless. At 
 once obsequious and malignant, he satirizes in their 
 absence those whom he lives by flattering. He is 
 familiar with the prince only as an agent of vice, but of 
 this familiarity he is so proud, as not only to be super- 
 cilious and haughty with common men, but to think his 
 interest of importance to the Duke of Lancaster. Yet 
 the man thus corrupt, thus despicable, makes himself 
 necessary to the prince that despises him, by the most 
 pleasing of all qualities, perpetual gaiety ; by an un- 
 failing power of exciting laughter, which is the more 
 freely indulged, as his wit is not of the splendid or 
 ambitious kind, but consists in easy scapes and sallies 
 of levity, which make sport, but raise no envy. It 
 must be observed, that he is stained with no enormous
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 39 
 
 or sanguinary crimes, so that his licentiousness is not 
 so oflfensive but that it may be borne for his mu*th. 
 
 " The moral to be drawn from this representation is, 
 that no man is more dangerous than he that, with a 
 will to corrupt, hath the power to please ; and that 
 neither wit nor honesty ought to think themselves 
 safe with such a companion, when they see Henry 
 seduced by Falstaff." 
 
 What can be cheaper than the venting of moral 
 apophthegms such as that which concludes the cri- 
 tique ? Shakspeare, who had no notion of copybook 
 ethics, well knew that Falstaflfs are not as plenty as 
 blackberries, and that the moral to be drawn from 
 the representation is no more than that great powers 
 of wit will fascinate, whether they be joined or not 
 to qualities commanding grave esteem. In the com- 
 mentary I have just quoted, the Doctor was thinking of 
 such companions as Savage ; but the interval is wide 
 and deep. 
 
 How idle is the question as to the cowardice of 
 Falstaff. Maurice Morgann wrote an essay to free 
 his character from the allegation; and it became the 
 subject of keen controversy. Deeply would the knight 
 have derided the discussion. His retreat from before 
 Prince Henry and Poins, and his imitating death when
 
 40 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS ! 
 
 attacked bj Douglas, are the points mainly dwelt 
 upon by those who make him a coward. I shall not 
 minutely go over what I conceive to be a silly dispute 
 on both sides : but in the former case Shakspeare saves 
 his honour by making him offer at least some resistance 
 to two bold and vigorous men when abandoned by his 
 companions ; and, in the latter, what fitting antagonist 
 was the fat and blown soldier of three-score for 
 
 " That furious Scot, 
 The bloody Douglas, whose well- labouring sword 
 Had three times slain the ajipearance of the Iving ? " 
 
 He did no more than what Douglas himself did in the 
 conclusion of the fight : overmatched, the renowned 
 warrior 
 
 " 'Gan vail his stomach, and did grace the shame 
 Of those that turned their backs ; and, in his flight, 
 Stumbling in fear, was took." 
 
 Why press cowardice on Falstaff more than upon 
 Douglas ? In an age when men of all ranks engaged 
 in personal conflict, we find him chosen to a command 
 in a slaughterous battle ; he leads his men to posts of 
 imminent peril ; it is his sword which Henry wishes to 
 borrow when about to engage Percy, and he refuses to 
 lend it from its necessity to himself; he can jest coolly
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 41 
 
 in tlie midst of danger ; he is deemed worthy of em- 
 ploying the arm of Douglas at the time that Hotspur 
 engages the prince ; Sir John Coleville yields himself 
 his prisoner ; and, except in the jocular conversations 
 among his own circle, no word is breathed that he has 
 not performed, and is not ready to perform, the duties 
 of a soldier. Even the attendant of the chief justice, 
 with the assent of his hostile lordship, admits that he 
 has done good service at Shrewsbury. All this, and 
 much more, is urged in his behalf by Maurice Mor- 
 gann; but it is far indeed from the root of the matter. 
 Of his being a thief and a glutton I shall say a few 
 words anon ; but where does he cheat the weak or prey 
 upon the poor, — where terrify the timorous or insult 
 the defenceless, — where is he obsequious, where malig- 
 nant, — where is he supercilious and haughty with 
 common men, — where does he think his interest of 
 importance to the Duke of Lancaster ? Of this last 
 charge I see nothing whatever in the play. The 
 "Duke" of Lancaster* is a slip of the Doctor's pen. 
 
 * He is once called so by Westmoreland, Second Pail of 
 Henry IV. Act iv. Sc. 1. 
 
 " Health and fair greeting from our general, 
 The prince Lord John and Duke of Lancaster;" 
 
 but it occurs nowhere else, and we must not place much reliance
 
 12 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 ♦ 
 
 But Falstaflf nowhere extends his patronage to Prince 
 John; on the contrary, he asks from the prince the 
 favour of his good report to the king, adding, when he 
 is alone, that the sober-blooded boy did not love him. 
 He is courteous of manner ; but, so far from being 
 obsequious, he assumes the command wherever he goes. 
 He is jocularly satirical of speech : but he who has 
 attached to him so many jesting companions for such a 
 series of years, never could have been open to the re- 
 proach of malignity. If the sayings of Johnson 
 himself about Goldsmith and Garrick, for example, 
 "were gathered, must he not have allowed them to be 
 far more calculated to hurt their feelings than any- 
 thing Falstaff ever said of Poins or Hal ? and yet 
 •would he not recoil from the accusation of being 
 actuated by malignant feelings towards men whom, in 
 spite of wayward conversations, he honoured, admired, 
 and loved ? 
 
 Let us consider for a moment who and what Falstaff 
 was. If you put him back to the actual era in which 
 his date is fixed, and judge him by the manners of that 
 
 oh the authenticity or the verhal accuracy of such verses. He was 
 Prince John of Lancaster, and afterwards Duke of Bedford. The 
 king was then, as the king is now, Duke of Lancaster*
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 43 
 
 time ; a knight of the days perhaps of Edward III. — 
 at all events of Henry IV. — was a man not to be con- 
 founded with the knights spawned in our times. A 
 knight then was not far from the rank of peer ; and 
 with peers, merely by the virtue of his knighthood, he 
 habitually associated as their equal. Even if we judge 
 of him by the repute of knights in the days when his 
 character was written, — and in dealing with Shak- 
 speare it is always safe to consider him as giving 
 himself small trouble to depart from the manners 
 which he saw around him, — the knights of Elizabeth 
 were men of the highest class. The queen conferred 
 the honour with much difficulty, and insisted that it 
 should not be disgraced. Sir John Falstaff, if his- 
 mirth and wit inclined him to lead a reckless life, held 
 no less rank in the society of the day than the Earl 
 of Rochester in the time of Charles II. Henry IV. 
 disapproves of his son's mixing with the loose revellers 
 of the town; but admits Falstaff unreproved to his 
 presence. "When he is anxious to break the acquaint- 
 ance, he makes no objection to the station of Sir John, 
 but sends him with Prince John of Lancaster against 
 the archbishop and the Earl of Northumberland. His 
 objection is not that the knight, by his rank, is no
 
 44 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 fitting companion for a son of his own, but that he can 
 better trust him with the steadier than the more mer- 
 curial of the brothers. 
 
 We find by incidental notices that he was reared, 
 when a boy, page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Nor- 
 folk, head of one of the greatest houses that ever was 
 in England, and the personal antagonist of him who 
 was afterwards Henry IV. ; that he was in his youth 
 on familiar terms with John of Gaunt, the first man of 
 the land after the death of his father and brother ; 
 and that, through all his life, he had been familiar 
 with the lofty and distinguished. We can, therefore, 
 conjecture what had been his youth and his manhood ; 
 we see what he actually is in declining age. In this, 
 if I mistake not, will be found the true solution of 
 the character; here is what the French call the mot 
 (Venigme. Conscious of powers and talents far sur- 
 passing those of the ordinary run of men, he finds 
 himself outstripped in the race. He must have seen 
 many a man whom he utterly despised rising over his 
 head to honours and emoluments. The very persons 
 upon whom, it would appear to Dr. Johnson, he was 
 intruding, were many of them his early companions, — 
 many more his juniors at court. He might have at- 
 tended his old patron, the duke, at Coventry, upon St.
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 45 
 
 Lambert's day, wlien Richard II. flung down the warder 
 amidst the greatest men of England. If he jested in 
 the tilt-yard with John of Gaunt, could he feel that 
 any material obstacle prevented him from mixing with 
 those who composed the court of John of Gaunt's son ? 
 In fact, he is a dissipated man of rank, with a 
 thousand times more wit than ever fell to the lot of all 
 the men of rank in the world. But he has ill played 
 his cards in life. He grumbles not at the advancement 
 of men of his own order ; but the bitter drop of his 
 soul overflows when he remembers how he and that 
 cheeseparing Shallow began the world, and reflects that 
 the starveling justice has land and beeves, while he, 
 the wit and the gentleman, is penniless, and living from 
 hand to mouth by the casual shifts of the day. He 
 looks at the goodly dwelling and the riches of him 
 whom he had once so thoroughly contemned, with an 
 inward pang that he has scarcely a roof under which 
 he can lay his head. The tragic Macbeth, in the agony 
 of his last struggle, acknowledges with a deep despair 
 that the things which should accompany old age, — as 
 honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, — he must 
 not look to have. The comic Falstaff says nothing on 
 the subject ; but, by the choice of such associates as 
 Bardolph, Pistol, and the rest of that following, he
 
 46 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 tacitly declares that he too has lost the advantages 
 which should be attendant on years. No curses loud 
 or. deep have accompanied his festive career, — its con- 
 clusion is not the less sad on that account : neglect, 
 forgotten friendships, services overlooked, shared plea- 
 sures unremembered, and fair occasions gone for ever 
 by, haunt him, no doubt, as sharply as the conscious- 
 ness of deserving universal hatred galls the soul of 
 Macbeth. 
 
 And we may pursue the analogy farther without any 
 undue straining. All other hope lost, the confident 
 tyrant shuts himself up in what he deems an im- 
 pregnable fortress, and relies for very safety upon his 
 interpretation of the dark sayings of riddling witches. 
 Divested of the picturesque and supernatural horror of 
 the tragedy, Macbeth is here represented as driven to 
 his last resource, and dependent for life only upon 
 chances, the dubiousness of which he can hardly con- 
 ceal from himself. The Boar's Head in Eastcheap is 
 not the castle of Dunsinane, any more than the con- 
 versation of Dame Quickly and Doll Tearsheet is that 
 of the Weird Sisters ; but in the comedy, too, we have 
 the man, powerful in his own way, driven to his last 
 " frank," and looking to the chance of the hour for the
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 47 
 
 living of the hour. Hope after hope has broken down, 
 as prophecy after prophecy has been discovered to be 
 juggling and fallacious. He has trusted that his Bir- 
 nam Wood would not come to Dunsinane, and yet it 
 comes ; — that no man not of woman born is to cross 
 his path, and lo ! the man is here. What then remains 
 for wit or warrior when all is lost — when the last stake 
 is gone — when no chance of another can be dreamt 
 of — when the gleaming visions that danced before 
 their eyes are found to be nothing but mist and 
 mirage ? What remains for them but to die ? — And 
 so they do. 
 
 With such feelings, what can Falstaff, after having 
 gone through a life of adventure, care about the repute 
 of courage or cowardice? To divert the prince, he 
 engages in a wild enterprise, — nothing more than what 
 would be called a "lark" now. When deer-stealing 
 ranked as no higher ofifence than robbing orchards, — 
 not indeed so high as the taking a slice off a loaf by a 
 wandering beggar, which some weeks ago has sent the 
 vagrant who committed the *' crime" to seven years' 
 transportation, — such robberies as those at Gadshill, 
 especially as all parties well knew that the money taken 
 there was surely to be repaid, as we find it is in the
 
 48 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 end,"^ were of a comparatively venial nature. Old 
 father antic, the Law, had not yet established his un- 
 doubted supremacy ; and taking purses, even in the 
 
 * Henrg IV. Part 1. Act iii. Sc. 3. 
 
 " Fal. Now Hal, to the news at court : for the robbery, lad ? 
 How is that answered ? 
 
 P. Hen. My sweet beef, I must 
 
 Still be good angel to thee. 
 The money is paid back. 
 
 Fal. I do not hke 
 
 That paying back ; it is a double labour. 
 
 P. Hen. I am good friends with my father, and may do anything. 
 
 Fal. Eob me the exchequer, the first thing thou dost ; 
 And do 't with unwashed hands too. 
 
 Bard. Do, my lord." 
 
 The quiet and biisiness-like manner in which Bardolph enforces 
 on the heir-apparent his master's reasonable proposition of robbing 
 the exchequer, is worthy of that plain and straightforward cha- 
 racter. I have always considered it a greater hardship that 
 Bardolph should be hanged " for pix of httle price " by an old 
 companion at Gadshill, than that Falstaff should have been ban- 
 ished. But Shakspeare wanted to get rid of the paity ; and as, in 
 fact, a soldier was hanged in the army of Henry V. for such a 
 theft, the opportunity was afforded. The king is not concerned in 
 tlie order for his execution however, which is left with the Duke of 
 Exeter. 
 
 I have omitted a word or two from the ordinary editions in the 
 above quotation, which are useless to the sense and spoil the 
 metre. A careful consideration of Falstaff's speeches will show, 
 that though they are sometimes printed as prose, they are in 
 almost all cases metrical. Indeed, I do not think that there is 
 much prose in any of Shakspeai'e's plays.
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 49 
 
 days of Queen Elizabeth, -^-as not absolutely incom- 
 patible with gentility. The breaking up of the great 
 households and families by the wars of the Roses, the 
 suppression of the monasteries and the confiscation 
 of church property by Henry VIII. , added to the 
 adventurous spirit generated throughout all Europe 
 by the discovery of America, had thrown upon the 
 world " men of action," as they called themselves, 
 without any resources but what lay in their right 
 hands. Younger members of broken houses, or as- 
 pirants for the newly lost honours or the ease of the 
 cloister, did not well know what to do with themselves. 
 They were too idle to dig ; they were ashamed to 
 beg; — and why not apply at home the admirable 
 maxim, 
 
 " That they should take who have the power, 
 And they should keep who can," 
 
 which was acted upon with so much success beyond 
 the sea. The same causes which broke down the 
 nobility, and crippled the resources of the church, 
 deprived the retainers of the great baron, and the 
 sharers of the dole of the monastery, of their ac- 
 customed mode of living ; and robbery in these classes 
 was considered the most venial of offences. To the
 
 50 SHAKSPEAKE PAPERS : 
 
 system of poor laws, — a system worthy of being pro- 
 jected " in great Eliza's golden time " by tbe greatest 
 philosopher of that day, or, with one exception, of 
 any other day, — are we indebted for that general 
 respect for property which renders the profession of 
 a thief infamous, and consigns him to the hulks, or 
 the tread-mill, without compassion. But I must not 
 wander into historical disquisitions ; though no subject 
 would, in its proper place, be more interesting than 
 a minute speculation upon the gradual working of the 
 poor-law system on English society. It would form 
 one of the most remarkable chapters in that great 
 work yet to be written, " The History of the Lowest 
 Order from the earliest times," — a work of far more 
 importance, of deeper philosophy, and more picturesque 
 romance, than all the chronicles of what are called 
 the great events of the earth. Elsewhere let me talk 
 of this. I must now get back again to Falstaff. 
 
 His Gadshill adventure was a jest, — a jest, perhaps, 
 repeated after too many precedents ; but still, accord- 
 ing to the fashion and the humour of the time, 
 nothing more than a jest. His own view of such 
 transactions is recorded ; he considers Shallow as a 
 fund of jesting to amuse the prince, remarking that 
 it is easy to amuse " with a sad brow " (with a
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 51 
 
 solemnity of appearance) " a fellow that never had 
 the ache in his shoulders." What was to be accom- 
 plished by turning the foolish justice into ridicule, 
 was also to be done by inducing the true prince to 
 become for a moment a false thief. The serious face 
 of robbery was assumed " to keep Prince Harry in 
 perpetual laughter." That, in Falstaff's circumstances, 
 the money obtained by the night's exploit would bo 
 highly acceptable, cannot be doubled; but the real 
 object was to amuse the prince. He had no idea of 
 making an exhibition of bravery on such an occasion ; 
 Poins well knew his man when he said beforehand, 
 " As for the third, if he fight longer than he see 
 reason, I'll forswear arms : " his end was as much 
 obtained by the prince's jokes upon his cowardice. 
 It was no matter whether he invented what tended 
 to laughter, or whether it was invented upon him. 
 The object was won so the laughter was in any manner 
 excited. The exaggerated tale of the misbegotten 
 knaves in Kendal-green, and his other lies, gross and 
 mountainous, are told with no other purpose; and 
 one is almost tempted to believe him when he says 
 that he knew who were his assailants, and ran for 
 their greater amusement. At all events, it is evident 
 that he cares nothing on the subject. He offers a 
 
 E 3
 
 53 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 jocular defence ; but immediately passes to matter of 
 more importance than the question of his standing or 
 running : 
 
 " But, lads, I'm glad you have the money. Hostess ! 
 Clap to the doors ; watch to-night, pray to-morrow. 
 Gallants, lads, hoys, hearts-o'-gold ! All the titles of 
 Good fellowship come to you ! " 
 
 The money is had ; the means of enjoying it are 
 at hand. Why waste our time in inquiring how it 
 has been brought here, or permit nonsensical discus- 
 sions on my valour or cowardice to delay for a 
 moment the jovial appearance of the bottle ? 
 
 I see no traces of his being a glutton. His round- 
 ness of paunch is no proof of gormandizing pro- 
 pensities ; in fact, the greatest eaters are. generally 
 thin and spare. When Henry is running over the 
 bead-roll of his vices, we meet no charge of gluttony 
 urged against him. 
 
 *' There is a devil 
 Haunts thee i' the likeness of a fat old man ; 
 A ton of man is thy companion. 
 Why dost thou c6nverse with that trunk of humours. 
 That boltiag-hutch of beastliness, that swohi parcel of 
 Dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed 
 Cloakbag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox 
 With the pudding in his belly, that reverend vice,
 
 PICTUEES, GEAVE AND GAY. 53 
 
 That grey iniquity, that father ruffian, 
 That vanity in years ? Wherein is he good 
 But to taste sack, and drink it ? Wherein neat 
 And cleanly, but to carve a capon, and eat it ? "* 
 
 The sack and sugar FalstaflF admits readily ; of ad- 
 diction to the grosser pleasure of the table neither 
 he nor his accuser says a word. Capon is light 
 eating; and his neatness in carving gives an im- 
 pression of delicacy in the observances of the board. 
 He appears to have been fond of capon ; for it figures 
 in the tavern-bill found in his pockets as the only 
 eatable beside the stimulant anchovy for supper, and 
 the halfpenny-worth of bread. Nor does his conver- 
 sation ever turn upon gastronomical topics. The bot- 
 tle supplies an endless succession of jests ; the dish 
 scarcely contributes one. 
 
 We must observe that Falstaff is never represented 
 as drunk, or even affected by wine. The copious 
 potations of sack do not cloud his intellect, or em- 
 barrass his tongue. He is always self-possessed, and 
 ready to pour forth his floods of acute wit. In this 
 
 * This and the foregoing passage also are printed as prose : I have 
 not altered a single letter, and the reader will see not only that they are 
 dramatical blank- verse, but dramatical blank-verse of a very ex- 
 cellent kind. After aU the editions of Shakspeare, another is sadly 
 wanted. The text throughout requires a searching ciitical revision.
 
 64 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 he forms a contrast to Sir Toby Belch. The dis- 
 crimination between these two characters is very mas- 
 terly. Both are knights, both convivial, both fond of 
 loose or jocular society, both somewhat in advance of 
 their youth — there are many outward points of simili- 
 tude, and yet they are as distinct as Prospero and 
 Polonius. The Illyrian knight is of a lower class of 
 mind. His jests are mischievous ; Falstaff never 
 commits a practical joke. Sir Toby delights in brawl- 
 ing and tumult ; Sir John prefers the ease of his own 
 inn. Sir Toby sings songs, joins in catches, and 
 rejoices in making a noise; Sir John knows too well 
 his powers of wit and conversation to think it neces- 
 sary to make any display, and he hates disturbance. 
 Sir Toby is easily affected by liquor and roystering ; 
 Sir John rises from the board as cool as when he sate 
 dovra. The knight of Blyria had nothing to cloud his 
 mind ; he never aspired to higher things than he has 
 attained ; he lives a jolly life in the household of his 
 niece, feasting, drinking, singing, rioting, playing tricks 
 from one end of the year to the other : his wishes are 
 gratified, his hopes unblighted. I have endeavoured to 
 show that Falstaff was the contrary of all this. And 
 we must remark that the tumultuous Toby has some 
 dash of romance in him, of which no trace can be
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 55 
 
 found in the English knight. The wit and grace, the 
 good-humour and good looks of Maria, conquer Toby's 
 heart, and he is in love with her — love expressed in 
 rough fashion, but love sincere. Could we see him 
 some dozen years after his marriage, we should find 
 him sobered down into a respectable, hospitable, and 
 domestic country gentleman, surrounded by a happy 
 family of curly-headed lUyrians, and much fonder 
 of his wife than of his bottle. We can never so 
 consider of FalstafF; he must always be a dweller 
 in clubs and taverns, a perpetual diner-out at gen- 
 tlemen's parties, or a frequenter of haunts where he 
 will not be disturbed by the presence of ladies of 
 condition or character. In the Merry Wives of 
 "Windsor, — I may remark, in passing, that the Fal- 
 staff of that play is a different conception from the 
 Falstaff oi Senry IV., and an inferior one — his love is 
 of a very practical and unromantic nature. The 
 ladies whom he addresses are beyond a certain age ; 
 and his passion is inspired by his hopes of making 
 them his East and West Indies, — by their tables and 
 their purses. No ; Falstaff never could have married, 
 — he was better "accommodated than with a wife." 
 He might have paid his court to old Mistress Ursula, 
 ind sworn to marry her weekly from the time when
 
 56 SHAKSPEAEE PAPEBS : 
 
 he perceived the first white hair on his chin; but 
 the oath was never kept, and we see what was the 
 motive of his love, when we find him sending her 
 a letter by his page after he has been refused credit 
 by Master Dombledon, unless he can oflFer something 
 better than the rather unmarketable security of him- 
 self and Bardolph. 
 
 We must also observe that he never laughs. Others 
 laugh with him, or at him ; but no laughter from 
 him who occasions or permits it. He jests with a 
 sad brow. The wit which he profusely scatters 
 about is from the head, not the heart. Its satire 
 is slight, and never malignant or afironting ; but 
 still it is satirical, and seldom joyous. It is any- 
 thing but fun. Original genius and long practice 
 have rendered it easy and familiar to him, and he 
 uses it as a matter of business. He has too much 
 philosophy to show that he feels himself misplaced ; 
 we discover his feelings by slight indications, which 
 are, however, quite sufficient. I fear that this con- 
 ception of the character could never be rendered 
 popular on the stage ; but I have heard in private 
 the part of Falstafi" read with a perfectly grave, 
 solemn, slow, deep, and sonorous voice, touched oc- 
 casionally somewhat with the broken tone of age, from
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. S7 
 
 beginning to end, with admirable effect. But I can 
 imagine him painted according to my idea. He is 
 always caricatured. Not to refer to ordinary draw- 
 ings, I remember one executed by the reverend and 
 very clever author of the Miseries of Human Life, 
 (an engraving of which, if I do not mistake, used to 
 hang in Ambrose's parlour in Edinburgh, in the ac- 
 tual room which was the primary seat of the Nodes 
 AmbrosiancB,) and the painter had exerted all his 
 art in making the face seamed with the deep-drawn 
 wrinkles and lines of a hard drinker and a constant 
 laugher. Now, had jolly Bacchus 
 
 " Set the trace in bis face that a toper will tell," 
 
 should we not have it carefully noted by those who 
 everlastingly joked upon his appearance ? should we 
 not have found his Malmsey nose, his whelks and 
 bubukles, his exhalations and meteors, as duly de- 
 scribed as those of Bardolph ? A laughing counte- 
 nance he certainly had not. Jests such as his are not, 
 like Ralph's, " lost, unless you print the face." The 
 leering wink in the eye introduced into this portraiture 
 is also wrong, if intended to represent the habitual 
 look of the man. The chief justice assures us that his 
 eyes were moist like those of other men of his time of
 
 58 8HAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 life ; and, without his lordship's assurance, we may be 
 certain that Falstaff seldom played tricks with them. 
 He rises before me as an elderly and very corpulent 
 gentleman, dressed like other military men of the 
 time, [of Elizabeth, observe, not Henry,] yellow- 
 cheeked, white-bearded, double chinned, with a good- 
 humoured but grave expression of countenance, sen- 
 suality in the lower features of his face, high intellect 
 in the upper. 
 
 Such is the idea I have formed of Falstaff, and per- 
 haps some may think I am right. It required no 
 ordinary genius to carry such a character through so 
 great a variety of incidents with so perfect a con- 
 sistency. It is not a difficult thing to depict a man 
 corroded by care within, yet appearing gay and at 
 ease without, if you every moment pull the machinery 
 to pieces, as children do their toys, to show what is 
 inside. But the true art is to let the attendant 
 circumstances bespeak the character, without being 
 obliged to label him : " Here you may see the tyrant ; " 
 or, " ffere is the man lieavy of hearty light of man- 
 ner. ^^ Your ever-melancholy and ostentatiously broken- 
 hearted heroes are felt to be bores, endurable only on 
 account of the occasional beauty of the poetry in which 
 they figure. We grow tired of " the gloom the fabled
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 59 
 
 Hebrew wanderer wore," &c., and sympathize as little 
 with perpetual lamentations over mental sufferings en- 
 dured, or said to be endured, by active youth and 
 manhood, as we should be with its ceaseless complaints 
 of the physical pain of corns or toothache. The 
 death-bed of Falstaff, told in the patois of Dame 
 Quickly to her debauched and profligate auditory, is 
 a thousand times more pathetic to those who have 
 looked upon the world with reflective eye, than all the 
 morbid mournings of Childe Harold and his poetical 
 progeny. 
 
 At the table of Shallow, laid in his arbour, Falstaff 
 is compelled by the eager hospitality of his host to sit, 
 much against his will. The wit of the court endures 
 the tipsy garrulity of the prattling justice, the drunken 
 harmonies of Silence, whose tongue is loosed by the 
 sack to chaunt butt-ends of old-fashioned ballads, the 
 bustling awkwardness of Davy, and the long-known 
 ale-house style of conversation of Bardolph, without 
 uttering a word except some few phrases of common- 
 place courtesy. He feels that he is in mind and thought 
 far above his company. Was that the only company 
 in which the same accident had befallen him ? Cer- 
 tainly not; it had befallen him in many a mansion 
 more honoured than that of Shallow, and amid society
 
 60 
 
 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 loftier in name and prouder in place. His talent and 
 the use to which he had turned it, had as completely 
 disjoined him in heart from those among whom he 
 mixed, or might have mixed, as it did from the pippin- 
 and-caraway-eating party in Gloucestershire. The 
 members of his court are about him, but not of him ; 
 they are all intended for use. From Shallow he bor- 
 rows a thousand pounds ; and, as the justice cannot 
 appreciate his wit, he wastes it not upon him, but uses 
 other methods of ingratiating himself. Henry delights 
 in his conversation and manner, and therefore all his 
 fascinations are exerted to win the favour of one from 
 whom so many advantages might be expected. He 
 lives in the world alone and apart, so far as true com- 
 munity of thought with others is concerned; and his 
 main business in life is to get through the day. That 
 — the day — is his real enemy ; he rises to fight it in 
 the morning ; he gets through its various dangers as 
 well as he can ; some difficulties he meets, some he 
 avoids ; he shuns those who ask him for money, seeks 
 those from whom he may obtain it ; lounges here, bus- 
 tles there ; talks, drinks, jokes, schemes ; and at last 
 his foe is slain, when light and his troubles depart. 
 *' The day is gone — the night's our own." Cou- 
 rageously has he put an end to one of the three
 
 PICTUKES, GKAVE AND GAY. 61 
 
 hundred and sixty-five tormentors whicli he has yearly 
 to endure; and to-morrow — why — as was to-day, so 
 to-morrow shall be. At all events I shall not leave 
 the sweet of the night un-picked, to think anything 
 more about it. Bring me a cup of sack ! Let us be 
 merry ! Does he ever think of what were his hopes 
 and prospects at the time, when was 
 
 "Jack FalstafF, now Sir John, a boy, 
 And page to Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk ? " 
 
 Perhaps ! but he chases away the intrusive re- 
 flection by another cup of sack and a fresh sally of 
 humour. 
 
 Dryden maintained that Shakspeare killed Mercutio, 
 because, if he had not, Mercutio would have killed 
 him. In spite of the authority of 
 
 " All those prefaces of Drj'den, 
 For these our critics much confide in," 
 
 Glorious John is here mistaken. Mercutio is killed 
 precisely in the part of the drama where his death is 
 requisite. Not an incident, scarcely a sentence, in 
 this most skilfully managed play of Romeo and Juliet^ 
 can be omitted or misplaced. But I do think that 
 Shakspeare was unwilling to hazard the reputation of
 
 63 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 Falstaff by producing him again in connexion with his 
 old companion, Hal, on the stage. The dancer in the 
 epilogue of the Second part of Henry IV. promises 
 the audience, that " if you be not too much cloyed 
 with fat meat, our humble author will continue the 
 story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with 
 fair Katherine of France : where for anything I know, 
 Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be 
 killed with your hard opinions."^ The audience was 
 not cloyed with fat meat, Sir John was not killed with 
 their hard opinions; he was popular from the first 
 hour of his appearance : but Shakspeare never kept 
 his word. It was the dramatist, not the public, who 
 
 * I consider tliis Ei^ilogue to be in blank-verse, — 
 
 " First my fear, then my courtesy, then my speech," &c. 
 but some slight alterations should be made : the transposition of a 
 couple of words will make the passage here quoted metrical. 
 
 " One word more I beseech you. If you be not 
 Too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author 
 The story will continue with Sir John in 't. 
 And make you merry with fair Kate of France. Where 
 (For any thing I know) Falstaff shall die of 
 A sweat, unless already he be killed with 
 Your hard opinions ; Oldcastle died a martyr, 
 And this is not the man. 
 My tongue is weary, when my legs are too, 
 m bid you good-night ; and kneel down before you, 
 But indeed to pray for the queen."
 
 PICTURES, GEAVE AND GAY. 63 
 
 killed his hero in the opening scenes of Henry V. ; for 
 
 he knew not -how to interlace him with the story of 
 
 Agincourt. There Henry was to be lord of all ; and 
 
 it was matter of necessity that his old master should 
 
 disappear from the scene. He parted therefore even 
 
 just between twelve and one, e'en at turning of the 
 
 tide, and we shall never see him again until the waters 
 
 of some Avon, here or elsewhere, — it is a good Celtic 
 
 name for rivers in general, — shall once more bathe the 
 
 limbs of the like of him who was laid for his last 
 
 earthly sleep under a grave-stone bearing a disregarded 
 
 inscription, on the north side of the chancel in the 
 
 great church at Stratford. 
 
 W. M.
 
 64 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 JAQUES. 
 
 "As he passed through the fields, and saw the animals around 
 him, — ' Ye,' said he, ' are happy, and need not envy me that walk 
 thus among you hurthened with myself; nor do I, ye gentle heings, 
 envy your fehcity, for it is not the felicity of man. I have many 
 distresses from which ye are free ; I fear pain when I do not feel 
 it ; I sometimes shrink at e^ils recollected, and sometimes start at 
 evils anticipated. Surely the equity of Providence has halanced 
 pecuhar sufferings with pecuUar enjoyments.' 
 
 " With observations like these the prince amused himself as he 
 returned, uttering them with a i^laintive voice, yet with a look that 
 discovered him to feel some complacence in his own perspicacity, 
 and to receive some solace of the miseries of life from conscious- 
 ness of the dehcacy with which he felt, and the eloquence with 
 which he bewailed them." — Easselas, chap. ii. 
 
 This remark of Dr. Johnson on the consolation 
 derived by his hero from the eloquence "with which he 
 gave vent to his complaints is perfectly just, but just 
 only in such cases as those of Rasselas. The misery 
 that can be expressed in flowing periods cannot be of 
 more importance than that experienced by the Abys- 
 sinian prince enclosed in the Happy Valley. His 
 greatest calamity was no more than that he could not 
 leave a place in which all the luxuries of life were at 
 his command. But, as old Chremes says in the Seau- 
 tontimorumenos,
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 65 
 
 " Miseiiim ? quern minus credere 'st ? 
 Quid reliqui 'st, quin haheat, quae quidem in homine dicuntur bona ? 
 Pai-entes, patriam incolumem, amicos, genu', cognates, divitias : 
 Atque hffic perinde sunt ut illius animus qui ea possidet ; 
 Qui uti scit, ei bona; Uli, qui non utitur recte, mala."* 
 
 On whicli, as 
 
 "Plain truth, dear Bentley, needs no parts of speech," 
 
 I cannot do better than transcribe the commentary of 
 Hickie, or some other grave expositor from whose 
 pages he has transferred it to his own. " 'Tis certain 
 that the real enjoyment arising from external advan- 
 tages depends wholly upon the situation of the mind of 
 him who possesses them ; for if he chance to labour 
 under any secret anguish, this destroys all relish ; or, 
 
 * It may be thus attempted in something like the metre of the 
 original, which the learned know by the sounding name of Tetra- 
 meter Iambic Aeatalectic : 
 
 " Does CHuia talk of misery ? Believe his idle tale who can ? 
 WTiat hinders it that he should have whate'er is counted good for 
 
 man, — 
 His father's home, his native land, with wealth, and friends, and 
 
 kith and kin ? 
 But all these blessings will be piized according to the mind T\ithin : 
 WeU used, the owner finds them good ; if badly used, he deems 
 them iU. 
 CI. Nay, but his sii'e was always stem, and even now I fear him 
 still," &c. 
 
 F
 
 66 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 if he know not how to use them for valuable purposes, 
 they are so far from being of any service to him, that 
 they often turn to real misfortunes." It is of no con- 
 sequence that this profound reflection is nothing to the 
 purpose in the place where it appears, because Chremes 
 is not talking of any secret anguish, but of the use or 
 abuse made of advantages according to the disposition 
 of the individual to whom they have been accorded ; 
 and the anguish of Clinia was by no means secret. He 
 feared the perpetual displeasure of his father, and 
 knew not whether absence might not have diminished or 
 alienated the affections of the lady on whose account he 
 had abandoned home and country ; but the general pro- 
 position of the sentence cannot be denied. A " fatal 
 remembrance" — to borrow a phrase from one of the 
 most beautiful of Moore's melodies — may render a life, 
 apparently abounding in prosperity, wretched and un- 
 happy, as the vitiation of a single humour of the eye 
 casts a sickly and unnatural hue over the gladsome 
 meadow, or turns to a lurid light the brilliancy of the 
 sunniest skies. 
 
 Rasselas and Jaques have no secret anguish to tor- 
 ment them, no real cares to disturb the even current 
 of their tempers. To get rid of the prince first : — 
 His sorrow is no iiiore than that of the starling in the
 
 PICTURES, GEAVE AND GAY. 67 
 
 Sentimental Journey. He cannot get out. He is dis- 
 contented, because he has not the patience of Words- 
 worth's nuns, who fret not in their narrow cells ; or of 
 Wordsworth's muse, which murmurs not at being 
 cribbed and confined to a sonnet. He wants the 
 philosophy of that most admirable of all jail-ditties, 
 — and will not reflect that 
 
 " Every island is a prison, 
 
 Close surrounded by the sea ; 
 Kings and piinces, for that reason, 
 Prisoners are as well as we." 
 
 And as his calamity is, after all, very tolerable, — as 
 many a sore heart or a wearied mind, buffeting about 
 amid the billows and breakers of the external world, 
 would feel but too happy to exchange conditions with 
 him in his safe haven of rest, — it is no wonder that 
 the weaving of sonorous sentences of easily soothed 
 sorrow should be the extent of the mental afflictions of 
 Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. 
 
 Who or what Jaques was before he makes his ap- 
 pearance in the forest, Shakspeare does not inform 
 us, — any farther than that he had been a roue of 
 considerable note, as the Duke tells him, when he 
 
 proposes to 
 
 f3
 
 68 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 " Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, 
 If they will patiently receive my medicine. 
 
 Duke. Fie on thee ! I can teU what thou wouldst do. 
 
 Jaques. What, for a counter, would I do but good ? 
 
 Duke. Most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin ; 
 For thou thyself hast been a hbertine 
 As sensual as the brutish stiug itself ; 
 And all the embossed sores and headed evils 
 That thou with licence of fi'ee foot hast caught, 
 Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world." 
 
 This, and that he was one of the three or four loving 
 lords "who put themselves into voluntary exile with the 
 old Duke, leaving their lands and revenues to enrich 
 the new one, who therefore gave them good leave to 
 wander, is all we know about him, until he is formally 
 announced to us as the melancholy Jaques. The very 
 announcement is a tolerable proof that he is not soul- 
 stricken in any material degree. When Rosalind tells 
 him that he is considered to be a melancholy fellow, he 
 is hard put to it to describe in what his melancholy 
 consists. " I have," he says, 
 
 " Neither the scholar's melancholy, which 
 Is emulation ; nor the musician's, which is 
 Fantastical ; nor the courtier's, which is proud ; 
 Nor the soldier's. 
 
 Which is ambitious ; nor the lawyer's, which 
 Is politic ; nor the lady's, which is nice ; 
 Nor the lover's, which is aU these : but it is
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 69 
 
 A melancholy of mine own, compounded 
 
 Of many simples, extracted from many objects, 
 
 And indeed 
 
 The sundrj' contemplation of my travels, 
 
 In which my often rumination wraps me 
 
 In a most humorous sadness."* 
 
 He is nothiDg more than an idle gentleman given to 
 musing, and makins; invectives against the affairs of 
 the world, which are more remarkable for the poetry of 
 their style and expression than the pungency of their 
 satire. His famous description of the seven ages of 
 man is that of a man who has seen but little to com- 
 plain of in his career through life. The sorrows of his 
 infant are of the slightest kind, and he notes that it is 
 taken care of in a nurse's lap. The griefs of his 
 schoolboy are confined to the necessity of going to 
 school ; and he, too, has had an anxious hand to attend 
 to him. His shining morning face reflects the superin- 
 tendence of one — probably a mother — interested in his 
 
 * This is piinted as prose, but assuredly it is blank verse. The 
 alteration of a syllable or two, which in the corrupt state of the 
 text of these plays is the slightest of aU possible critical licences, 
 ■would make it run perfectly smooth. At all events, in the second 
 line, " emulation " should be " emulative," to make it agree with 
 the other clauses of the sentence. The courtier's melancholy is 
 not pride, nor the soldier's ambition, &c. The adjective is used 
 throughout, — fantastical, proud, ambitious, politic, nice.
 
 70 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 welfare. The lover is tortured by no piercing pangs of 
 love, liis woes evaporating themselves musically in a 
 ballad of his own composition, written not to his mis- 
 tress, but fantastically addressed to her eyebrow. The 
 soldier appears in all the pride and the swelling hopes 
 of his spirit-stirring trade, 
 
 " Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, 
 Seeking the bubble reputation 
 Even in the cannon's mouth." 
 
 The fair round belly of the justice lined with good 
 capon lets us know how he has passed his life. He 
 is full of ease, magisterial authority, and squirely 
 dignity. The lean and slippered pantaloon, and the 
 dotard sunk into second childishness, have suffered 
 only the common lot of humanity, without any of 
 the calamities that embitter the unavoidable malady 
 of old age.^ All the characters in Jaques's sketch are 
 well taken care of. The infant is nursed; the boy 
 educated ; the youth tormented with no greater cares 
 than the necessity of hunting after rhymes to please 
 the ear of a lady, whose love sits so lightly upon him 
 as to set him upon nothing more serious than such 
 
 * " Senectus ipsa est morbus." — Ter. Phorm. iv, i. 9.
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 71 
 
 a self-amusing task ; the man in prime of life is 
 engaged in gallant deeds, brave in action, anxious 
 for character, and ambitious of fame ; the man in de- 
 clining years has won the due honours of his rank, 
 he enjoys the luxuries of the table and dispenses the 
 terrors of the bench ; the man of age still more ad- 
 vanced is well to do in the world. If his shank 
 be shrunk, it is not without hose and slipper, — if 
 his eyes be dim, they are spectacled, — if his years 
 have made him lean, they have gathered for him 
 wherewithal to fatten the pouch by his side. And when 
 this strange eventful history is closed by the penalties 
 paid by men who live too long, Jaques does not tell us 
 that the helpless being, 
 
 " Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything," 
 
 is left unprotected in his helplessness. 
 
 Such pictures of life do not proceed from a man 
 very heavy at heart. Nor can it be without design 
 that they are introduced into this especial place. The 
 moment before, the famished Orlando has burst in 
 upon the sylvan meal of the Duke, brandishing a 
 naked sword, demanding with furious threat food for 
 himself and his helpless companion, 
 
 " Oppressed \vith two weak evils, age and hunger."
 
 72 SHAKSPEAEE PAPEES : 
 
 The Duke, struck with his earnest appeal, cannot 
 refrain from comparing the real suffering which he 
 witnesses in Orlando with that which is endured by 
 himself and his " co-mates, and partners in exile." 
 Addressing Jaques, he says, 
 
 " Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy. 
 This wide and universal theatre 
 Presents more woeful pageants than the scene 
 "UTierein we play in."* 
 
 But the spectacle and the comment upon it lightly 
 touch Jaques, and he starts off at once into a witty 
 and poetic comparison of the real drama of the world 
 with the mimic drama of the stage, in which, with 
 the sight of well-nurtured youth driven to the savage 
 desperation of periling his own life, and assailing that 
 of others, — and of weakly old age lying down in the 
 feeble but equally resolved desperation of dying by 
 the wayside, driven to this extremity by sore fatigue 
 and hunger, — he diverts himself and his audience, 
 whether in the forest or theatre, on the stage or in 
 the closet, with graphic descriptions of human life; 
 not one of them, proceeding as they do from the lips 
 of the melancholy Jaques, presenting a single point 
 
 * Query- o;i / "Wlierem we playm" is tautological. "TMierein 
 we play on" i. e. " continue to play."
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY, 73 
 
 on which true melancholy can dwell. Mourning over 
 what cannot be avoided must be in its essence common- 
 place : and nothing has been added to the lamentations 
 over the ills brought by the flight of years since 
 Moses, the man of God,* declared the concluding 
 period of protracted life to be a period of labour 
 and sorrow; — since Solomon, or whoever else writes 
 under the name of the Preacher, in a passage which, 
 whether it is inspired or not, is a passage of exquisite 
 beauty, warned us to provide in youth, " while the evil 
 days come not, nor the years draw nigh when thou 
 shalt say, I have no pleasure in them ; while the 
 sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars be not 
 darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: in 
 the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, 
 and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the 
 grinders cease because they are few, and those that 
 look out of the windows be darkened, and the doors 
 shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the 
 grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice 
 of the bird, and all the daughters of music shall 
 be brought low ; also when they shall be afraid of 
 that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, 
 
 * Psalm xc. " A prayer of Moses, the man of God," v. 10.
 
 74 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 and the almond-tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper 
 shall be a burthen, and desire shall fail : because 
 man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go 
 about the streets : or ever the silver cord be loosed, 
 or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken 
 at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern ; " 
 — or, to make a shorter quotation, since Homer 
 summed np all these ills bj applying to old age the 
 epithet of Xvypo';, — a word which cannot be trans- 
 lated, but the force of which must be felt. Abate 
 these unavoidable misfortmies, and the catalogue of 
 Jaques is that of happj conditions. In his visions 
 there is no trace of the child doomed to wretchedness 
 before its very birth ; no hint that such a thing could 
 occur as its being made an object of calculation, 
 one part medical, three parts financial, to the starvel- 
 ing surgeon, whether by the floating of the lungs, 
 or other test equally fallacious and fee-producing, 
 the miserable mother may be convicted of doing that 
 which, before she had attempted, all that is her 
 soul of woman must have been torn from its utter- 
 most roots, when in an agony of shame and dread 
 the child that was to have made her forget her labour 
 was committed to the cesspool. No hint that the 
 days of infancy should be devoted to the damnation
 
 PICTDEES, GRAVE AND GAT. 76 
 
 of a factory, or to the tender mercies of a parish 
 beadle. No hint that philosophy should come forward 
 armed with the panoply offensive and defensive of 
 logic and eloquence, to prove that the inversion of 
 all natural relations was just and wise, — that the 
 toil of childhood was due to the support of manhood, 
 — that those hours, the very labours of which even 
 the etymologists give to recreation, should be devoted 
 to those wretched drudgeries which seem to split the 
 hearts of all but those who derive from them blood- 
 stained money, or blood-bedabbled applause. Jaques 
 sees not Greensmith squeezing his children by the 
 throat until they die. He hears not the supplication 
 of the hapless boy begging his still more hapless 
 father for a moment's respite, ere the fatal hand- 
 kerchief is twisted round his throat by the hand of 
 him to whom he owed his being. Jaques thinks not 
 of the baby deserted on the step of the inhospitable 
 door, of the shame of the mother, of the disgrace 
 of the parents, of the misery of the forsaken infant. 
 His boy is at school, his soldier in the breach, his 
 elder on the justice-seat. Are these the woes of 
 life? Is there no neglected creature left to himself 
 or to the worse nurture of others, whose trade it is 
 to corrupt, — who mil teach him what was taught to
 
 76 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 swaggering Jack Chance, found on Newgate steps, 
 and educated at the venerable seminary of St. Giles's 
 Pound, where 
 
 " They taught him to drink, and to thieve, and fight, 
 And eveiything else but to read and write." 
 
 Is there no stripling short of commons, but abundant 
 in the supply of the strap or the cudgel ? — no man 
 fighting through the world in fortuneless struggles, 
 and occupied by cares or oppressed by wants more 
 stringent than those of love ? — or in love itself does 
 the current of that bitter passion never run less 
 smooth than when sonnets to a lady's eyebrow are the 
 prime objects of solicitude ? — or may not even he who 
 began with such sonneteering have found something 
 more serious and sad, something more heart-throbbing 
 and soul-rending, in the progress of his passion ? Is 
 the soldier melancholy in the storm and whirlwind 
 of war? Is the gallant confronting of the cannon 
 a matter to be complained of ? The dolorous flight, 
 the trampled battalion, the broken squadron, the lost 
 battle, the lingering wound, the ill-furnished hospital, 
 the unfed blockade, hunger and thirst, and pain, and 
 fatigue, and mutilation, and cold, and rout, and scorn, 
 and slight, — services neglected, unworthy claims pre- 
 ferred, life wasted, or honour tarnished, — are all passed
 
 PICTUBES, GRAVK AND GAT. 77 
 
 by ! In peaceful life we have no deeper misfortune 
 placed before us than that it is not unusual that a 
 justice of peace may be prosy in remark and trite 
 in illustration. Are there no other evils to assail 
 us through the agony of life? And when the con- 
 clusion comes, how far less tragic is the portraiture 
 of mental imbecility, if considered as a state of 
 misery than as one of comparative happiness, as es- 
 caping a still worse lot! Crabbe is sadder far than 
 Jaques, when, after his appalling description of the 
 inmates of a workhouse, — (what would Crabbe have 
 written now ?) — he winds up by showing to us amid 
 its victims two persons as being 
 
 " happier far than they, 
 The moiling idiot, and the madman gay." 
 
 If what he here sums up as the result of his life's 
 observations on mankind be all that calls forth the 
 melancholy of the witty and eloquent speaker, he had 
 not much to complain of. Mr. Shandy lamenting in 
 sweetly modulated periods, because his son has been 
 clu'istened Tristram instead of Trismegistus, is as 
 much an object of condolence. Jaques has just seen 
 the aspect of famine, and heard the words of despair ; 
 the Duke has pointed out to him the consideration 
 that more woful and practical calamities exist than
 
 78 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 even the exile of princes and the downfall of lords ; and 
 he breaks off into a light strain of satire, fit only for 
 jesting comedy. Trim might have rebuked him as he 
 rebuked the prostrate Mr. Shandy, by reminding him 
 that there are other things to make us melancholy in 
 the world : and nobody knew it better, or could say it 
 better, than he in whose brain was minted the hysteric 
 passion of Lear choked by his button, — the farewell of 
 victorious Othello to all the pomp, pride, and circum- 
 stance of glorious war, — the tears of Richard over the 
 submission of roan Barbary to Bolingbroke, — the de- 
 mand of Romeo that the Mantuan druggist should 
 supply him with such soon-speeding gear that will rid 
 him of hated life 
 
 "As \ioleDtly as hasty powder fired 
 Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womh," — 
 
 the desolation of Antony, — the mourning of Henry 
 over sire slain by son, and son by sire, — or the despair 
 of Macbeth. I say nothing of the griefs of Constance, 
 or Isabel, or Desdemona, or Juliet, or Ophelia, because 
 in the sketches of Jaques he passes by all allusion to 
 women : a fact which of itself is sufficient to prove 
 that his melancholy was but in play, — was nothing 
 more than what Arthur remembered when he was 
 in France, where
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 79 
 
 " Young gentlemen would be as sad as night, 
 Only for wantonness." 
 
 Shakspeare well knew that there is no true pathetic, 
 nothing that can permanently lacerate the heart, and 
 embitter the speech, unless a woman be concerned. It 
 is the legacy left us by Eve. The tenor of man's 
 woe, says Milton, with a most ungallant and gi'isly 
 pun, is still from wo-msin to begin ; and he who will 
 give himself a few moments to reflect will find that the 
 stern trigamist is right. On this, however, I shall not 
 dilate. I may perhaps have something to say as we go 
 on, of the ladies of Shakspeare. For the present 
 purpose, it is enough to remark with Trim, that there 
 are many real griefs to make a man lie down and cry, 
 without troubling ourselves with those which are put 
 forward by the poetic mourner in the forest of Arden. 
 
 Different indeed is the sight set before the eyes of 
 Adam in the great poem just referred to, when he is 
 told to look upon the miseries which the fall of man 
 has entailed upon his descendants. Far other than 
 the scenes that flit across this melancholy man by pro- 
 fession are those evoked by Michael in the visionary 
 lazar-house. It would be ill-befitting, indeed, that 
 the merry note of the sweet bird warbling freely in
 
 80 SHAKSPEAKE PAPERS : 
 
 the glade should be marred by discordant sounds of 
 woe, cataloguing the dreary list of disease, 
 
 " All maladies 
 Of ghastly spasm, or racking tortui'e, qualms 
 Of heartsick agony, all feverous kinds. 
 Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catan'hs, 
 Intestine stone and ulcer, coUc pangs, 
 Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy. 
 Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence. 
 Dropsies, and asthmas, and joiat-racking rheums;" 
 
 while, amid the dire tossing and deep groans of the 
 sufferers, 
 
 " Despair 
 
 Tended the sick, husiest from couch to couch : 
 And over them ti'iumphant Death his dart 
 Shook, but delayed to stiike." 
 
 And equally ill-befitting would be any serious allusion 
 to those passions and feelings which in their violence 
 or their anguish render the human bosom a lazar-house 
 filled with maladies of the mind as racking and as 
 wasting as those of the body, and call forth a suppli- 
 cation for the releasing blow of Death as the final 
 hope, with an earnestness as desperate, and cry as loud 
 as ever arose from the tenement, sad, noisome, and 
 dark, which holds the joint-racked victims of physical 
 disease. Such themes should not sadden the festive
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 81 
 
 banquet in tlie forest. The Duke and his co-mates 
 and partners in exile, reconciled to their present mode 
 of life, [" I would not change it," sajs Amiens, 
 speaking, we may suppose, the sentiments of all,] and 
 successful in having plucked the precious jewel, con_ 
 tent, from the head of ugly and venomous Adversity, 
 are ready to bestow their woodland fare upon real 
 suflfering, but in no mood to listen to the heart-rending 
 descriptions of sorrows graver than those which form 
 a theme for the discourses which Jaques in mimic 
 melancholy contributes to their amusement. 
 
 Shakspeare designed him to be a maker of fine sen- 
 tences, — a dresser forth in sweet language of the 
 ordinary common-places or the common-place mishaps 
 of mankind, and he takes care to show us that he did 
 not intend him for anything beside. With what ad- 
 mirable art he is confronted with Touchstone. He 
 enters merrily laughing at the pointless philosophising 
 of the fool in the forest. His lungs crow like chanti- 
 cleer when he hears him moralizing over his dial, and 
 making the deep discovery that ten o'clock has succeeded 
 nine, and will be followed by eleven. When Touchstone 
 himself appears, we do not find in his own discourse any 
 touches of such deep contemplation. He is shrewd, 
 sharp, worldly, witty, keen, gibing, observant. It is
 
 83 SHAKSPEARE PAPKE3 : 
 
 plain that he has been mocking Jaques ; and, as is 
 usual, the mocked thinks himself the mocker. If one 
 has moralized the spectacle of a wounded deer into 
 a thousand similes, comparing his weeping into the 
 stream to the conduct of worldlings in giving in their 
 testaments the sum of more to that which had too 
 much, — his abandonment, to the parting of the flux 
 of companions from misery, — the sweeping by of the 
 careless herd full of the pasture, to the desertion of the 
 poor and broken bankrupt by the fat and greasy citizens, 
 — and so forth ; if such have been the common-places 
 of Jaques, are they not fitly matched by the common- 
 places of Touchstone upon his watch ? It is as high a 
 stretch of fancy that brings the reflection how 
 
 " from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, 
 
 And then from hour to hour we rot and rot, 
 And thereby hangs a tale," 
 
 which is scoffed at by Jaques, as that which dictates 
 his own moralizings on the death of the deer. The 
 motley fool is as wise as the melancholy lord whom he 
 is parodying. The shepherd Corin, who replies to 
 the courtly quizzing of Touchstone by such apoph- 
 thegms as that "it is the property of rain to wet, 
 and of fire to burn," is unconsciously performing the 
 same part to the clown, as he had been designedly
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 83 
 
 performing to Jaques. "Witty nonsense is answered 
 by dull nonsense, as the emptiness of poetry had been 
 answered by the emptiness of prose. There was 
 nothing sincere in the lamentation over the wounded 
 stag. It was only used as .a peg on which to hang 
 fine conceits. Had FalstafiF seen the deer, his ima- 
 gination would have called up visions of haunches and 
 pasties, preluding an everlasting series of cups of sack 
 among the revel riot of boon companions, and he would 
 have instantly ordered its throat to be cut. If it had 
 fallen in the way of Friar Lawrence, the mild-hearted 
 man of herbs would have endeavoured to extract the 
 arrow, heal the wound, and let the hart ungalled go 
 free. Neither would have thought the hairy fool a 
 subject for reflections, which neither relieved the wants 
 of man nor the pains of beast. Jaques complains of 
 the injustice and cruelty of killing deer, but unscrupu- 
 lously sits down to dine upon venison, and sorrows over 
 the sufi'erings of the native burghers of the forest city, 
 without doing anything farther than amusing himself 
 with rhetorical flourishes drawn from the contemplation 
 of the pain which he witnesses with professional cool- 
 ness and unconcern. 
 
 It is evident, in short, that the happiest days of his 
 life are those which he is spending in the forest. His 
 
 o3
 
 84 
 
 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 raking days are over, and he is tired of city dissi- 
 pation. He has shaken hands with the -world, finding, 
 with Cowley, that " he and it would never agree." To 
 use an expression somewhat vulgar, he has had his fun 
 for his money ; and he thijiks the bargain so fair and 
 conclusive on both sides, that he has no notion of 
 opening another. His mind is relieved of a thousand 
 anxieties which beset him in the court, and he breathes 
 freely in the forest. The iron has not entered into his 
 soul; nothing has occurred to chase sleep from his 
 eyelids ; and his fantastic reflections are, as he himself 
 takes care to tell us, but general observations on the 
 ordinary and outward manners and feelings of man- 
 kind, — a species of taxing which 
 
 " like a wild-goose flies, 
 
 Unclaim'd of any man." 
 
 Above all, in having abandoned station, and wealth, 
 and country, to join the faithful few who have in evil 
 report clung manfully to their prince, he knows that he 
 has played a noble and an honourable part ; and they 
 to whose lot it may have fallen to experience the hap- 
 piness of having done a generous, disinterested, or self- 
 denying action, — or sacrificed temporary interests to 
 undying principle, — or shown to the world without,
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AST) GAT. 85 
 
 that what are thought to be its great advantages can 
 be flung aside, or laid aside, when they come in colli- 
 sion with the feelings and passions of the world 
 within, — will be perfectly sure that Jaques, reft of 
 land, and banished from court, felt himself exalted 
 in his own eyes, and therefore easy of mind, whether 
 he was mourning in melodious blank verse, or weaving 
 jocular parodies on the canzonets of the good-humoured 
 Amiens. 
 
 He was happy " under the greenwood tree." Addi- 
 son I believe it is who says, that all mankind have an 
 instinctive love of country and woodland scenery, and 
 he traces it to a sort of dim recollection imprinted 
 upon us of our original haunt, the garden of Eden. 
 It is at all events certain, that, from the days when 
 the cedars of Lebanon supplied images to the great 
 poets of Jerusalem, to that in which the tall tree 
 haunted Wordsworth " as a passion," the forest has 
 caught a strong hold of the poetic mind. It is with 
 reluctance that I refrain from quoting ; but the pas- 
 sages of surpassing beauty which crowd upon me from 
 all times and languages are too numerous. I know not 
 which to exclude, and I have not room for all ; let me 
 then take a bit of prose from one who never indulged 
 in poetry, and I think I shall make it a case in point.
 
 86 SHAKSPEARK PAPERS : 
 
 In a little book called Statistical Sketches of Upper 
 Canada, for the use of Emigrants, by a Backwoodsman, 
 now lying before me, the author, after describing the 
 field-sports in Canada with a precision and a gout to 
 be derived only from practice and zeal, concludes a 
 chapter, most appropriately introduced by a motto from 
 TJie Lady of the Lake, 
 
 " 'Tis mem-, 'tis mem' in good greenwood. 
 When the mavis and merle are singing, 
 When the deer sweep by, and the hounds are in cry. 
 And the hunter's horn is ringing," 
 
 by saying, 
 
 " It is only since writing the above that I fell in 
 with the first volume of Moore's Life of Lord Edward 
 Fitzgerald; and I cannot describe the pleasure I re- 
 ceived from reading his vivid, spirited, and accurate 
 description of the feelings he experienced on first 
 taking on him the life of a hunter. At an earlier 
 period of life than Lord Edward had then attained, 
 I made my debut in the forest, and first assumed the 
 blanket-cloak and the rifle, the moccasin and the snow- 
 shoe; and the ecstatic feeling of Arab- like indepen- 
 dence, and the utter contempt for the advantage and 
 restrictions of civilization, which he describes, I then 
 felt in its fullest power. And even now, when my way
 
 PICTURES, GEAVE AND GAT. 87 
 
 of life, like Macbeth's, is falling ' into the sere, the 
 yellow leaf,' and when a tropical climate, privation, 
 disease, and thankless toil are combining with advanc- 
 ing years to unstring a frame the strength of which 
 once set hunger, cold, and fatigue at defiance, and to 
 undermine a constitution that once appeared iron- 
 bound, still I cannot lie down by a fire in the woods 
 without the elevating feeling which I experienced 
 formerly returning, though in a diminished degree. 
 This must be human nature ; — for it is an undoubted 
 fact, that no man who associates with and follows the 
 pursuits of the Indian, for any length of time, ever 
 voluntarily returns to civilized society. 
 
 " What a companion in the woods Lord Edward 
 must have been ! and how shocking to think that, 
 with talents which would have made him at once 
 the idol and the ornament of his profession, and af- 
 fections which must have rendered him an object 
 of adoration in all the relations of private life — with 
 honour, with courage, with generosity, with every trait 
 that can at once ennoble and endear, — he should 
 never have been taught that there is a higher prin- 
 ciple of action than the mere impulse of the passions, 
 — that he should never have learned, before plunging 
 his country into blood and disorder, to have weighed
 
 88 
 
 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS; 
 
 the means he possessed with the end he proposed, 
 or the problematical good with the certain evil ! — that 
 he should have had Tom Paine for a tutor in religion 
 and politics, and Tom Moore for a biographer, to hold 
 up as a pattern, instead of warning, the errors and 
 misfortunes of a being so noble, — to subserve the re- 
 volutionary purposes of a faction, who, like Samson, 
 are pulling down a fabric which will bury both them 
 and their enemies under it." 
 
 Never mind the aberrations of Lord Edward Fitz- 
 gerald, the religion or the politics of Tom Paine, or 
 the biography of Tom Moore. On all these matters 
 I may hold my own opinions, but they are not wanted 
 now , but have we not here the feelings of Jaques ? 
 Here are the gloomy expressions of general sorrow over 
 climate, privation, disease, thankless toil, advancing 
 years, unstrung frame. But here also we have ecstatic 
 emotions of Arab-like independence, generous reflections 
 upon political adversaries, and high-minded adherence 
 to the views and principles which in his honour and 
 conscience he believed to be in all circumstances in- 
 flexibly right, coming from the heart of a forest. The 
 Backwoodsman is Dunlop ; and is he, in spite of this 
 sad-sounding passage, melancholy ? Not he, in good 
 sooth. The very next page to that which I have
 
 PICTURES, GEAA'E AND GAY. 89 
 
 quoted is a description of the pleasant mode of tra- 
 velling in Canada, before the march of improvement 
 had made it comfortable and convenient.* 
 
 Jaques was just as woe-begone as the Tyger, and 
 no more. I remember when he~Dunlop I mean, not 
 Jaques — used to laugh at the phrenologists of Edin- 
 
 * " Formerly, that is to say, previous to the peace of 1815, a 
 journey between Quebec and Sandwich was an undertaking con- 
 siderably more tedious and troublesome than the voyage from 
 London to Qiiebec. In the first place, the commissariat of the 
 expedition had to be cared for ; and to that end every gentleman 
 who was liable to travel had, as a part of his appointments, a pro- 
 \dsion basket, which held generally a cold round of beef, tin plates 
 and drinking cups, tea, sugar, biscuits, and about a gallon of 
 brandy. These, with your wardrobe and a camp-bed, were stowed 
 away in a batteau, or flat-bottomed boat; and off you set with a 
 crew of seven stout, light-hearted, joUy, lively Canadians, who sung 
 theii' boat songs all the time they could spare from smoking their 
 pipes. You were accompanied by a fleet of similar boats, called a 
 brigade, the crews of which assisted each other up the rapids, and 
 at night put into some creek, bay, or uninhabited island, where 
 fires were lighted, tents made of the sails, and the song, the laugh, 
 and the shout were heard, with little intermission, all the night 
 through ; and if you had the felicity to have among the party 
 a fifer or a fiddler, the dance was sometimes kept up all night, — for, 
 if a Frenchman has a fiddle, sleep ceases to be a necessary of Ufa 
 with him. This mode of travelling was far from being unpleasant, 
 for there was something of romance and adventure iii it; and the 
 scenes you witnessed, both by night and day, were picturesque in 
 the highest degree. But it was tedious : for you were in great luck 
 if you arrived at your joui-ney's end in a month ; and if the
 
 90 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 burgh for saying, after a careful admeasurement, that 
 his skull in all points was exactly that of Shakspeare, — 
 I suppose he will be equally inclined to laugh when he 
 finds who is the double an old companion has selected 
 for him. But no matter. His melancholy passes 
 away not more rapidly than that of Jaques ; and I 
 venture to say that the latter, if he were existing in 
 flesh and blood, would have no scruple in joining the 
 doctor this moment over the bowl of punch which I am 
 sui'e he is brewing, has brewed, or is about to brew, on 
 the banks of Huron or Ontario. 
 
 Whether he would or not, he departs from the stage 
 with the grace and easy elegance of a gentleman in 
 heart and manners. He joins his old antagonist the 
 usurping Duke in his fallen fortunes ; he had spumed 
 him in his prosperity : his restored friend he be- 
 queaths to his former honour, deserved by his pa- 
 weather were boisterous, or the wind a-head, you might be an in- 
 definite time longer. 
 
 " But your march of improvement is a sore destroyer of the 
 romantic and picturesque. A gentleman about to take such a 
 journey now-a-days, orders his servant to pack his portmanteau, 
 and put it on board the John Molson, or any of his family; 
 and at the stated hour he marches on board, the bell rings, the 
 engine is put in motion, and away you go smoking, and splashing, 
 and walloping along, at the rate of ten knots an hour, in the 
 Ugliest species of craft that ever disfigured a maiine landscape."
 
 PICTURES, GEAVE AND GAY. 
 
 &1 
 
 tience and his virtue, — he compliments Oliver on his 
 restoration to his land, and love, and great allies, — 
 wishes Silvius joy of his long-sought and well-earned 
 marriage, — cracks upon Touchstone one of those good- 
 humoured jests to which men of the world on the eve 
 of marriage must laughingly submit, — and makes his 
 bow. Some sage critics have discovered as a great 
 geographical fault in Shakspeare, that he introduces 
 the tropical lion and serpent into Arden, which, it 
 appears, they have ascertained to lie in some temperate 
 zone. I wish them joy of their sagacity. Monsters 
 more wonderful are to be found in that forest ; for 
 never yet, since water ran and tall tree bloomed, were 
 there gathered together such a company as those 
 who compose the dramatis personce of As You Like 
 it. All the prodigies spawned by Africa, " leonum 
 arida nutrix,''^ might well have teemed in a forest, 
 wherever situate, that was inhabited by such creatures 
 as Rosalind, Touchstone, and Jaques. 
 
 ^^" As to the question which opened these Papers, 
 — why, I must leave it to the jury. Is the jesting, 
 revelling, rioting Falstaff, broken of fortunes, luckless 
 in life, sunk in habits, buffeting with the discreditable 
 part of the world, or the melancholy, mourning, com-
 
 92 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 plaining Jaques, honourable of conduct, high in moral 
 position, fearless of the future, and lying in the forest 
 away from trouble, — which of them, I say, feels more 
 the load of care? I think Shakspeare well knew, and 
 depicted them accordingly. But I must leave it to 
 my readers, si qui sunt. W. M. 
 
 EOMEO. 
 
 " Of this unlucky sort our Eomeus is one, 
 For all his hap tui-ns to mishap, and all his mirth to mone." 
 The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet. 
 
 '* Never," says Prince Escalus, in the concluding 
 distich of Romeo and Juliet, 
 
 " — was there stoiy of more woe 
 Than this of Juhet and her Romeo." 
 
 It is a story which, in the inartificial shape of a black- 
 letter ballad, powerfully affected the imagination, and 
 awakened the sensibilities of our ancestors, and in the 
 hands of Shakspeare has become the love-story of the 
 whole world. Who cares for the loves of Petrarch and 
 Laura, or of Eloisa and Abelard, compared with those 
 of Romeo and Juliet ? The gallantries of Petrarch are 
 conveyed in models of polished and ornate verse ; but,
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 93' 
 
 in spite of their elegance, we feel that they are frosty 
 as the Alps beneath which they were written. They 
 are only the exercises of genius, not the ebullitions of 
 feeling ; and we can easily credit the story that 
 Petrarch refused a dispensation to marry Laura, lest 
 marriage might spoil his poetry. The muse, and not 
 the lady, was his mistress. In the case of Abelard 
 there are many associations which are not agreeable ; 
 and, after all, we can hardly help looking upon him as 
 a fitter hero for Bailie's Dictionary than a romance. 
 In Romeo and Juliet we have the poetry of Petrarch 
 without its iciness, and the passion of Eloisa free from 
 its coarse exhibition. We have, too, philosophy far 
 more profound than ever was scattered over the syllo- 
 gistic pages of Abelard, full of knowledge and acute- 
 ness as they undoubtedly are. 
 
 But I am not about to consider Romeo merely as a 
 lover, or to use him as an illustration of Lysander's 
 often-quoted line, 
 
 " The course of true love never did ran smooth." 
 
 In that course the current has been as rough to others 
 as to Romeo ; who, in spite of all his misfortunes, has 
 wooed and won the lady of his affections. That Lysan- 
 der's line is often true, cannot be questioned; though
 
 94 SHAKSPEABE PAPERS : 
 
 it is no more than the exaggeration of an annoyed 
 suitor to say that love has never run smoothly. The 
 reason why it should be so generally true, is given in 
 Peveril of the Peak, by Sir Walter Scott ; a man 
 who closely approached to the genius of Shakspeare in 
 depicting character, and who, above all WTiters of 
 imagination, most nearly resembled him in the posses- 
 sion of keen, shrewd, every-day common sense, rendered 
 more remarkable by the contrast of the romantic, 
 pathetic, and picturesque by which it is in all directions 
 surrounded. 
 
 " This celebrated passage 
 
 [' Ah me 1 for aught that ever I coitld read,' &c.] 
 
 which we have prefixed to this chapter, [chap, xii, 
 vol. i. Peveril of the Peak,^ has, like most observations 
 of the same author, its foundation in real experience. 
 The period at which love is felt most strongly is seldom 
 that at which there is much prospect of its being 
 brought to a happy issue. In fine, there are few men 
 who do not look back in secret to some period of their 
 youth at which a sincere and early afiection was re- 
 pulsed or betrayed, or became abortive under opposing 
 circumstances. It is these little passages of secret 
 history, which leave a tinge of romance in every bosom,
 
 PICTUKES, GEAYE AKD GAT. 95 
 
 ' Scarce permitting ua, even in the most busy or the most 
 advanced period of life, to listen with total indifference 
 to a tale of true love."* 
 
 These remarks, the justice of which cannot be ques- 
 tioned, scarcely apply to the case of Romeo. In no 
 respect save that the families were at variance, was the 
 match between him and Juliet such as not to afford a 
 prospect of happy issue ; and everything indicated the 
 possibility of making their marriage a ground of recon- 
 ciliation between their respective houses. Both are 
 tired of the quarrel. Lady Capulet and Lady Montague 
 are introduced in the very first scene of the play, 
 endeavouring to pacify their husbands ; and when the 
 brawl is over, Paris laments to Juliet's father that it is 
 a pity persons of such honourable reckoning should have 
 lived so long at variance. For Romeo himself old 
 Capulet expresses the highest respect, as being one of 
 the ornaments of the city; and, after the death of 
 Juliet, old Montague, touched by her truth and con- 
 stancy, proposes to raise to her a statue of gold. With 
 such sentiments and predispositions, the early passion 
 
 * "Was Sir Walter thinking of his ovm case when he wrote this 
 passage ? See his Life by Lockhai-t, voh i. p. 342. His family 
 used to call Sii' Walter Old Peveril, from some fancied resem- 
 blance of the chaa'acter.
 
 96- SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 of the Veronese lovers does not come •within the canon of 
 Sir Walter Scott ; and, as I have said, I do not think 
 that Romeo is designed merely as an exhibition of a 
 man unfortunate in love. 
 
 I consider him to be meant as the character of an 
 unluchy man, — a man who, with the best views and 
 fairest intentions, is perpetually so unfortunate as to fail 
 in every aspiration, and, while exerting himself to the 
 utmost in their behalf, to involve all whom he holds 
 dearest in misery and ruin. At the commencement of 
 the play an idle quarrel among some low retainers of the 
 rival families produces a general riot, with which he 
 has nothing to do. He is not present from beginning to- 
 end ; the tumult has been so sudden and unexpected, 
 that his father is obliged to ask 
 
 " Wh&i set this ancient quarrel new abroach ? " 
 
 And yet it is this very quarrel which lays him prostrate 
 in death by his own hand, outside Capulet's monument, 
 before the tragedy concludes. While the fray was 
 going on, he was nursing love-fancies, and endeavouring 
 to persuade himself that his heart was breaking for 
 Rosaline. How afflicting his passion must have been, 
 we see by the conundrums he makes upon it :
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 97 
 
 " Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs ; 
 Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes ; 
 Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears.* 
 What is it else ? — a madness most discreet, 
 A choking gall, and a preserving sweet." — 
 
 And so forth. The sorrows which we can balance in 
 such trim antitheses do not lie very deep. The time is 
 rapidly advancing when his sentences will be less 
 sounding. 
 
 " It is my lady ; oh, it is my love ! 
 that she knew she were ! " 
 
 speaks more touchingly the state of his engrossed soul 
 than all the fine metaphors ever vented. The super- 
 cilious Spartans in the days of their success prided 
 themselves upon the laconic brevity of their despatches 
 to states in hostility or alliance with them. When they 
 were sinking before the Macedonians, another style was 
 adopted ; and Philip observed that he had taught them 
 to lengthen their monosyllables. Real love has had a 
 contrary effect upon Romeo. It has abridged his 
 swelling passages, and brought him to the language of 
 prose. The reason of the alteration is the same in both 
 cases. The brevity of the Spartans was the result of 
 studied affectation. They sought, by the insolence of 
 
 * Is Ihei'e not a line missing ? 
 
 H
 
 98 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 threats obscurely insinuated in a sort of demi-oracular 
 language, to impose upon others, — perhaps they imposed 
 upon themselves, — an extravagant opinion of their mys- 
 terious power. The secret was found out at last, and 
 their anger bubbled over in big words and lengthened 
 sentences. The love of Kosaline is as much affected on 
 the part of Romeo, and it explodes in wire-drawn 
 conceits. 
 
 " WTien the devout reUgion of mine eye 
 
 Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires ; 
 And those who often drown'd could never die, 
 
 Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars. 
 One fairer than my love ! — the all-seeing sun 
 Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun." 
 
 It is no wonder that a gentleman who is so clever as to 
 be able to say such extremely fine things, forgets, in the 
 next scene, the devout religion of his eye, without any 
 apprehension of the transparent heretic being burnt for 
 a liar by the transmutation of tears into the flames of 
 an auto dafe. He is doomed to discover that love in 
 his case is not a madness most discreet when he defies 
 the stars ; there are then no lines of magnificent 
 declamation. 
 
 " Is it even so ? then I defy you, stars ! 
 
 Thou knowest my lodging: get me ink and paper, 
 And lih-e post-horses; I wUl hence to-nigbt."
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE ANB GAY. 99 
 
 Nothing can be plainer prose than these verses. But 
 how were they delivered ? Balthazar will tell us. 
 
 " Pardon me, sir; I dare not leave you thus : 
 Your looks are pale and wild, and do import 
 Some misadventure." 
 
 Again, nothing can be more quiet than his final 
 determination : 
 
 /^ " Well, Juliet, I will Ue with thee to-night." 
 
 It is plain Juliet, — unattended by any romantic 
 epithet of love. There is nothing about " Cupid's 
 arrow," or "Dian's wit;" no honeyed word escapes 
 his lips, — nor again does any accent of despair. His 
 mind is so made up, — the whole course of the short 
 remainder of his life so unalterably fixed, that it is 
 perfectly useless to think more about it. He has full 
 leisure to reflect without disturbance upon the details of 
 the squalid penury which made him set down the poor 
 apothecary as a fit instrument for what now had become 
 his " need ; " and he offers his proposition of purchasing 
 that soon-speeding gear which is to hurry him out of 
 life, with the same business-like tone as if he were pur- 
 chasing a pennyworth of sugar-candy. When the 
 apothecary suggests the danger of selling such drugs, 
 Romeo can reflect on the Tolly of scrupling to sacrifice 
 
 h3
 
 100 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 life when the holder of it is so poor and unfortunate. 
 Gallant and gay of appearance himself, he tells his new- 
 found acquaintance that bareness, famine, oppression, 
 ragged misery, the hollow cheek and the hungry eye, 
 are fitting reasons why death should be desired, not 
 avoided ; and with a cool philosophy assures him that 
 gold is worse poison than the compound which hurries 
 the life- weary taker out of the world. The language of 
 desperation cannot be more dismally determined. What 
 did the apothecary think of his customer as he pocketed 
 the forty ducats ? There you go, lad, — there you go, he 
 might have said, — there you go with that in your 
 girdle that, if you had the strength of twenty men, 
 would straight despatch you. "Well do I know the use 
 for which you intend it. To-morrow's sun sees not you 
 alive. And you philosophise to me on the necessity of 
 buying food and getting into flesh. You taunt my 
 poverty, — you laugh at my rags, — you bid me defy the 
 law, — you tell me the world is my enemy. It may be 
 so, lad, — it may be so ; but less tattered is my garment 
 than your heart, — less harassed by law of one kind or 
 another my pursuit than yours. What ails that lad ? 
 I know not, neither do I care. But that he should 
 moralize to me on the hard lot which I experience,— 
 that he, with those looks and those accents, should
 
 PICTUKES, GRAVE AND GAY. 101 
 
 fancy that I, amid my beggarly account of empty boxes, 
 am less bappy than he, — ha ! ha ! ha ! — it is something 
 to make one laugh. Ride your way, boy : I have your 
 forty ducats in my purse, and you my drug in your 
 pocket. And the law ! Well ! "What can the execu- 
 tioner do worse to me in my penury and my age than 
 you have doomed for yourself in your youth and splen- 
 dour. I carry not my hangman in my saddle as I ride 
 along. And the curses which the rabble may pour upon 
 my dying moments, — what are they to the howling 
 gurgle which, now rising from your heart, is deafening 
 your ears ? Adieu, boy, — adieu ! — and keep your 
 philosophy for yourself. Ho ! ho ! ho ! 
 
 But had any other passion or pursuit occupied 
 Romeo, he would have been equally unlucky as in 
 his love. Ill fortune has marked him for her own. 
 From beginning to end he intends the best ; but his 
 interfering is ever for the worst. It is evident that 
 he has not taken any part in the family feud which 
 divides Verona, and his first attachment is to a lady 
 of the antagonist house. "^ To see that lady, — perhaps 
 
 * Rosaline was niece of Capulet. The list of persons invited to 
 the ball is 
 
 " Signior Martiuo, and his 'nife and daughters ; 
 County Anselm[o], and his beauteous sisters;
 
 103 SHAKSPEAKE PAPEKS . 
 
 to mark that lie has had no share in the tumult of 
 the morning, — he goes to a ball given by Capulet, 
 at which the suitor accepted by the family is to be 
 introduced to Juliet as her intended husband. Paris 
 is in every way an eligible match. 
 
 " Verona's summer hath not such a flower." 
 
 He who has slain him addresses his corse as that 
 of the " noble County Paris," with a kindly re- 
 membrance that he was kinsman of a friend slain 
 in Romeo's own cause. Nothing can be more fervent, 
 more honourable, or more delicate than his devoted 
 and considerate wooing. His grief at the loss of 
 Juliet is expressed in few words ; but its sincerity 
 is told by his midnight and secret visit to the tomb 
 of her whom living he had honoured, and on whom, 
 when dead, he could not restrain himself from lavish- 
 
 The lady widow of Vetruvio ; 
 
 Signior Placentio, and his lovely nieces ; 
 
 Mercutio, and his hrofcher Valentine; 
 
 Mine uncle Capulet, his wife and daughters ; 
 
 My fair niece Rosaline; [and] Livia; 
 
 Signior Valentio, and his cousin Tybalt ; 
 
 Lucio, and the lively Helena." 
 
 I have altei'ed Anselme to the Italian form Ansehno, and in the 
 seventh line inserted and. I think I may fairly claim this list as 
 being in verse. It is always piinted as prose.
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 103 
 
 ing funereal homage. Secure of the favour of her 
 father, no serious objection could be anticipated from 
 herself. When questioned by her mother, she readilj 
 promises obedience to parental wishes, and goes to 
 the ball determined to " look to like, if looking liking 
 move." Everything glides on in smooth current till 
 the appearance of him whose presence is deadly. 
 Romeo himself is a most reluctant visitor. He ap- 
 prehends that the consequences of the night's revels 
 will be the vile forfeit of a despised life by an un- 
 timely death, but submits to his destiny. He foresees 
 that it is no wit to go, but consoles himself with the 
 reflection that he " means well in going to this 
 mask." His intentions, as usual, are good; and, as 
 usual, their consequences are ruinous. 
 
 He yields to his passion, and marries Juliet. For 
 this hasty act he has the excuse that the match 
 may put an end to the discord between the families. 
 Friar Lawrence hopes that 
 
 " this alliance may so happy prove 
 To turn your households' rancour into love." 
 
 It certainly has that effect in the end of the play, 
 but it is by the suicidal deaths of the flower and 
 hope of both families. Capulet and Montague tender.
 
 104 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 in a gloomy peace, the hands of friendship, over the 
 untimely grave of the poor sacrifices to their enmity. 
 Had he met her elsewhere than in her father's house, 
 he might have succeeded in a more prosperous love. 
 But there his visit is looked upon by the professed 
 duellist Tybalt, hot from the encounter of the morn- 
 ing, and enraged that he was baulked of a victim, 
 as an intrusion and an insult. The fiery partisan 
 is curbed with much diflBculty by his uncle; and 
 withdraws, his flesh trembling with wilful choler, de- 
 termined to wreak vengeance at the first opportunity 
 on the intruder. It is not long before the opportunity 
 offers. Vainly does Romeo endeavour to pacify the 
 bullying swordsman, — vainly does he protest that he 
 loves the name of Capulet, — vainly does he decline 
 the profiered duel. His good intentions are again 
 doomed to be frustrated. There stands by his side 
 as mad-blooded a spirit as Tybalt himself, and Mer- 
 cutio, all unconscious of the reasons why Romeo 
 refuses to fight, takes up the abandoned quarrel. The 
 star of the unlucky man is ever in the ascendant. 
 His ill-omened interference slays his friend. Had he 
 kept quiet, the issue might have been different ; but 
 the power that had the steerage of his course had 
 destined that the uplifting of his sword was to be
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 105 
 
 the signal of death to his very friend. And when 
 the dying Mercutio says, " Why the devil came you 
 between us ? I was hurt under your arm ; " he can 
 only offer the excuse, which is always true, and always 
 unavailing, " I thought all for the best." All his 
 visions of reconciliation between the houses are dis- 
 sipated. How can he now avoid fighting with Tybalt ? 
 His best friend lies dead, slain in his own quarrel, 
 through his own accursed intermeddling ; and the 
 swaggering victor, still hot from the slaughter, comes 
 back to triumph over the dead. Who with the heart 
 and spirit of a man could under such circumstances 
 refrain from exclaiming, 
 
 " Away to heaven, respective lenity ! 
 And fire-eyed fury be Ti\y conduct now." 
 
 Vanish gentle breath, calm words, knees humbly bowed ! 
 — his weapon in an instant glitters in the blazing sun ; 
 and as with a lightning flash, — as rapidly and resist- 
 lessly, — before Benvolio can pull his sword from the 
 scabbard, Tybalt, whom his kindred deemed a match 
 for twenty men, is laid by the side of him who but a 
 moment before had been the victim of his blade. What 
 avails the practised science of the duellist, the gentle- 
 man of the very first house, of the first and second
 
 106 SHAKSPEARE PAPEES : 
 
 cause! — how weak is the immortal passado, or the 
 punto reverso, the hay, or all the other learned devices 
 of Vincent Saviola, against the whirlwind rage of a 
 man driven to desperation by all that can rouse fury or 
 stimulate hatred ! He sees the blood of his friend red 
 upon the ground ; the accents of gross and unprovoked 
 outrage ring in his ears ; the perverse and obstinate in- 
 solence of a bravo confident in his skill, and depending 
 upon it to insure him impunity, has marred his hopes ; 
 and the butcher of the silk button has no chance against 
 the demon which he has evoked. "A la stoccata " carries 
 it not away in this encounter : but Romeo exults not 
 in his death. He stands amazed, and is with difficulty 
 hurried off, exclaiming against the constant fate which 
 perpetually thi-ows him in the way of misfortune. 
 Well, indeed, may Friar Lawrence address him by the 
 title of thou " fearful man ! " — as a man whose career 
 through life is calculated to inspire terror. Well may 
 he say to him that 
 
 " Affliction is enamour'd of thy parts, 
 And thou art wedded to calamity." 
 
 And slight is the attention which Romeo pays to the 
 eloquent arguments by which it is proved that he had
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 107 
 
 every reason to consider himself happy. When the 
 friar assures him that 
 
 " A pack of blessings lights upon thy back, 
 Happiness courts thee in her best aiTay," 
 
 the nurse may think it a discourse of learning and 
 good counsel, fit to detain an enraptured auditor all 
 the night. Romeo feels it in his case to be an idle 
 declamation, unworthy of an answer. 
 
 The events which occur during his enforced absence, 
 the haste of Paris to be wedded, the zeal of old Capulet 
 in promoting the wishes of his expected son-in-law, the 
 desperate expedient of the sleeping-draught,* the ac- 
 
 * Is there not some mistake in the length of time that this 
 sleeping-draught is to occupy, if we consider the text as it now 
 stands to be coiTect? Fidar Lawi-ence says to Juliet, when he is 
 recommending the expedient, 
 
 " Take thou this phial, being then in bed, 
 And this distilled liquor drink thou off: 
 "VMien presently through aU thy veins shaU ran 
 A cold and drowsy humour, which shall seize 
 Each vital spirit, &c. 
 
 And in this borrow'd hkeness of shrunk death 
 Thou shalt remain full two and forty hours, 
 And then awake as from a pleasant sleep." 
 
 JuUet retires to bed on Tuesday night, at a somewhat early hour. 
 Her mother says after she departs, " 'Tis now near night." Say it 
 is eleven o'clock : foxty-two hours fi-om that hour biing us to five
 
 108 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 cident which prevented the delivery of the friar's 
 letter, the officious haste of Balthazar to communicate 
 
 o'clock in the evening of Thursday ; and yet we find the time of 
 her awakening fixed in profound darkness, and not long before the 
 dawn. We should allow at least ten hours more, and read, 
 
 " Thou shalt remain full two and fifty hours," — 
 
 which would fix her awakening at three o'clock in the morning, a 
 time which has been marked in a former scene as the approach 
 of day. 
 
 " Cap. Come, stir, stii', stir ! The second cock has crow'd, — 
 The curfew bell hath rung, — 'tis three o'clock." 
 
 Immediately after he says, " Good faith, 'tis day." This observa- 
 tion may appear superfluously minute; but those who take the 
 pains of reading the play critically wiU find that it is dated through- 
 out with a most exact attention to hours. We can time almost 
 every event. Ex. gr. Juliet dismisses the nurse on her en'and to 
 Eonieo when the clock struck nine, and complains that she has not 
 returned at twelve. At twelve she does return, and Juliet immedi- 
 ately proceeds to Friar Lawrence's cell, where she is married 
 without delay. Komeo parts with his bride at once, and meets his 
 friends while " the day is hot." Juliet at the same hour addresses 
 her prayer to the fiery-footed steeds of Phoebus, too slowly for her 
 feelings progressing towards the west. The same exactness is 
 observed in every part of the play. 
 
 I may remark, as another instance of Eomeo's iU luck, the change 
 of the original wedding day. When pressed by Paris, old Capulet 
 says that " Wednesday is too soon, — on Thursday let it be;" but 
 afteiTvards, when he imagines that his daughter is incUned to 
 consult his wishes, he fixes it for Wednesday, even though his wife 
 observes that Thursday is time enough. Had this day not been 
 lost, the letter of Friar Lawz-ence might stUl have been forwarded 
 to Mantua to explain what had occurred.
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 109 
 
 the tidings of Juliet's burial, are all matters out of his 
 control. But the mode of his death is chosen by him- 
 self; and in that he is as unlucky as in everything 
 else. Utterly loathing life, the manner of his leaving 
 it must be instantaneous. He stipulates that the poison 
 by which he is to die shall not be slow of effect. He 
 calls for 
 
 " such soon-speecling gear 
 As will disperse itself through all the veins, 
 That the hfe-wearj' taker may fall dead." 
 
 He leaves himself no chance of escape. Instant death 
 is in his hand ; and thanking the true apothecary for 
 the quickness of his drugs, he scarcely leaves himself 
 a moment with a kiss to die. If he had been less in 
 a hurry, — if he had not felt it impossible to delay 
 posting off to Verona for a single night, — if his riding 
 had been less rapid, or his medicine less sudden in its 
 effect, he might have lived. The friar was at hand to 
 release Juliet from her tomb the very instant after the 
 fatal phial had been emptied. That instant was 
 enough: the unlucky man had effected his purpose 
 ju^t when there was still a chance that things might be 
 amended. Those who wrote the scene between Romeo 
 and Juliet which is intended to be pathetic, after her 
 awakening and before his death, quite mistake the
 
 110 SHAKSPEAEE PAPEES ! 
 
 character of the hero of the play. I do not blame 
 them for their poetry, -which is as good as that of 
 second-rate writers of tragedy in general ; and think 
 them, on the whole, deserving of our commendation 
 for giving us an additional proof how unable clever 
 men upon town are to follow the conceptions of genius. 
 Shakspeare, if he thought it consistent with the cha- 
 racter which he had with so much deliberation framed, 
 could have written a parting scene at least as good as 
 that with which his tragedy has been supplied; but 
 he saw the inconsistency, though his unasked assistants 
 did not. They tell us they did it to consult popular 
 taste. I do not believe them. I am sure that popular 
 taste would approve of a recurrence to the old play in 
 all its parts ; but a harlotry play-actor might think it 
 hard upon him to be deprived of a " point," pointless 
 as that point may be. 
 
 Haste is made a remarkable characteristic of Romeo, 
 — because it is at once the parent and the child of 
 uniform misfortune. As from the acorn springs the 
 oak, and from the oak the acorn, so does the tempera- 
 ment that inclines to haste predispose to misadventure, 
 and a continuance of misadventure confirms the habit 
 of haste. A man whom his rashness has made con- 
 tinually unlucky, is strengthened in the determination
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. Ill 
 
 to persevere in his rapid movements by the very feeling 
 that the " run " is against him, and that it is of no use 
 to think. In the case of Romeo, he leaves it all to 
 the steerage of Heaven, i. e. to the heady current of 
 his own passions ; and he succeeds accordingly. All 
 through the play care is taken to show his impatience. 
 The very first word he speaks indicates that he is 
 anxious for the quick passage of time. 
 
 " Ben. Good moiTow, cousin. 
 Eom. Is the day so young ? 
 
 Ben. But new struck nine. 
 Rom. Ay me, sad hours seem long." 
 
 The same impatience marks his speech in the moment 
 of death : 
 
 " true apothecary, 
 Thy diTigs are quick !" 
 
 From his first words to his last the feeling is the same. 
 
 The lady of his love, even in the full swell of her 
 
 awakened afiections, cannot avoid remarking that his 
 
 contract is 
 
 " Too rash, too unadvised, too sudden, 
 Too like the lightning, which does cease to he 
 Ere one can say. It lightens." 
 
 When he urges his marriage on the friar, 
 
 "Rom. let us home : I stand on sudden haste. 
 Friar. Wisely and slow. They stumhle that run fast"
 
 112 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 The metaphors put into his mouth are remarkable for 
 their allusions to abrupt and violent haste. He wishes 
 that he may die 
 
 " As violently as hasty powder fired 
 Doth hui'iy from the fatal cannon's womb." 
 
 When he thinks that Juliet mentions his name in 
 anger, it is 
 
 " as if that name, 
 Shot from the deadly level of a gun, 
 Did mui'der her." 
 
 When Lawrence remonstrates with him on his vio- 
 lence, he compares the use to which he puts his wit to 
 
 " Powder in a skilless soldier's llask j" 
 
 and tells him that 
 
 " violent delights have Adolent ends, 
 And in their triumph die ; like fire and powder, 
 V\^hich, as they kiss, consume." 
 
 Lightning, flame, shot, explosion, are the favourite 
 parallels to the conduct and career of Romeo. Swift 
 are his loves ; as swift to enter his thought, the mis- 
 chief which ends them for ever. Rapid have been all 
 the pulsations of his life; as rapid the determination 
 which decides that they shall beat no more. 
 
 A gentleman he was in heart and soul. All his
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 113 
 
 habitual companions love him : Benvolio and Mercutio, 
 who represent the young gentlemen of his house, are 
 ready to peril their lives, and to strain all their ener- 
 gies, serious or gay, in his service. His father is filled 
 with an anxiety on his account so delicate, that he 
 will not venture to interfere with his son's private 
 sorrows, while he desires to discover their source, and 
 if possible to relieve them. The heart of his mother 
 bursts in his calamity; the head of the rival house 
 bestows upon him the warmest panegyrics ; the tutor 
 of his youth sacrifices everything to gratify his wishes ; 
 his servant, though no man is a hero to his valet de 
 chambre, dares not remonstrate with him on his inten- 
 tions, even when they are avowed to be savage-wild, 
 
 " More fierce and more inexorable far, 
 Than empty tigers or the roaring sea," — 
 
 but with an eager solicitude he breaks his commands 
 by remaining as close as he can venture, to watch over 
 his safety. Kind is he to all. He wins the heart of 
 the romantic Juliet by his tender gallantry : the worldly- 
 minded nurse praises him for being as gentle as a lamb. 
 When it is necessary or natural that the Prince or 
 Lady Montague should speak harshly of him, it is done 
 in his absence. No words of anger or reproach are
 
 114 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 addressed to his ears save by Tybalt ; and from him 
 they are in some sort a compliment, as signifying that 
 the self- chosen prize-fighter of the opposing party 
 deems Romeo the worthiest antagonist of his blade. 
 We find that he fights two blood-stained duels, but 
 both are forced upon him ; the first under circum- 
 stances impossible of avoidance, the last after the 
 humblest supplications to be excused. 
 
 " begone ! 
 By Heaven, I lore thee better than myself, 
 For I came hither armed against myself. 
 Stay not ; begone ! — Uve, and hereafter say 
 A madman's mercy bade thee run away." 
 
 "With all the qualities and emotions which can inspire 
 affection and esteem, — with all the advantages that 
 birth, heaven, and earth could at once confer, — with 
 the most honourable feelings and the kindliest inten- 
 tions, — he is eminently an unlucky man. The record 
 of his actions in the play before us does not extend to 
 the period of a week ; but we feel that there is no 
 dramatic straining to shorten their course. Everything 
 occurs naturally and probably. It was his concluding 
 week ; but it tells us all his life. Fortune was against 
 him ; and would have been against him, no matter 
 that might have been his pursuit. He was born to
 
 PIOTUEES, GRAVE AND GAT. 115 
 
 win battles, but to lose campaigns. If we desired 
 to moralize with the harsh-minded satirist, who never 
 can be suspected of romance,' we should join with him 
 in extracting as a moral from the play 
 
 " Nullum habes numen, si sit prudentia ; sed te 
 Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam, coeloque locamus ;" 
 
 and attribute the mishaps of Romeo, not to want of 
 fortune, but of prudence. Philosophy and poetry 
 differ not in essentials, and the stern censure of 
 Juvenal is just. But still, when looking on the time- 
 less tomb of Romeo, and contemplating the short and 
 sad career through which he ran, we cannot help re- 
 collecting his mourning .words over his dying friend, 
 and suggest as an inscription over the monument of 
 the luckless gentleman, 
 
 "I THOUGHT ALL FOR THE BEST." 
 
 i8
 
 116 SHAKSPEAEE PAPEES : 
 
 MIDSUMMEE NIGHT'S DKEAM. 
 BOTTOM, THE WEAVER 
 
 " Some men are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and 
 others with a wooden ladle." — Ancient Proverb. 
 
 " Then did the sun on dunghill shine." — Ancient Pistol. 
 
 It has often been remarked that it is impossible to 
 play the enchanted scenes of Bottom with any effect. 
 In reading the poem we idealize the ass-head ; we can 
 conceive that it represents in some grotesque sort the 
 various passions and emotions of its wearer; that it 
 assumes a character of dull jocosity, or duller sapience, 
 in his conversations with Titania and the fairies ; and 
 when calling for the assistance of Messrs. Peas-blossom 
 and Mustard-seed to scratch his head, or of the Queen 
 to procure him a peck of provender or a bottle of hay, 
 it expresses some puzzled wonder of the new sensations 
 its wearer must experience in tinglings never felt be- 
 fore, and cravings for food until then unsuited to his 
 appetite. But on the stage this is impossible. As the 
 manager cannot procure for his fairies representatives 
 of such tiny dimensions as to be in danger of being 
 overflown by the bursting of the honey-bag of an 
 humble-bee, so it is impossible that the art of the
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 117 
 
 property-man can furnish Bottom with an ass-head 
 capable of expressing the mixed feelings of humanity 
 and asinity which actuate the metamorphosed weaver. 
 It is but a pasteboard head, and that is all. The jest 
 is over the first moment after his appearance; and, 
 having laughed at it once, we cannot laugh at it any 
 more. As m the case of a man who, at a masquerade, 
 has chosen a character depending for its attraction 
 merely on costume, — we may admire a Don Quixote, if 
 properly bedecked in Mambrino's helmet and the other 
 habiliments of the Knight of La Mancha, at a first 
 glance, but we think him scarcely worthy of a second. 
 So it is with the Bottom of the stage ; the Bottom 
 of the poem is a different person. Shakspeare in 
 many parts of his plays drops hints, "vocal to the 
 intelligent," that he feels the difficulty of bringing his 
 ideas adequately before the minds of theatrical spec- 
 tators. In the opening addi-ess of the Chorus of 
 Henry V. he asks pardon for having dared 
 
 " On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth 
 So great an object. Can this cockpit hold 
 The vasty fields of France ? or, may we cram 
 Within this wooden 0, the veiy casques 
 That did afiiight the aii* at Agiucoml?" 
 
 and requests his audience to piece out the imperfec-
 
 118 BHAKSPEAEE PAPEKS : 
 
 tions of the theatre with their thoughts. This is an 
 apology for the ordinary and physical defects of any 
 stage, — especially an ill-furnished one ; and it requires 
 no great straining of our imaginary forces to submit to 
 them. Even Ducrow himself, with appliances and 
 means to boot a hundredfold more magnificent and 
 copious than any that were atf the command of Shaks- 
 peare, does not deceive us into the belief that his 
 fifty horses, trained and managed with surpassing skill, 
 and mounted by agile and practised riders, dressed in 
 splendid and carefully-considered costumes, are ac- 
 tually fighting the battle of Waterloo, but we willingly 
 lend ourselves to the delusion. In like manner, we 
 may be sure that in the days of Queen Elizabeth the 
 audience of the Globe complied with the advice of 
 Chorus, and, 
 
 " Minding true things by what their mockeries be," 
 
 were contented that 
 
 " Four or five most vile and ragged foils 
 Eight ill-disposed, in brawl ridiculous," 
 
 should serve to represent to their imagination the 
 name of Agincourt. 
 
 We consent to this just as we do to Greeks and 
 Romans speaking English on the stage of London, or
 
 PICTUEES, GRATE AND GAT. 119 
 
 French on that of Paris; or to men of any country 
 speaking in verse at all ; or to all the other demands 
 made upon our belief in playing. We can dispense 
 with the assistance of such downright matter-of-fact 
 interpreters as those who volunteer their services to 
 assure us that the lion in Pyramus and Thisbe is not a 
 lion in good earnest, bufllmerely Snug the joiner. But 
 there are difficulties of a more subtle and metaphysical 
 kind to be got over, and to these, too, Shakspeare not 
 unfrequently alludes. In the play before us, — Mid- 
 summer Nighth Dream, — for example, when Hippolita 
 speaks scornfully of the tragedy in which Bottom holds 
 so conspicuous a part, Theseus answers, that the best 
 of this kind (scenic performances) are but shadows, and 
 the worst no worse if imagination amend them. She 
 answers that it must be your imagination then, not 
 theirs. He retorts with a joke on the vanity of actors, 
 and the conversation is immediately changed. The 
 meaning of the Duke is, that however we may laugh at 
 the silliness of Bottom and his companions in their 
 ridiculous play, the author laboui'S under no more than 
 the common calamity of dramatists. They are all but 
 dealers in shadowy representations of life ; and if the 
 worst among them can set the mind of the spectator at 
 work, he is equal to the best. The answer to Theseus
 
 120 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 is, that none but the best, or, at all events, those who 
 approach to excellence, can call with success upon ima- 
 gination to invest their shadows with substance. Such 
 playwrights as Quince the carpenter, — and they abound 
 in every literature and every theatre, — draw our atten- 
 tion so much to the absurdity of the performance actu- 
 ally going on before us, that ire have no inclination to 
 trouble ourselves with considering what substance in the 
 background their shadows should have represented. 
 Shakspeare intended the remark as a compliment or a 
 consolation to less successful wooers of the comic or the 
 tragic Muse, and touches briefly on the matter ; but it 
 was also intended as an excuse for the want of effect 
 upon the stage of some of the finer touches of such dra- 
 matists as himself, and an appeal to all true judges of 
 poetry to bring it before the tribunal of their own ima- 
 gination ; making but a matter of secondary inquiry how 
 it appears in a theatre, as delivered by those who, what- 
 ever others may thuik of them, would, if taken at their 
 own estimation, " pass for excellent men." His own 
 magnificent creation of fairy land in the Athenian wood 
 must have been in his mind, and he asks an indulgent 
 play of fancy not more for Oberon and Titania, the glit- 
 tering rulers of the elements, who meet
 
 PICTUEES, GRAVE AKD GAT. 121 
 
 » " on bill, in dale, forest, or mead, 
 
 By paved fountain, or by rusby brook. 
 Or on tbe beacbed margent of tbe sea. 
 To dance tbeu- ringlets to tbe wbistling mnd," 
 
 than for the shrewd and knavish Robin Goodfellow, the 
 lord of practical jokes, or the dull and conceited Bottom, 
 " the shallowest thickskin ^f the barren sort," rapt so 
 wondrously from his loom and shuttle, his threads and 
 thrums, to be the favoured lover of the Queen of Faery, 
 fresh from the spiced Indian air, and lulled with dances 
 and delight amid the fragrance of the sweetest flowers, 
 filling with their luscious perfume a moonlighted forest. 
 One part of Bottom's character is easily understood, 
 and is often well acted. Amid his own companions he 
 is the cock of the walk. His genius is admitted without 
 hesitation. When he is lost in the wood, Quince gives 
 up the play as marred. There is no man in Athens able 
 to take the first part in tragedy but himself. Flute 
 declares that he has the best wit of any handicraftman 
 in the city. This does not satisfy the still warmer 
 admirer,"^ who insists on the goodliness of his person. 
 
 * Act iv. sc. 2. Atbens. — Quince's House. — Enter Quince, Flute, 
 Snout, and Starvebng. 
 
 " Qui. Have you sent to Bottom's bouse yet, etc. ?
 
 192 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 and the fineness of his voice. When it seems hopeless 
 that he should appear, the cause of the stage is given up 
 as utterly lost. When he returns, it is hailed as the 
 ^' courageous day," and the " happy hour," which is to 
 restore the legitimate drama. It is no wonder that this 
 perpetual flattery fills him with a most inordinate opinion 
 of his own powers. There 'is not a part in the play 
 
 Flu. He hath simply the best wit of any mania Athens. 
 
 Qui. Yea, and the best person too; and he is a very paramour for 
 a sweet voice. 
 
 Flu, You must say paragon ; a paramour is, God bless us ! a 
 thing of naught." 
 
 I propose that the second admirer's speech be given to Snout, who 
 else has not anything to say, and is introduced on the stage to no 
 purpose. The few words he says elsewhere in the play are all ridi. 
 culous; and the mistake of "jiaramour" for "paragon" is more 
 appropriate to him than to Quince, who corrects the cacology of 
 Bottom him self, [Act. iii. sc. 1. 
 
 " Pyr. Thisby, the flower of odious savours sweet. 
 Qui. Odours — odours."] 
 And, besides, Quince, the playwright, manager, and ballad-monger, 
 
 ["I'll get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this di-eam," says 
 Bottom,] 
 
 is of too much importance in the company to be rebuked by so infe- 
 rior a personage as Flute. In the original draft of their play Snout 
 was to perform Pyi-amus's father, and Quince, Thisbe's father, but 
 those parts are omitted ; Snout is the representative of WaU, and 
 Quince has no part assigned him. Perhaps this was intentional, as 
 another proof of bungling.
 
 PICTUBES, GRAVE AND GAT. 123 
 
 which he cannot perform. As a lover he promises to 
 make the audience weep ; but his talent is still more 
 S'hining in the Herculean vein of a tyrant. The man- 
 liness of his countenance, he admits, incapacitates him 
 from acting the part of a heroine ; but, give him a mask, 
 and he is sure to captivate by the soft melody of his 
 voice. But, lest it should be thought this melodious 
 softness was alone his characteristic, he claims the part 
 of the lion, which he is to discharge with so terrific a 
 roar as to call forth the marked approbation of the war- 
 like Duke ; and yet, when the danger is suggested of 
 frightening the ladies, who all, Amazons as they were, 
 must be damited by sounds so fear-mspiring, he pro- 
 fesses himself gifted with a power of compass capable of 
 imitating, even in the character of a roaring lion, the 
 gentleness of the sucking dove, or the sweetness of the 
 nightingale. He is equally fit for all parts, and in all 
 parts calculated to outshine the rest. This is al- 
 lowed ; but, as it is impossible that he can perform them 
 all, he is restricted to the principal. It is with the 
 softest compliments that he is induced to abandon the 
 parts of Thisbe and the lion for that of Pyramus. 
 Quince assures him that he can play none other, because 
 " Pyramus is a sweet- faced man ; a proper man as one 
 shall see in a summer's day; a most lovely, gentleman-
 
 124 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 like man; therefore YOU must undertake it." What 
 man of woman born could resist flattery so unsparingly 
 administered ? the well-pufied performer consents, and 
 though he knows nothing of the play, and is unable to 
 tell whether the part for which he is cast is that of a 
 lover or a tyrant, undertakes to discharge it with a calm 
 and heroic indifierence as to the colour of the beard he 
 is to wear, being confident, under any circumstances, of 
 success, whether that most important part of the cos- 
 tume be straw-coloured or orange-tawny, French crown 
 or purple in grain. With equal confidence he gets 
 through his performance. The wit of the courtiers, or 
 the presence of the Duke, have no efiect upon his nerves. 
 He alone speaks to the audience in his own character, 
 not for a moment sinking the personal consequence 
 of Bottom in the assumed port of Pyramus. He sets 
 Theseus right on a point of the play with cool import- 
 ance ; and replies to the jest of Demetrius (which he does 
 not understand) with the self-command of ignorant in- 
 difference. We may be sure that he was abundantly con- 
 tented with his appearance, and retired to drink in, with 
 ear well deserving of the promotion it had attained under 
 the patronage of Robin Goodfellow, the applause of his 
 companions. It is true that Oberon designates him as 
 a *' hateful fool ; " that Puck stigmatizes him as the
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 195 
 
 greatest blockhead of the set ; that the audience of wits 
 and courtiers before whom he has performed vote him 
 to be an ass : but what matter is that ? He mixes not 
 with them ; he hears not their sarcasms ; he could not 
 understand their criticisms ; and, in the congenial com- 
 pany of the crew of patches and base mechanicals who 
 admire him, lives happy in the fame of being the Nicho- 
 las Bottom, who, by consent, to him universal and 
 world-encompassing, is voted to be the Pyramus, — the 
 prop of the stage, — the sole support of the di-ama. 
 
 Self-conceit, as great and undisguised as that of 
 poor Bottom, is to be found in all classes and in 
 all circles, and is especially pardonable in what it is 
 considered genteel or learned to call " the histrionic 
 profession." The triumphs of the player are evanescent. 
 In no other department of intellect, real or simulated, 
 does the applause bestowed upon the living artist bear 
 so melancholy a disproportion to the repute awaiting 
 him after the generation passes which has witnessed his 
 exertions. According to the poet himself, the poor 
 player 
 
 " Struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
 And then is heard no more." 
 
 Shakspeare's own rank as a performer was not high, 
 and his reflections on the business of an actor are
 
 126 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 in general splenetic and discontented. He might have 
 said, — though indeed it would not have fitted with the 
 mood of mind of the despairing tyrant into whose 
 mouth the reflection is put, — that the well-graced 
 actor, who leaves the scene not merely after strutting 
 and fretting, but after exhibiting power and genius 
 to the utmost degree at which his art can aim, amid 
 the thundering applause, — or, what is a deeper tribute, 
 the breathless silence of excited and agitated thousands, 
 — is destined ere long to an oblivion as undisturbed as 
 that of his humbler fellow-artist, whose prattle is 
 without contradiction voted to be tedious. Kemble 
 is fading fast from our view. The gossip connected 
 with everything about Johnson keeps Garrick before 
 us, but the interest concerning him daily becomes less 
 and less. Of Betterton, Booth, Quin, we remember 
 little more than the names. The Lowins and Burbages 
 of the days of Shakspeare are known only to the dra- 
 matic antiquary, or the poring commentator, anxious to 
 preserve every scrap of information that may bear upon 
 the elucidation of a text, or aid towards the history of 
 the author. With the sense of this transitory fame 
 before them, it is only natural that players should 
 grasp at as much as comes within their reach while 
 they have power of doing so. It would be a curious
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 127 
 
 speculation to inquire which personally has the greater 
 enjoyment, — the author, neglected in life, and -working 
 for immortal renown, or the actor living among huzzas, 
 and consigned to forgetfulness the moment that his 
 hour is past. I suppose, on the usual principle of 
 compensation, each i&nds in himself springs of hap- 
 piness and self-comfort. The dim distance, in its 
 shadowy and limitless grandeur, fills with solemn 
 musings the soul of the one; the gorgeous gilding 
 of the sunfly scenery in the foreground kindles with 
 rapturous joy the heart of the other. Shenstone lays 
 it down as a principle, that, if it were left to our choice 
 whether all persons should speak ill of us to our faces, 
 and with applause behind our backs, or, vice versa, that 
 the applause should be lavished upon ourselves, and the 
 ill-speaking kept for our absence, we should choose the 
 latter ; because, if we never heard the evil report, 
 we should know nothing about our bad reputation, 
 while, on the contrary, the good opinion others enter- 
 tained of us would be of no avail if nothing reached 
 our ears but words of anger or reproach. Since, after 
 all, it is from within, and not from without, the 
 sources of joy or sorrow bubble up, it does not matter 
 so very much as the sensitive Lord of Leasowes ima- 
 gines what the opinions of others concerning us may
 
 128 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 be, — at least as compared with those which, right or 
 wrong, we form of ourselves. The question is of no 
 great practical importance ; and yet it would be some- 
 what curious to speculate in the manner of Hamlet, if 
 we could do so, on the feelings of Kean and Words- 
 worth in the zenith of the popularity of the former, 
 when he was worshipped as a demi-god by the un- 
 questionable, or, at least, the scarce-questioned dis- 
 pensers of daily renown; while the other by the 
 recognised oracles of critical sagacity was Set down as 
 a jackass more obtuse than that belaboured by his own 
 Peter Bell. 
 
 Pardon, therefore, the wearers of the sock and 
 buskin for being obnoxious to such criticism as that 
 lavished by Quince upon Bottom. We have no traces 
 left us of what constituted the ordinary puffery of the 
 Elizabethan days ; but, as human nature is the same in 
 all ages, we must suppose the trade to have been in its 
 own way as vigorously carried on then as now. And, 
 without hinting at anything personal, do we not week 
 after week find attached to every performer making 
 (whether with justice or not is no part of the con- 
 sideration) pretensions to the omnifarious abilities 
 of Bottom, some Peter Quince, who sticks to that 
 Bottom with the tenacity of a leech, and is ready to
 
 PICTUEES, GRAVE AND GAT. 129 
 
 swear that 7ie, the Bottom, is the only man in Athens ; 
 that his appearance spreads an universal joj ; his 
 occultation involves the world in dramatical eclipse; 
 that his performance of the lover can only be surpassed 
 by his performance of the tyrant; and that it must 
 puzzle an impartial public to decide whether nature and 
 art, genius and study, designed him for a heroine 
 couchant, or a rampant lion. To this it is little 
 wonder that the object of applause lets down his ears 
 too often donkey-like, and permits himself to be 
 scratched by a Master Cobweb, spun though he be 
 by a bottle^bellied spider, or a Master Peas-blossom, 
 who can only claim Mistress Squash for his mother 
 and Master Peascod for his father. In Peter Quince, 
 Shakspeare shadowed forth, by anticipation, Sheridan's 
 Puff. Quince is a fool, and Puff a rogue ; and yet I 
 think the criticism of the elder reviewer just as valu- 
 able. It is in the end as useful to the object of 
 applause to be tcJd, in plain terms, that he alone can 
 act Pyramus because he is a sweet-faced man, a proper 
 man, a most lovely, gentlemanlike man, as to have the 
 same flummery administered under the guise of mock 
 philosophy, with gabbling intonations about breadth, 
 profoundness, depth, length, thickness, and so forth ; 
 which, being interpreted, signify, in many cases, "I
 
 130 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 know nothing about acting or writing, but I do know 
 that you can give me a box or a dinner, and therefore 
 let me play to your Bottom, Quince the carpenter, in 
 an ass's head, intended as a representation of Aristotle 
 the Stagirite." 
 
 Alas ! I am wandering far away from the forest. I 
 can only plead that my guide has led me into my own 
 congenial land of newspaper from his native soil of 
 poetry. But he never long remains out of his own 
 domain, and the jokes and jests upon the unlucky com- 
 pany who undertook to perform 
 
 " A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus 
 And his love Thisbe, very tragical miith," 
 
 are but intrusive matter amid the romantic loves, all 
 chivalrous and a little classical, of Theseus and Hippo- 
 lita, and the jealousies unearthly, and yet so earthly, of 
 Fairy Land. The romance of early Greece was some- 
 times strangely confused by the romance of the middle 
 ages. It would take a long essay on the mixture of 
 legends derived from all ages and countries to account 
 for the production of such a personage as the " Duke 
 ycleped Theseus " and his following ; and the fairy 
 mythology of the most authentic superstitions would be 
 ransacked in vain to discover exact authorities for the
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 131 
 
 Shakspearian Oberon and Titania. But, no matter 
 whence derived, the author knew well that in his hands 
 the chivalrous and classical, the airy and the imagina- 
 tive, were safe. It was necessary for his drama to 
 introduce among his fairy party a creature of earth's 
 mould, and he has so done it as in the midst of his 
 mirth to convey a picturesque satire on the fortune 
 which governs the world, and upon those passions which 
 elsewhere he had with agitating pathos to depict. As 
 Eomeo, the gentleman, is the unlucky man of Shaks- 
 peare so here does he exhibit Bottom, the blockhead, 
 as the lucky man, as him on whom Fortune showers 
 her favours beyond measure. 
 
 This is the part of the character which cannot be per- 
 formed. It is here that the greatest talent of the actor 
 must fail in answering the demand made by the author 
 upon our imagination. The utmost lavish of poetry, 
 not only of high conception, but of the most elaborate 
 working in the musical construction of the verse, and a 
 somewhat recondite searching after all the topics favour- 
 able to the display of poetic eloquence in the ornamental 
 style, is employed in the description of the fairy scenes 
 and those who dwell therein. Language more brilliantly 
 bejewelled with whatever tropes and figures rhetoricians 
 catalogue in their books is not to be found than what is 
 
 k3
 
 133 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 scattered forth with copious hand in Midsummer Niglifs 
 Dream,. The compHment to Queen Elizabeth, 
 
 "In maiden meditation fancy-free," 
 
 was of necessity sugared with all the sweets that the 
 bon-bon box of the poet could supply ; but it is not more 
 ornamented than the passages all around. The pastoral 
 images of Corin 
 
 " Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love 
 To amorous PhilUda;" 
 
 the homely consequences resulting from the fairy 
 quarrel, 
 
 " The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain. 
 The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn 
 Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard ; 
 The fold stands empty in the drowned field. 
 And crows are fatted with the murrain flock ;" 
 
 and so on, are ostentatiously contrasted with misfor- 
 tunes more metaphorically related : 
 
 " We see 
 The seasons alter ; hoary-headed frosts 
 Fall on the fresh lap of the crimson rose ; 
 And on old Hyems' chin and icy crown 
 An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds 
 Is, as in mockery, set."
 
 PICTURES, GEAVE AND GAT. 133 
 
 The mermaid chaimting on the back of her dolphin ; 
 the fair vestal throned in the west ; the bank blowing 
 with wild thyme, and decked with oxlip and nodding 
 violet ; the roundelay of the fairies singing their queen to 
 sleep ; and a hundred images beside of aerial grace and 
 mythic beauty, are showered upon us ; and in the midst 
 of these splendours is tumbled in Bottom the weaver, 
 blockhead by original formation, and rendered doubly 
 ridiculous by his partial change into a literal jackass. 
 He, the most unfitted for the scene of all conceivable 
 personages, makes his appearance, not as one to be 
 expelled with loathing and derision, but to be 
 instantly accepted as the chosen lover of the Queen of 
 the Fairies. The gallant train of Theseus traverse the 
 forest, but they are not the objects of such fortune. The 
 lady, under the oppression of the glamour cast upon her 
 eyes by the juice of love-in-idleness, reserves her rap- 
 tures for an absurd clown. Such are the tricks of 
 Fortune. 
 
 Oberon, himself, angry as he is with the caprices of 
 his queen, does not anticipate any such object for her 
 charmed affections. He is determined that she is to be 
 captivated by " some vile thing," but he thinks only of 
 
 " Ounce, or cat or bear, 
 Pard, or boar with bristled liaii-,"
 
 134 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS: 
 
 animals suggesting ideas of spite or terror ; but he does 
 not dream that, under the superintendence of Puck, 
 spirit of mischief, she is to be enamoured of the head of 
 an ass sm-mounting the body of a weaver. It is so 
 nevertheless ; and the love of the lady is as desperate 
 as the deformity of her choice. He is an angel that 
 wakes her from her flowery bed ; a gentle mortal, whose 
 enchanting note wins her ear, while his beauteous shape 
 enthralls her eye ; one who is as wise as he is beautiful ; 
 one for whom all the magic treasures of the fairy king- 
 dom are to be with surpassmg profusion dispensed. For 
 him she gathers whatever wealth and delicacies the Land 
 of Faery can boast. Her most airy spirits are ordered 
 to be kind and courteous to this gentleman^ — for into 
 that impossible character has the blindness of her love 
 transmuted the clumsy and conceited clown. Apricocks 
 and dewberries, purple grapes, green figs, and mul- 
 berries, are to feed his coarse palate ; the thighs of 
 bees, kmdled at the eyes of fiery glow-worms, are to 
 light him to his flower-decked bed ; wings plucked from 
 painted butterflies are to fan the moonbeams from him 
 as he sleeps ; and in the very desperation of her intoxi- 
 cating passion she feels that there is nothing which 
 should not be jielded to the strange idol of her soul. 
 She mourns over the restraints which separate her from
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 135 
 
 the object of her burning affection, and thinks that the 
 moon and the flowers participate in her sorrow. 
 
 " The moon, methinks, looks with a watery eye, 
 And when she weeps, weeps every little flower, 
 Lamenting some enforced chastity." 
 
 Abstracting the poetry, we see the same thing every 
 day in the plain prose of the world. Many is the 
 Titania driven by some unintelligible magic so to waste 
 her love. Some juice, potent as that of Puck, — the 
 true Cupid of such errant passions, — often converts in 
 the eyes of woman the grossest defects into resistless 
 charms. The lady of youth and beauty will pass by 
 the attractions best calculated to captivate the opposite 
 sex, to fling herself at the feet of age or ugliness. 
 Another, decked with graces, accomplishments, and the 
 gifts of genius, and full of all the sensibilities of refine- 
 ment, will squander her affections on some good-for- 
 nothing roue, whose degraded habits and pursuits banish 
 him far away from the polished scenes which she adorns. 
 The lady of sixteen quarters will languish for him who 
 has no arms but those which nature has bestowed ; from 
 the midst of the gilded salon a soft sigh may be directed 
 towards the thin-clad tenant of a garret ; and the heiress 
 of millions may wish them sunken in the sea if they
 
 136 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 form a barrier between ber and tbe penniless lad toiling 
 for bis livelibood, 
 
 "Lord of Ms presence, and no land beside." 
 
 Fielding has told us all tbis in bis own way, in a disticb, 
 (put, I believe, into tbe moutb of Lord Grizzle ; but, 
 as I bave not tbe illustrious tra,gedy in wbicb it appears, 
 before me, I am not certain, and must tberefore leave it 
 to my readers to verify tbis important point.) Love 
 
 " Lords into cellars bears, 
 And bids the bra-\vny porter walk up-stairs." 
 
 Tom Thumb and Midsummer NigWs Dream preach 
 tbe one doctrine. It would be amusing to trace tbe 
 courses of thought by which the heterogeneous minds of 
 Fielding and Shakspeare came to the same conclusion. 
 
 Ill-mated loves are generally but of short duration 
 on tbe side of tbe nobler party, and she awakes to 
 lament her folly. The fate of those who suffer like 
 Titania is the hardest. Tbe man who is deprived of 
 external graces of appearance may bave the power of 
 captivating by those of tbe mind : wit, polish, fame, 
 may compensate for tbe want of youth or personal 
 attractions. In poverty or lowly birth may be found 
 all that may worthily inspire devoted affection —
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 137 
 
 " The rank is but the guinea's stamp, 
 The man 's the gowd for a' that." 
 
 In the very dimgliill of dissipation and disgrace will 
 be raked up occasionally a lurking pearl or two of 
 honourable feeling, or kind emotion, or irregular talent, 
 which may be dwelt upon by the fond eye, wilfully 
 averting its gaze from the miserable mass in which they 
 are buried. But woe unto the unhappy lady who, like 
 Titania, is obliged to confess, when the enchantment 
 has passed by, that she was "enamoured of an assP^ 
 She must indeed " loathe his visage," and the memory 
 of all connected with him is destined ever to be at- 
 tended by a strong sensation of disgust. 
 
 But the ass himself of whom she was enamoured 
 has not been the less a favourite of Fortune, less happy 
 and self-complacent, because of her late repentance. 
 He proceeds onward as luckily as ever. Bottom, during 
 the time that he attracts the attentions of Titania, 
 never for a moment thinks there is anything extraor- 
 dinary in the matter. He takes the love of the Queen 
 of the Fairies as a thing of course, orders about her 
 tiny attendants as if they were so many apprentices at 
 his loom, and dwells in Fairy Land unobservant of its 
 wonders, as quietly as if he were still in his workshop. 
 Great is the courage and self-possession of an ass-head.
 
 138 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 Theseus would have bent in reverent awe before Titania. 
 Bottom treats her as carelessly as if she were the wench 
 of the next-door tapster. Even Christopher Sly,* when 
 
 * In comparing the characters of Sly and Bottom, we must be 
 struck with the remarkable profusion of picturesque and classical 
 allusions with which both these buffoons are surrounded. I have 
 quoted some of the passages from ilidsummer Night's Dream 
 aboye. The Induction to the Taming of the Shreiv is equally rich. 
 There, too, we have the sylvan scenery and the cheerful sport of 
 the huntsman, and there we also have references to Apollo and 
 Semiramis ; to Cytherea all in sedges hid ; to lo as she was a maid ; 
 to Daphne roaming through a thorny wood. The coincidence is 
 not casual. Shakspeare desired to elevate the scenes in which such 
 grovelling characters played the principal i)art by all the artificial 
 graces of poetry, and to prevent them from degenerating into mere 
 farce. As I am on the subject, I cannot refrain from observing 
 that the remarks of Bishop Hurd on the character of the Lord in 
 the Induction to the Taming of the Shreiv are marked by a ridi- 
 culous impertinence, and an ignorance of criticism truly astonishing. 
 They are made to swell, however, the strange faiTago of notes 
 gathered by the variorum editors. The next editor may safely spare 
 them. 
 
 I have not troubled my readers with verbal ci'iticism in this 
 paper, but I shall here venture on one conjectural emendation. 
 HeiTuia, chiding Demetrius, says. Act ui. sc. 2, 
 
 " If thou hast slain Lysander in his sleep, 
 Being o'er shoes in blood, wade in the deep. 
 And kill me too." 
 
 Should we not read " knee deep ?" As you are already over your 
 shoes, wade on until the bloody tide reaches your knees. In Shak- 
 speare's time knee was generally spelt kne ; and between the and kne 
 there is not much difference in writing.
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 139 
 
 he finds himself transmuted into a lord, shows some 
 signs of astonishment. He does not accommodate him- 
 self to surrounding circumstances. The first order he 
 gives is for a pot of small ale ; and after all the elegant 
 luxuries of his new situation have been placed ostenta- 
 tiously before him — after he has smelt sweet savours, 
 and felt soft thmgs — after he begins to think he is 
 
 " A lord, indeed, 
 And not a tinker nor Christopher [o] Sly;" 
 
 even then nature — or habit, which stands in the place 
 of nature, — recurs invincible, and once more he calls 
 for a pot of the smallest ale. (I may again cite 
 Fielding in illustration of Shakspeare; for do we not 
 read, in the Covent Garden tragedy, of the consolation 
 that 
 
 " Cold small heer is to the waking drunkard; " 
 
 and do we not hear the voice of Christopher Sly pray- 
 ing, for God's sake, in the midst of his lordly honours, 
 for a draught of that unlordly but long-accustomed 
 beverage?) In the Arabian NigJiVs Entertainments a 
 similar trick is played by the Caliph Haroun Al- 
 raschid upon Abou Hassan, and he submits, with much 
 reluctance, to believe himself the Commander of the 
 Faithful. But having in vain sought how to explain
 
 140 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 tlie enigma, he yields to the belief, and then performs 
 all the parts assigned to him, whether of business 
 or pleasure, of counsel or gallantry, with the easy 
 self-possession of a practised gentleman. Bottom has 
 none of the scruples of the tinker of Burton-heath, 
 or the Ion vivmit of Bagdad. He sits down amid 
 the fairies as one of themselves without any astonish- 
 ment ; but so far from assuming, like Abou Hassan, 
 the manners of the court where he has been so 
 strangely intruded, he brings the language and bear- 
 ing of the booth into the glittering circle of Queen 
 Titania. He would have behaved in the same man- 
 ner on the throne of the caliph, or in the bedizened 
 chamber of the lord; and the ass -head would have 
 victoriously carried him through. 
 
 Shakspeare has not taken the trouble of working 
 out the conclusion of the adventure of Sly ; and the 
 manner in which it is finished in the old play where 
 he found him, is trifling and common-place. The 
 Arabian novelist repeats the jest upon his hero, and 
 concludes by placing him as a favourite in the court 
 of the amused caliph. This is the natural ending 
 of such an adventure ; but, as Bottom's was super- 
 natural, it was to conclude differently. He is there- 
 fore dismissed to his ordinary course of life, unaffected
 
 PICTUKES, GRAVE AND GAY, 141 
 
 by what has passed. He admits at first that it is 
 wonderful, but soon thinks it is nothing more than 
 a fit subject for a ballad in honour of his own name. 
 He falls at once to his old habit of dictating, boasting, 
 and swaggering, and makes no reference to what has 
 happened to him in the forest. It was no more than an 
 ordinary passage in his daily life. Fortune knew 
 where to bestow her favours. 
 
 Adieu then, Bottom the weaver ! and long may you 
 go onward prospering in your course ! But the prayer 
 is needless, for you carry about you the infallible 
 talisman of the ass -head. You will be always sure 
 of finding a Queen of the Fairies to heap her favours 
 upon you, while to brighter eyes and nobler natures 
 she remains invisible or averse. Be you ever the 
 chosen representative of the romantic and the tender 
 before dukes and princesses; and if the judicious 
 laugh at your efibrts, despise them in return, setting 
 down their criticism to envy. This you have a right 
 to do. Have they, with all their wisdom and wit, 
 captivated the heart of a Titania as you have done? 
 Not they — nor will they ever. Prosper therefore, 
 with undoubting heart despising the rabble of the 
 wise. Go on your path rejoicing ; assert loudly your 
 claim to fill every character in life ; and may you
 
 143 SHAKSPEAKE PAPERS : 
 
 be quite sure that as long as the noble race of the 
 Bottoms continues to exist, the chances of extraordi- 
 nary good luck will fall to their lot, while in the 
 ordinary course of life they will never be unattended 
 by the plausive criticism of a Peter Quince. 
 
 HIS LADIES.— LADY MACBETH. 
 
 " Then gently scan your brother man, 
 
 More gently sister woman." Burns. 
 
 "Je donne men avis, non comme bon, mais comme mien." 
 
 Montaigne. 
 
 The ladies of Shakspeare have of course riveted the 
 
 attention, and drawn to them the sympathies, of all who 
 
 have read or seen his plays. The book-trained critic, 
 
 weighing words and sentences in his closet ; the romantic 
 
 poet, weaving his verses by grove or stream ; the polished 
 
 occupant of the private box ; Ijie unwashed brawler of 
 
 the gallery ; the sedate visitant of the pit, are touched 
 
 each in his several way by the conjugal devotion and 
 
 melancholy fate of Desdemona, the high-souled principle 
 
 of Isabella, the enthusiastic love and tragic end of Juliet, 
 
 the maternal agonies of Constance, the stern energies of 
 
 Margaret of Anjou, the lofty resignation of Katharine, 
 
 the wit and romance of Rosalind, frolic of tongue, but
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 143 
 
 deeply feeling at heart ; the accomplished coquetries 
 of Cleopatra, redeemed and almost sanctified by her 
 obedient rushing to welcome death at the call ringing in 
 her ears from the grave of her self- slain husband ; the 
 untiring affection of Imogen, Ophelia's stricken heart 
 and maddened brain, or the filial constancy of Cordelia. 
 Less deeply marked, but all in their kind beautiful, are 
 the innocence of Miranda, the sweetness of Anne Page, 
 the meek bearing — beneath the obtrusion of undesired 
 honours — of Anne Boleyn, the playful fondness of 
 Jessica ; — but I should run through all the catalosue of 
 Shakspeare's plays were I to continue the enumeration. 
 The task is unnecessary, for they dwell in the hearts of 
 all, of every age, and sex, and condition. They nestle 
 in the bosoms of the wise and the simple, the sedentary 
 and the active, the moody and the merry, the learned 
 and the illiterate, the wit of the club, the rustic of the 
 farm, the soldier in camp, the scholar in college ; and it 
 affords a remarkable criterion of their general effect, 
 that, even in those foreign countries which, either from 
 imperfect knowledge, defective taste, or national pre- 
 judice, set little value on the plays of Shakspeare, — 
 while Hamlet, Richard, Macbeth, King John, Lear, and 
 Falstaff, are unknown or rejected, the names of Des- 
 demona and Juliet are as familiar as household words.
 
 144 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 No writer ever created so many female characters, 
 or placed tliem in situations of such extreme diversity ; 
 and in none do we find so lofty an appreciation of 
 female excellence. The stories from which the great 
 dramatists of Athens drew their plots were, in most of 
 their striking incidents, derogatory to woman. The 
 tale of Troy divine, the war of Thebes, the heroic 
 legends, were their favourite, almost their exclusive 
 sources ; and the crimes, passions, and misfortunes of 
 Clytemnestra and Medea, Phaedra and Jocasta, could 
 only darken the scene. An adulterous spouse aiding in 
 the murder of her long- absent lord, the King of men, 
 returning crowned with conquest ; a daughter partici- 
 pating in the ruthless avenging by death inflicted on a 
 mother by a son ; an unpitying sorceress killing her 
 childi-en to satiate rage against her husband ; a faith- 
 less wife endeavouring to force her shameless love on 
 her step-son, and by false accusation consigning him 
 for his refusal to destruction beneath his father's curse ; 
 a melancholy queen linked in incestuous nuptials to her 
 own offspring ; — these lathes are the heroines of the 
 most renowned of the Greek tragedies ! and tlie conse- 
 quences of their guilt or misfortmie compose the fable 
 of many more. In some of the Greek plays, as the 
 Eumenides, we have no female characters except the
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 145 
 
 unearthly habitants of heaven or hell; in the most 
 wonch'ous of them all, Prometheus Fettered, appears 
 only the mythic lo ; in the Persians, only the ghost of 
 Atossa, who scarcely appertains to womankind : in 
 some, as Philoctetes, women form no part of the 
 dramatis personce ; in others, as the Seven against 
 Thebes, they are of no importance to the action of the 
 piece ; or, as in the Suppliants, serve but as the Chorus ; 
 and, in many more, are of less than secondary import- 
 ance. Euripides often makes them the objects of those 
 imgallant reflections which consign the misogynic di-a- 
 matist to such summary punishment from the irritated 
 sex in the comedies of Aristophanes ; and in the whole 
 number, in the thirty-thi-ee plays extant, there are but 
 two women who can affect om- nobler or softer emotions. 
 The tender and unremitting care of Antigone for her 
 blind, forlorn, and aged father, her unbending determi- 
 nation to sacrifice her lover and her life sooner than 
 fail in paying funeral honours to her fallen brother; 
 and, in Alcestis, her resolute m-ging that her own life 
 should be taken to preserve that of a beloved husband, — 
 invest them with a pathetic and heroic beauty. But, 
 in the one, we are haunted by the horrid recollections 
 of incest and fratricide ; and in the other we are some- 
 what indignant that we should be forced to sympathize
 
 146 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 with an affection squandered upon so heartless a fellow 
 as Admetus, who suffers his wife to perish in his stead 
 with the most undisturbed conviction of the superior 
 value of his own existence, pouring forth all the while 
 the most melodious lamentations over her death, but 
 never for a moment thinking of coming forward to pre- 
 vent it. They are beautiful creations, nevertheless. 
 
 The Greek dramatists were in a great measure bound 
 
 to a particular class of subjects ; but, in general, the 
 
 manner in which an author treats the female character, 
 
 affords one of the main criteria by which the various 
 
 gradations of genius may be estimated. By the 
 
 highest genius woman is always spoken of with a deep 
 
 feeling of the most reverential delicacy. Helen is the 
 
 cause of the war immortalized by the Iliad ; but no 
 
 allusion to her lapse is made throughout the poem save 
 
 by herself, deploring in bitter accents what she has 
 
 done. She wishes that she had died an evil death 
 
 before she followed Paris ; she acknowledges herself to 
 
 be unworthy of the kindred of those whom she describes 
 
 as deserving of honour ; her conscience suggests that 
 
 her far-famed brothers, " whom one mother bore," are 
 
 in the field when the warring chieftains meet in truce, 
 
 but dare not show themselves among theh' peers through 
 
 shame of the disgrace she has entailed upon them ; and,
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 147 
 
 at the last, she lays bare her internal feeling that insult 
 is the lot she deserves by the warm gratitude with 
 which she acknowledges, in her bitter lament over the 
 corse of Hector, that he had the generosity never to 
 address her with upbraiding. The wrath of Achilles is 
 roused for the injury inflicted upon him by carrying off 
 Briseis, dear to his heart, " spear-captured as she was." 
 She is restored by the penitent Agamemnon, with 
 solemn vows that she returns pure and uninsulted. Of 
 Andromache I think it unnecessary to speak. In the 
 Odyssey, it is true, we have Circe and Calypso ; but 
 they are goddesses couching with a mortal, and excite 
 no human passion. We meet them in the region of 
 ^^ speciosa miracula^^ where Cyclops, and Sirius, and 
 Lotus-eaters dwell ; where the King of the winds holds 
 his court, and whence is the passage to Erebus. In 
 that glorious mixture of adventure and allegory, — the 
 Voyage of Ulysses, — we may take those island beauties- 
 to be the wives and sweethearts whom sailors meet in 
 every port ; or, following the stream of moralists and 
 commentators, look upon the fable to be no more than 
 
 " Truth severe in faiiy fiction dressed." 
 
 In other parts of the poem we might wish for more 
 warm-heartedness in Penelope ; but under her circum- 
 
 l3
 
 148 SHAKSPEABE PAPERS : 
 
 stances caution is excusable, and she must be admitted 
 to be a pattern of constancy and devotion. The Helen 
 of the Odyssey is a fine continuation of the Helen of 
 the Iliad. Still full of kindly feminine impulses, still 
 sorrowing when she thinks of the misfortunes she has 
 occasioned, her griefs have lost the intense poignancy 
 with which they afflicted her while leading a life degrad- 
 ing her in her own eyes, and exposing her to affronts 
 of which she could not complain. Restored to the 
 husband of her early affections, consoled by his pardon, 
 and dwelling once more amid the scenes of her youth, 
 — absence from which, and absence so occasioned, she 
 had never ceased to regret in wasting floods of tears, — 
 the Helen of the Odyssey comes before us no longer 
 uttering the accents of ceaseless self-reproach, but 
 soothed, if not pacified, in soul. We have the lull 
 after the tempest, — the calm following the whirlwind. 
 
 Virgil is a great poet indeed, though few will now 
 agree with Scaliger that he is equal, far less superior, 
 to Homer. Dido is the blot upon the ^neid. The 
 loves of the Carthaginian queen might have made, and 
 in the hands of Virgil would have made, a charming 
 poem, treated separately,— a poem far superior in exe- 
 cution to the Hero and Leander of Musaeus, but a 
 work of the same order. As it stands, the episode, if
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 149 
 
 it can be so called, utterly ruins the epic character of 
 the hero. St. Evremond has said that ^neas had all 
 the qualities of a monk ; it is plain that he had not the 
 feelings of a gentleman ; and we cannot wonder that 
 his first wife wandered from his side, and that he met 
 with so violent an opposition when he sought another. 
 Virgil, after his conduct to Dido, had not the courage 
 to introduce him to Lavinia in person, and leaves him 
 undefended to the angry tongue of her mother. The 
 poet was justly punished for his fourth book ; for, in all 
 those which follow, he has not ventured to introduce 
 any female characters but incendiaries, sibyls, shrews, 
 and furies. 
 
 When Dante took Virgil as his guide in the infernal 
 regions, he did not follow his master in dwelling on 
 the pleasures or the gentler sorrows of illicit love. 
 His ghostly women appear stern, or subdued of port. 
 The lady who is best known to the English reader, 
 Francesca di Rimini, forms no exception. Nothing 
 can be more grave and solemn than the tale of her 
 hapless passion, as told in the Inferno. It is pervaded 
 throughout by such sorrow and remorse as we might 
 expect to find in a region whence hope is excluded. 
 Accordingly how far difierent is its impression from 
 that left on the mind by the same story when told
 
 150 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 merely as a love-tale by Mr. Leigh Hunt. I do not 
 say this in disparagement of that picturesque and 
 graphic poem, the Story of Rimini, which has been 
 exposed to the most unjustifiable criticism ; but to 
 mark the manner in which men of talent and men of 
 genius handle the same subject. The ladies of Tasso, 
 though not vigorously sketched, and in general imitated 
 from the Latin poets, — I speak of his Jerusalem, — are 
 conceived in a spirit of romantic chivalry ; and, even 
 when the witching Armida leads Rinaldo astray, the 
 poet diverts our attention from the blandishments of 
 the enchantress to dazzle us by the wonders of magic 
 groves and gardens. Poor Tasso, besides, wishes to 
 persuade us — perhaps in some moody hours he had 
 persuaded himself — that he intended the whole poem 
 for an allegory, in which Armida was to play some 
 edifying part, — I forget what. In the poets of ro- 
 mance we do not look for the severer style of the epic ; 
 but the forest-ranging heroines of Ariosto and Spenser, 
 " roaming the woodland, frank and free," have an air 
 of self-confiding independence and maiden freshness, 
 worthy of the leafy scenes through which they move, 
 that renders it impossible to approach them with other 
 thoughts than those of chivalrous deference. If Spen- 
 ser, in his canto of Jealousy, makes the lady of the
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 151 
 
 victim of that weak passion treat her husband as he 
 had anticipated, why, she errs with no man of mortal 
 mould, but chooses as her mates the jolly satyrs won- 
 ning in the wood ; and Spenser has his allegory too. 
 Ariosto took no trouble to make explanations, being 
 satisfied, I suppose, with the character given of his 
 poetry by Cardinal Hippolyto; and even he has the 
 grace to beg the ladies, to whose service he had from 
 the beginning dedicated his lays, to avert their eyes 
 when he is about to sing the strange adventures of 
 Giocondo.^ 
 
 * Orlando Furioso, canto xxii. st. 1, 2, 3. 
 
 " Donne, e voi che le donue avete in pregio, 
 
 Per Dio, non date a questa istoria orecchia, 
 
 A questa che '1 ostier dire in ilispregio, 
 
 E in vostra infamia e biasmo s'apparecchia ; 
 
 Benclie ne macchia vi puo dar ne fregio 
 Lingua si vile ; e sia I'usanza vecchia, 
 
 Che '1 volgai'e ignorante ognun riprenda, 
 
 E parle piu de quel meno intenda. 
 
 n. 
 
 " Lasciate questo canto, che senz' esso 
 
 Puo star I'istoria, e non sai-a men chiara ; 
 
 Mettendolo Turpino, anch' io 1' o messo, 
 Non per malevolenzia, ne per gara; 
 
 Ch' io v' ami oltre niia lingua che 1' a expresso, 
 Che mai non fu di celebrarvi avai'a,
 
 159 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 The theme of Milton in Paradise Lost, hardly ad- 
 mits of the development of ordinary human feelings ; 
 but his sole Eve has grace in all her steps, and all her 
 actions too. In Paradise Regained his subject was 
 
 N' 6 falto mille prove, e v' o dimostro 
 Ch' io son ne potrei esser se non vostro. 
 
 III. 
 "Passi cM vuol tre carte, o quattro, senza 
 Leggeme verso, e chi pur legge vuole 
 Gli dia quella medesima credenza, 
 
 Che si vuol dare a finzion, e a fole," &c. 
 
 which thus may be rollingly Englished, 
 
 Ladies, and you to whom ladies are dear, 
 
 For God's sake don't lend to this story an ear. 
 
 Care not for fables of slander or blame 
 
 Which this scandalous chronicler flings on your name. 
 
 Spots that can stain you with slight or with wrong 
 
 Cannot be cast by so worthless a tongue. 
 
 WeU is it known, as an usage of old. 
 
 That the ignorant vulgar will ever be bold. 
 
 Satire and censure still scattering, and 
 
 Talking the most where they least understand. 
 
 Passed over unread let this canto remain, 
 
 Without it the story will be just as plain. 
 
 As Turpin has put it, so I put it too ; 
 
 But not from ill-feeling, dear ladies, to you. 
 
 My love to your sex has been shown in my lays ; 
 
 To you I have never been niggard of praise; 
 
 And many a proof I have given which secures 
 
 That I am, and can never be other than yours.
 
 PICTURES, GBAVE AND GAT. 153 
 
 badly chosen ; and he feared, from religious motives, 
 to introduce the Virgin. In Qomus his Lady is a 
 model of icy chastity, worthy of the classic verse in 
 which she is embalmed ; but Dalilah in Samson Ago- 
 nistes is the more dramatic conception. Ornate and 
 gay, she makes urgent court to her angry husband, 
 with no better fate than to be by him inexorably repelled. 
 She presses upon him all the topics that could lead to 
 reconciliation, but the sense of his wrongs is too acute 
 to allow of pardon ; and at last she bursts away with 
 the consoling reflection that, though spurned by him, 
 and made the object of reproach in Israelitish songs. 
 
 Skip three or four pages, and read not a word ; 
 
 Or, if you ivill read it, pray deem it absurd. 
 
 As a story in credit not better or worse 
 
 Than the foolish old tales you were told by the nurse. 
 I do not mean to defend my doggrel ; but I think Ariosto has 
 not yet had an adequate translator in Enghsh, or indeed in any 
 language ; nor, in my opinion, will he easily find one. The poem 
 is too long, and requires the aid of the music of the original lan- 
 guage to carry the reader through. I do not know what metre in 
 English could contend against the prohxity ; but I do know that 
 Aiiosto sadly wants— as what classic in the vernacular languages 
 does not? — a better critic of his text than he has yet found, in 
 Italian. 
 
 In the above passage it is somewhat amusing to find Ariosto 
 assuring his readers that they might pass this pailicular canto, 
 because without it " puo star Vistoria ; " as if there were a canto in 
 the whole poem of which the same might not be said.
 
 154 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS: 
 
 she sliall be hymned and honoured in those of her own 
 country as a deliverer. Milton was unhappy in his 
 wives and daughters; and his domestic manners ap- 
 pear to have been harsh and unamiable. In his prose 
 works, his Tetrachordon for example, he does not 
 display any kindly feeling for the sex ; but when he 
 clothed himself in his singing robes, and soared above 
 the cares of every-day life, to expatiate in the purer 
 regions of poetry, the soul of the poet softened and 
 sublimed; like his own Adam, his sterner nature 
 relented ; and, though he could not make Samson par- 
 don Dalilah, he will not let her depart unhonoured. In 
 Paradise Lost ^\iQ had spoken of her disparagingly, — 
 
 " So rose the Danite strong, 
 Herculean Samson, from the harlot lap 
 Of Philisttean Dalilah ; " 
 
 but when she comes before him, as it were, in bodily 
 presence, he leaves all the words of reproach to her 
 irritated lord, and suggests to her, topics of self-justi- 
 fication, dismissing her from the stage, not as a faithless 
 wife, but as a heroic woman, who had sacrificed her 
 affections to her country, and who retires after humili- 
 ating herself in vain to reap the reward of her patriotic 
 conduct among her people and her kindred. 
 
 If we turn from the epic and tragic to the other de-
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 155 
 
 partments of literature in which genius can be exercised, 
 we shall find the feeling much the same. Those who 
 write from observation of what is going on in the world, 
 — the novelist, the comic writer, the satirist, — must 
 take the world as it is, and lay it before us in its 
 mixture of good and evil. There is no need, however, 
 that the latter should be forcibly thrust upon us. The 
 task of the satirists appears to me the lowest in which 
 talent can be employed. The most famous among them, 
 Juvenal, tells us truly that the rigidi censura cachinni 
 — the part chosen by Democritus — is easy to any one. 
 We must rise above it, as he has done in some of his 
 satires, — as in that sublime poem in which the passage 
 occurs, the tenth, or the thirteenth and fourteenth, — 
 and forget the wit or the censor to assume the loftier 
 bearing of the moralist. I should have wondered that 
 the same mind which produced these noble effusions 
 could have perpetrated the enormities of the sixth satire 
 and some others, if I did not reflect that Rome, originally 
 an asylum for robbers, was nothing more than a stand- 
 ing camp, with the virtues and vices, the manners and 
 the feelings of a camp, to the day of its downfall. Rape 
 and violence procured its first women, and it would seem 
 as if the original act had influenced their feelings to the 
 sex throughout. It is certain that theirs is the only
 
 166 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 literature in the world in which no female character is 
 delineated worthy of the slightest recollection — a strik- 
 ing circumstance, and well deserving critical investiga- 
 tion ; but it would now lead us too far from our subject, 
 from which indeed I have delayed too long already. 
 We must get back to Shakspeare^ staying only to re- 
 mark that if Boccacio and his imitator, Chaucer, have 
 intermingled licentious tales in their miscellaneous col- 
 lection, they have done so, only in compliance with the 
 supposed necessity of delineating every species of life, 
 and that they hasten to show that they could be of 
 finer spirit when emancipated from the thraldom of 
 custom ; that Cervantes chequers the comic of Don 
 Quixote with visions of graceful and romantic beauty ; 
 and that such will be found to be the case more or less 
 in every composition that takes firm hold of the human 
 mind. I except, of course, works of morals, science, 
 and philosophy : and under those heads must come the 
 unromantic and unpoetic books of wit, and even buf- 
 foonery, if they be doomed to last. Rabelais will live 
 for ever to speak vocally to the intelligent ; but mere 
 licentiousness must perish. Indulgence in woman- 
 scorning ribaldry inflicts due punishment upon talent 
 itself, if it be prostituted to such miserable work. The 
 melancholy ability which has been so successful in La
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 157 
 
 Pucelle aflfords a sufficient reason why its author failed 
 when he attempted a Henriade. 
 
 Supereminent over all the great geniuses of the world 
 and with no others have I compared him — is Shakspeare 
 in his women. Homer was not called upon to intro- 
 duce them in such number or variety, nor could they 
 enter so intimately into the action of his poems. Still 
 less was there opportunity for their delineation in jMilton. 
 But Shakspeare's is the unique merit that, being a 
 dramatist wielding equally the highest tragic and the 
 lowest comic, and therefore compelled to bring females 
 prominently forward in every variety of circumstance, 
 he has carefully avoided themes and situations which 
 might either inspire horror or disgust, or excite licen- 
 tious feeling. We have in him no Phaedra, Clytem- 
 nestra or Medea; no story like those of Jocasta, or 
 Monimia, or the Mysterious Mother. He would have 
 recoiled from what is hinted at in Manfred. Even the 
 Myrrha of Sardanapalus could not have found a place 
 among his heroines. In none of his plots, comic or 
 tragic, does female frailty form an ingredient. The 
 only play in which ladies have been betrayed is Measure 
 for Measure ; and there he takes care that their mis- 
 fortune shall be amended, by marrying Mariana to 
 Angelo, and ordering Claudio to restore honour to
 
 158 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 Julietta, whom he had wronged. Nowhere else does a 
 similar example occur, and there it is set in strong 
 contrast with the high-toned purity of Isabella. In 
 the instances of slandered women, it seems to delight 
 him to place them triumphant over their slanderers ; 
 as Hero in Much Ado about Xothing, Hermione in the 
 Winter's Tale, Imogen in Cymheline. All his heroes 
 woo with the most honourable views ; there is no in- 
 trigue in any of his plays, no falsehood to the married 
 bed. Those who offer illicit proposals are exposed to 
 ruin and disgrace. Angelo falls from his lofty station. 
 Prmce John is driven from his brother's court. Falstaff, 
 the wit and courtier, becomes a butt, when his evil star 
 leads him to make lawless courtship to the Wives of 
 Windsor. The innocent and natural love of Miranda 
 in the Tempest affords a striking contrast to the coarse 
 and disgusting passion of Dorinda : a character thrust 
 into the play as an improvement by no less a man than 
 Dryden. Here again we may remark how great is the 
 distance which separates genius of the first order even 
 from that which comes nearest to it. The two most 
 detestable women ever drawn by Shakspeare — ^Regan 
 and Goneril — are both in love with Edmund ; but we 
 have no notice of their passion until the moment of 
 their death, and then we find that, wicked as were the
 
 PICTUEES, GRAVE AXD GAT. 159 
 
 thoughts which rankled in their bosoms, no infringement 
 of the laws of chastity was contemplated ; marriage 
 was their intention : " I was contracted to them both,'' 
 says Edmund ; " all three now marry in an instant." 
 With his dying breath he bears testimony that in the 
 midst of their crimes they were actuated by the domi- 
 nant feeling of woman : 
 
 " Yet Edmund was beloved ; 
 The one the other jjoisoned for his sake, 
 And after slew herself," 
 
 Emilia is accused by lago in soliloquy as being sus- 
 pected of faithlessness to his bed, but he obviously does 
 not believe the charge ; — 
 
 " I hate the Moor; 
 And it is thought abroad that 'twixt my sheets 
 He has done my office; I know not if 't be true, 
 But I, for mere suspicion in that kind, 
 Will do as if for surety." 
 
 He uses it merely as an additional excuse for hating 
 the Moor ; a palliation to his conscience in the career 
 which he is about to pursue. Queen Gertrude's mar- 
 riage with her brother-in-law is made the subject of 
 severe animadversion ; but it does not appear that she 
 had dishonoured herself in the life of her first husband, 
 or was in any manner participant m the crime of 
 Claudius. Hamlet, in the vehemence of his anger,
 
 160 SHAKSPEARE PAPEKS : 
 
 never insinuates such a charge ; and the Ghost, rising 
 to moderate his violence, acquits her by his very ap- 
 pearance at such a time, of any heinous degree of 
 guilt. As for the gross theory of Tieck respecting 
 Ophelia, it is almost a national insult. He maintams 
 that she had yielded to Hamlet's passion, and that its 
 natural consequences had driven her to suicide. Such 
 a theory is m direct opposition to the retu'mg and 
 obedient purity of her character, the tenour of her 
 conversations and soliloquies, the general management 
 of the play, and what I have endeavoured to show 
 is the undeviating current of Shakspeare's ideas. If 
 the German critic propomided this heresy to insult 
 English readers through one of their greatest favourites 
 in revenge for the ungallant reason which the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury,'^ in Henrij V., assigns as the 
 origin of the Salique law, he might be pardoned; but, 
 as it is plainly dictated by a spirit of critical wicked- 
 
 * Henry V. act i. sc. 2. Archbishop Chicheley's argument is 
 
 " The land Salique lies in Genuany, 
 Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe, 
 Where Charles the Great, ha\ing subdued the Saxons, 
 There left behind and settled certain French, 
 Who, holding in disdain the German women 
 For some dishonest maimers of their life, 
 Estahlished there this law, to wit, no female 
 Should be inheritrix in Salique land."
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 161 
 
 ness and blasphemy, I should consign him, in spite 
 of learning, acuteness, and Shakspearian knowledge, 
 without compassion, to the avenging hands of Lysis- 
 trata."^ 
 
 Such, in the plays where he had to create the 
 characters, was the course of Shakspeare. In the 
 historical plays, where he had to write by the book, 
 it is not at all different. Scandal is carefully avoided. 
 Many spots lie on the fame of Queen Elmor, but no 
 reference is made to them by the hostile tongue which 
 describes the mother-queen as a second Ate, stirring 
 her son. King John, to blood and strife. Jane Shore, 
 of whom Rowe, a commentator on Shakspeare too, 
 made a heroine, is not introduced on the stage in 
 Richard III. Poor Joan of Arc is used brutally, 
 it must be owned; but it is not till she is di-iven to 
 the stake that she confesses to an mfirmity which not 
 even her barbarous judges can seriously believe. We 
 must observe, besides, that the first part of Henry VI. 
 can scarcely be considered a play of Shakspeare, for 
 he did little more than revise the old play of that 
 name. To the charge of the older dramatist, too, 
 must be set the strange exhibition of Margaret of 
 Anjou mourning over the head of the Duke of Suffolk 
 
 * Aristopli. Lysistr. 
 
 M
 
 163 SHAKSPEARE PAPEBS : 
 
 in the second part. When Shakspeare has that vigor- 
 ous woman to himself, as in Richard III., she shows 
 no traces of such weakness : she is the heroic asserter 
 of her husband's rights, the unsubdued but not-to-be- 
 comforted mourner over her foully slaughtered son. 
 He makes the scenes of the civil wars sad enough ; the 
 father kills the son, the son the father, under the eyes 
 of the pitying king; but there is no hint of outrage 
 on women. He contrives to interest us equally in 
 Katharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. Everything 
 that poetry can do, is done, to make us forget the 
 faults of Cleopatra, and to incline us to thmk that a 
 world was well lost for that pttit nez retrousse. We 
 should in vain search the writings of the Romans 
 themselves for such Roman ladies as those of Coriolanus 
 and Julius Qcesar. In his camps and armies we have 
 much military tumult and railing, but nowhere the 
 introduction of licentious scenes. If Alcibiades be 
 attended by his Phrynia and Timandra, and Fal- 
 staif have his poll clawed like a parrot by Doll Tear- 
 sheet, the Athenian ladies are introduced as a vehicle 
 for the fierce misanthropy of Timon, and the fair one of 
 Eastcheap acts as a satire upon the impotent desires of 
 the withered elder, the dead elm, whom she clasps in her 
 venal embraces. They are drawn in their true colours :
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 163 
 
 no attempt is made to bedeck them with sentimental 
 graces — to hold them up to sympathetic admiration 
 with the maudlin novelist, or to exhibit them as '^ in- 
 teresting young females" with the police reporter. 
 They lift not their brazen fronts in courts and palaces ; 
 in obscure corners they ply their obscene trade. We 
 know that it is their vocation, and dismiss them from 
 our minds. There is no corruption to be feared from 
 the example of the inmates of Mr. Overdone's establish- 
 ment or Mrs. Quickly's tavern. Shakspeare exhibits 
 only one fallen lady in all his plays — and she is 
 Cressida. But Troilus and Oressida deserves a separate 
 paper, if for no other reason, yet because it is a play 
 in which Shakspeare has handled the same characters 
 as Homer. It is worth while to consider in what 
 points these greatest of poets agree, and in what they 
 differ. 
 
 Such, then, is the female character as drawn in 
 Shakspeare. It is pure, honourable, spotless, — ever 
 ready to perform a kind action, — never shrinking from 
 a heroic one. Gentle and submissive where duty or 
 affection bids, — firm and undaunted in resisting the 
 approaches of sin, or shame, or disgrace. Constant in 
 love through every trial, — faithful and fond in all the 
 great relations of life, as wife, as daughter, as sister, as 
 
 m3
 
 164 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 mother, as friend, — witty or refined, tender or romantic, 
 lofty or gay, — her failings shrouded, her good and 
 lovely qualities brought into the brightest light, she 
 appears in the pages of the mighty di'amatist as if she 
 were the cherished daughter of a fond father, the 
 idolized mistress of an adormg lover, the very goddess 
 of a kneeling worshipper. I have catalogued most of 
 the female names which adorn the plays. One is 
 absent from the list. She is absent ; the dark lady of 
 that stupendous work which, since the Eumenides, 
 bursting upon the stage with appalling howl in quest of 
 the fugitive Orestes, electrified with terror the Athenian 
 audience, has met no equal. I intend to maintain that 
 Lady Macbeth, too, is human in heart and impulse, — 
 that she is not meant to be an embodiment of the 
 Furies. 
 
 3Iacheth is the gloomiest of the plays. Well may 
 its hero say that he has supped full of horrors. It 
 opens with the incantations of spiteful witches, and 
 concludes with a series of savage combats, stimulated 
 by quenchless hate on one side, and by the desperation 
 inspired by the consciousness of unpardonable crime on 
 the other. In every act we have blood in torrents. 
 The first man who appears on the stage is the hleeding 
 captain. The first word uttered by earthly lips is,
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 165 
 
 " What Uoody man is that ? " The tale which the 
 captain relates is full of fearful gashes, reeking wounds, 
 and Uoody execution . The murder of Duncan in the 
 second act stains the hands of Macbeth so deeply as to 
 render them fit to incarnadine the multitudinous seas, 
 and make the green — one red. His lady imbrues her- 
 self in the crimson stream, and gilds the faces of the 
 sleeping grooms with gore. She thus afibrds a pretence 
 to the thane for slauo-hterinc; them in an access of 
 simulated fury. 
 
 " Their hands and faces were all badged with blood, 
 So were their daggers, which un-ndped we found 
 Upon their pillows." 
 
 Macbeth carefully impresses the sanguinary scene upon 
 his hearers : 
 
 " Here lay Duncan, 
 His silver s kin laced with his golden blood, 
 And his gashed stabs looked hke a breach in nature 
 For ruin's wasteful entrance ; there the murderers, 
 Steeped in the colours of their trade, their daggers 
 Unmannerly breeched in gore." 
 
 Direful thoughts immediately follow, and the sky itself 
 participates in the horror. The old man who can well 
 remember threescore and ten, during which time he 
 had witnessed dreadful hours and strange things, con-
 
 106 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 siders all as mere trifles, compared with the sore night 
 of Duncan's murder. 
 
 " The heavens, 
 Thou seest, as troubled with man's act, 
 Threaten his bloody stage ; by the clock 'tis day, 
 And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp." 
 
 The horses of Duncan forget their careful training, and 
 their natural instincts, to break their stalls and eat 
 each other. Gloom, ruin, murder, horrible doubts, 
 unnatural suspicions, portents of dread in earth and 
 heaven, surround us on all sides. In the third act, 
 desperate assassins, incensed by the blows and buffets 
 of the world, wearj with disasters, tugged with for- 
 tune, willing to wreak their hatred on all mankind, and 
 persuaded that Banquo has been their enemy, set upon 
 and slay him, without remorse and without a word. 
 The prayer of their master to Night, that she would, 
 with 
 
 "Bloody and invisible hand, 
 Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond " 
 
 which kept him in perpetual terror, is in part accom- 
 plished ; and he who was his enemy ui, as he says, 
 
 "Such bloody distance, 
 That eveiy minute of his being thrusts 
 Against my life,"
 
 PICTUKES, GRAVE AND GAY. 167 
 
 lies breathless in the dust. The murderers bring the 
 witness of their deed to the very banquet-chamber 
 of the expecting king. They come with hlood upon the 
 face. The hardened stabber does not communicate the 
 tidings of his exploit in set phrase. He minces not 
 the matter, — his language is not culled from any trim 
 and weeded vocabulary; and the king compliments 
 him in return, in language equally vernacular and 
 unrefined. 
 
 " Mur. My lord, his throat is cut; that I did for him. 
 Mac. Thou art the best o' the cut-throats." 
 
 Cheered by this flattering tribute to his merits, the 
 accomplished artist goes on, in all the pride of his 
 profession, to show that he had left no rubs or botches 
 in his work. Macbeth, after a burst of indignation at 
 the escape of Fleance, recurs to the comfortable assur- 
 ance of Banquo's death, and asks, in the full certainty 
 of an answer in the affirmative, 
 
 " But Banquo's safe ? 
 Mur. Ay, my good lord : safe in a ditch he bides, 
 
 With twenty trenched gashes on his head ; 
 
 The least a death to nature. 
 3Iac. Thanks for that." 
 
 Presently the gory locks of Banquo's spectre attest
 
 168 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 the truth of what the murderer has tokl, and the 
 banquet breaks up by the flight, rather than the 
 retirement, of the astonished guests ; leaving Macbeth 
 dismally, but fiercely, pondering over thoughts steeped 
 in slaughter. The very language of the scene is redo- 
 lent of blood. The word itself occurs in almost 
 every speech. At the conclusion of the act, come 
 the outspeakmg of suspicions hitherto only muttered, 
 and the determination of the Scottish nobles to make 
 an effort which may give to their tables meat, sleep 
 to their eyes, and free their feasts and banquets from 
 those bloody knives, the fatal hue of which haunted 
 them in their very hours of retirement, relaxation, or 
 festival. 
 
 The sanguine stain dyes the fourth act as deeply. A 
 head severed from the body, and a bloody child, are 
 the first apparitions that rise before the king at the 
 bidding of the weird sisters. The blood-boltered 
 Banquo is the last to linger upon the stage, and sear 
 the eyes of the amazed tyrant. The sword of the 
 assassin is soon at work in the castle of Macduff; 
 and his wife and children fly from the deadly blow, 
 shrieking " murder " — in vain. And the fifth act, — 
 from its appalling commencement, when the sleepmg 
 lady plies her hopeless task of nightly washing the
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 169 
 
 bloocl-stained hand, through the continual clangour 
 of trumpets callmg, as clamorous harbingers, to blood 
 and death, to its conclusion, when Macduff, with drip- 
 pmg sword, brings in the freshly hewn-off head of the 
 " dead butcher," to lay it at the feet of the victo- 
 rious Malcolm, — exhibits a sequence of scenes in 
 which deeds and thoughts of horror and violence are 
 perpetually, and almost physically, forced upon the 
 attention of the spectator. In short, the play is 
 one clot of blood from beginning to end. It was 
 objected to Alfieri, (by Grimm, I believe,) that he 
 wrote his tragedies not in tears, but blood. Shak- 
 speare could write in tears when he pleased. In 
 Macbeth he chose to dip his pen in a darker current. 
 
 Nowhere in the course of the play does he seek 
 to beguile us of our tears. We feel no more interest 
 in the gracious Duncan, m Ban quo, in Lady Macduff, 
 than we do m the slaughtered grooms. We feel that 
 they have been brutally murdered; and, if similar 
 occurrences were to take place in Wapping or Rother- 
 hithe, London would be in commotion. All the police 
 from A to Z would be set on the alert, the newspapers 
 crammed with paragraphs, and a hot search instigated 
 after the murderer. If taken, he would be duly tried, 
 wondered at, gazed after, convicted, hanged and for-
 
 170 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 gotten. We sliould think no more of liis victim than 
 we now think of Hannah Browne. The other cha- 
 racters of the play, with the exception of the two 
 principal, are nonentities. We care nothing for Mal- 
 colm or Donalbain, or Lenox or Rosse, or the rest of 
 the Scottish nobles. Pathetic, indeed, are the words 
 which hurst from Macduff when he hears the astomid- 
 ing tidings that all his pretty chickens and their dam 
 have been carried off at one fell swoop ; but he soon 
 shakes the woman out of his eyes, and dreams only of 
 revenge. His companions are slightly affected by the 
 bloody deed, and grief is in a moment converted into 
 rage. It is but a short passage of sorrow, and the 
 only one of the kind. What is equally remarkable 
 is, that we have but one slight piece of comic in the 
 play, — the few sentences given to the porter;"^ and 
 
 * The speech of this porter is in blank verse. 
 
 Here is a knocking indeed ! If a man 
 
 Were porter of hell-gate, he should have old 
 
 Turning the key. Knock — knock — knock ! "^lio is there, 
 
 In the name of Beelzebub ? Here is a farmer 
 
 That hanged himself [iip] on the expectation 
 
 Of plenty : come in time. Have napkins enough 
 
 About you. Here you '11 sweat for it. Eaiock — ^knock ! 
 
 Who 's there, in the other devdl's name ? [I'] faith 
 
 Here 's an equivocator, that could swear 
 
 In both the scales 'gainst either scale ; [one] who
 
 PICTUEES, GRAVE AND GAT. 171 
 
 their humour turns upon a gloomy subject for jest, — 
 the occupation of the keeper of the gates of hell. With 
 these two exceptions, — the brief pathos of Macduff, and 
 the equally brief comedy of the porter, — all the r^st is 
 blood. Tears and laughter have no place in this cavern 
 of death. 
 
 Of such a gory poem, Macbeth is the centre, the 
 moving spirit. From the beginning, before treason 
 has entered his mind, he appears as a man delight- 
 ing in blood. The captain announcing his deeds against 
 Macdonwald, introduces him bedabbled in slaughter. 
 
 Committed treason enough for God's sake, yet 
 Cannot equivocate to heaven. Oh ! come in, 
 Equivocator. Knock — knock — knock ! Who's there ? 
 'Faith, here 's an English tailor come hither 
 For stealing out of a French hose. Come in, tailor. 
 Here you may roast your goose. 
 
 Knock — knock — 
 
 Never in quiet. 
 Who are you ? but this place is too cold for hell. 
 I '11 devil-porter it no longer. I had thought 
 T' have let in some of all professions. 
 That go the primrose-path to th' everlasting darkness. 
 
 The alterations I propose ai*e very slight. Upon for on, i' faith 
 for 'faith, and the introduction of the word one in a place where it 
 is required. The succeeding dialogue is also in blank verse. So is 
 the sleeping scene of Lady Macbeth ; and that so palpably, that I 
 wonder it could ever pass for prose.
 
 173 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 "For brave Macbeth, — well he deserves that name, — 
 Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel. 
 Which smoked with bloody execution, 
 Like valour's minion carved out his passage 
 Until he faced the slave ; 
 
 And ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him. 
 Till he unseamed him from the nave to the chops,* 
 And fixed his head upon our battlements." 
 
 After this desperate backstroke, as Warburton justly 
 calls it,* Macbeth engages in another combat equally 
 sanguinary. He and Banquo 
 
 " Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe ; 
 Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds. 
 Or memorize another Golgotha, 
 I cannot tell." 
 
 Hot from such scenes, he is met by the witches. They 
 promise him the kingdom of Scotland. The glittering 
 prize instantly affects his imagination ; he is so wrapt 
 in thought at the very moment of its announcement that 
 he cannot speak. He soon informs us what is the hue 
 of the visions passing through his mind. The witches 
 
 * Warburton proposes that we should read " from the na^e to the 
 chops," as a more probable wound. But this could hardly be called 
 unseaming ; and the wound is intentionally horrid to suit the cha- 
 racter of the play. So, for the same reason, when Duncan is mur- 
 dered, we are made to remark that the old man had much blood 
 in him.
 
 PICTUEES, GRAVE AND GAT. 173 
 
 had told him he was to be king : they had not said a 
 word about the means. He instantly supplies them : 
 
 " Why do I yield to that suggestion 
 Whose hori'id image doth unfix my hair, 
 And make my seated heart knock at my ribs 
 Against the use of natui'e." 
 
 The dreaded word itself soon comes : 
 
 " My thought, whose muedee yet is but fantastical, 
 Shakes so my single state of man, that function 
 Is smothered in surmise." 
 
 To a mind so disposed, temptation is unnecessary. The 
 thing was done. Duncan was marked out for murder 
 before the letter was written to Lady Macbeth, and she 
 only followed the thought of her husband. 
 
 Love for him is in fact her guiding passion. She sees 
 that he covets the throne, — that his happiness is wrapt 
 up in the hope of being a king, — and her part is 
 accordingly taken without hesitation. With the blind- 
 ness of affection, she persuades herself that he is full of 
 the milk of human kindness, and that he would reject 
 false and unholy ways of attaining the object of his 
 desire. She deems it, therefore, her duty to spirit him 
 to the task. Fate and metaphysical aid, she argues, 
 have destined him for the golden round of Scotland.
 
 174 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 Shall she not lend her assistance ? She does not ask 
 the question twice. She will. Her sex, her woman's 
 breasts, her very nature, oppose the task she has pre- 
 scribed to herself ; but she prays to the ministers of 
 murder, to the spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, to 
 make thick her blood, and stop up the access and pas- 
 sage of remorse ; and she succeeds in mustering the 
 desperate courage which bears her through. Her insti- 
 gation was not in reality wanted. Not merely the 
 murder of Duncan, but of Malcolm, was already resolved 
 on by Macbeth. 
 
 " The Prince of Cumberland ! That is a step 
 On which I must foil clown, or else o'erleap, 
 For in my way it hes. Stars ! hide your fires, 
 Let not light see my black and dark desii'es ! " 
 
 As the time for the performance of the deed ap- 
 proaches, he is harassed by doubts ; but he scarcely 
 shows any traces of compunction or remorse. He pauses 
 before the crime, — not from any hesitation at its enor- 
 mity, but for fear of its results, — for fear of the poisoned 
 chalice being returned to his own lips, — for fear of the 
 trumpet- tongued indignation which must attend the 
 discovery of the murder of so popular a prince as 
 Duncan, — one who hag borne his faculties so meekly.
 
 PICTURES, GRATE AND GAY. 175 
 
 and loaded Macbeth himself with honoui"s. He is not 
 haunted by any feeling for the sin, any compassion for 
 his victim ; — the dread of losing the golden opinions he 
 has so lately won, the consequences of failure, alone 
 torment him. His wife has not to suggest murder, for 
 that has been already resolved upon ; but to represent 
 the weakness of drawing back, after a resolution has 
 once been formed. She well knows that the momentary 
 qualm will pass off, — that Duncan is to be slain, perhaps 
 when time and place will not so well adhere. Now, she 
 argues, — now it can be done with safety. Macbeth is 
 determined to wade through slaughter to a throne. If 
 he passes this moment he loses the eagerly desired prize, 
 and lives for ever after a coward in his own esteem ; or 
 he may make the attempt at a moment when detection 
 is so near at hand, that the stroke which sends Duncan 
 to his fate will be but the prelude of the destruction of 
 my husband. She therefore rouses him to do at once 
 that fi'om which she knows nothing but fear of detection 
 deters him ; and, feeling that there are no conscientious 
 scruples to overcome, applies herself to show that the 
 present is the most favourable instant. It is for him she 
 thinks — for him she is unsexed — for his ambition she 
 works — for his safety she provides.
 
 176 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 Up to the very murder, Macbeth displays no pity — 
 no feeling for anybody but himself. Fear of detection 
 still haunts him, and no other fear. 
 
 " Thou sure and steadfast earth, 
 Hear uot my steps which way they walk, for fear 
 The veiy stones prate of my whereabout." 
 
 As Lady Macbeth says, it is the frustrated attempt, 
 not the crime, that can confound him. When it has 
 been accomplished, he is for a while visited by brain-sick 
 fancies ; and to her, who sees the necessity of prompt 
 action, is left the care of providing the measures best 
 calculated to avert the dreaded detection. She makes 
 light of facing the dead, and assures her husband that 
 
 " A little water clears us of this deed. 
 How easy it is then ! " 
 
 Does she indeed feel this ? Are these the real emo- 
 tions of her mind ? Does she think that a little water 
 will wash out what has been done, and that it is as easy 
 to make all trace of it vanish from the heart as from the 
 hand ? She shall answer us from her sleep, in the lone- 
 liness of midnight, in the secrecy of her chamber. Bold 
 was her bearing, reckless and defying her tongue, when 
 her husband was to be served or saved ; but the sigh 
 bursting from her heavily-charged breast, and her deep
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 177 
 
 agony when she feels that, so far from its being easy to 
 get rid of the witness of murder, no washing can ob- 
 literate the damned spot, no perfume sweeten the hand 
 once redolent of blood, prove that the recklessness and 
 defiance were only assumed. We find at last what she 
 had sacrificed, how dreadful was the struggle she had 
 to subdue. Her nerve, her courage, mental and physi- 
 cal, was mibroken during the night of murder ; but 
 horror was already seated in her heart. Even then a 
 touch of what was going on in her bosom breaks forth. 
 When ui'ging Macbeth to act, she speaks as if she held 
 the strongest ties of human nature in contempt. 
 
 " I have given suck, and know 
 How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me : 
 I would, when it was smiUng in my face, 
 Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums, 
 And dashed the brains out, had I but so swom 
 As you have done to this." 
 
 Is she indeed so unnatural — so destitute of maternal, of 
 womanly feeling ? No. In the next scene we find her 
 deterred from actual participation in killing Duncan, 
 because he resembled her father in his sleep. This is 
 not the lady to pluck the nipple from the boneless gums 
 of her infant, and dash out its brains. Her language 
 is exaggerated in mere bravado, to taunt Macbeth's in-
 
 178 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS! 
 
 firmity of purpose by a comparison with her own boasted 
 firmness ; but if the case had arisen, she who had re- 
 coiled from injuring one whose life stood in the way of 
 her husband's hopes from a fancied resemblance to her 
 father, would have seen in the smile of her child a talis- 
 man of resistless protection. 
 
 The murder done, and her husband on the throne, 
 she is no longer implicated in guilt. She is unhappy 
 in her elevation, and writhes under a troubled spirit in 
 the midst of assumed gaiety. She reflects with a settled 
 melancholy that 
 
 " Nought's had, all's spent, 
 When our desire is got without content, 
 'Tis safer to be that wliich we destroy, 
 Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy." 
 
 This to herself. To cheer her lord, she speaks a different 
 language in the very next line. 
 
 " How now, my lord ! why do you keep alone, 
 Of sorriest fancies your companions making ; 
 Using those thoughts which should indeed have died 
 With those they think on ? " 
 
 Her own thoughts, we have just seen, were full as sorry 
 as those of her husband ; but she can wear a mask. 
 Twice only does she appear after her accession to the 
 throne ; once masked, once unmasked. Once seated at
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 179 
 
 high, festival, entertaining the nobles of her realm, full 
 of grace and courtesy, performing her stately hospitali- 
 ties with cheerful countenance, and devising with rare 
 presence of mind excuses for the distracted conduct of 
 her husband. Once again, when all guard is removed, 
 groaning in despair. 
 
 The few words she says to Macbeth after the guests 
 have departed, almost driven out by herself, mark that 
 her mind is completely subdued. She remonstrates with 
 him at first for having broken up the feast ; but she 
 cannot continue the tone of reproof, when she finds 
 that his thoughts are bent on gloomier objects. Blood 
 is for ever on his tongue. She had ventured to tell 
 him that the visions which startle him, were but the 
 painting of his brain, and that he was unmanned in 
 folly. He takes no heed of what she says, and con- 
 tinues to speculate, at first in distraction, then in dread, 
 and lastly in savage cruelty, upon blood. The apparition 
 of Banquo almost deprives him of his senses. He marvels 
 that such things could be, and complains that a cruel 
 exception to the ordinary laws of nature is permitted in 
 his case. Blood, he says, 
 
 " has been shed ere now in the olden time, 
 
 Ere human statute purged the gentle weal," — 
 
 n3
 
 X80 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 and in more civilized times also ; but, when death came, 
 no further consequences followed. Now not even twenty 
 mortal murders [he remembered the number of deadly- 
 gashes reported by the assassin] will keep the victim in 
 his grave. As long as Ban quo' s ghost remains before 
 him, he speaks in the same distracted strain. When 
 the object of his special wonder, by its vanishing, gives 
 him time to reflect, fear of detection, as usual, is his 
 first feeling. 
 
 " It will have blood, they say ; blood will have blood ! " 
 
 The most improbable witnesses have detected murder. 
 Stones, trees, magotpies, choughs, have disclosed the 
 secretest man of blood. Then come cruel resolves, 
 to rid himself of his fears. Mercy or remorse is to be 
 henceforward unknown ; the firstlings of his heart are 
 to be the firstlings of his hand, — the bloody thought is 
 to be followed instantly by the bloody deed. The tiger 
 is now fully aroused in his soul. 
 
 " I am in blood 
 Stept in so far, that, should I wade no more, 
 Eeturning were as tedious as go o'er," 
 
 He sees an enemy in every castle ; everywhere he 
 plants his spies ; from every hand he dreads an at- 
 tempt upon his life. Nearly two centuries after the 
 play was written, the world beheld one of its fairest
 
 PICTUBES, GRAVE AND GAY. 181 
 
 portions delivered to a rule as bloody as that of the 
 Scottish tyrant; and so true to nature are the con- 
 ceptions of Shakspeare, that the speeches of mixed 
 terror and cruelty, which he has given to Macbeth, 
 might have been uttered by Robespierre. The atro- 
 cities of the Jacobin, after he had stept so far in blood, 
 were dictated by fear. " Robespierre," says a quondam 
 satellite,^ "devenait plus sombre; son air renfrogne 
 repoussait tout le monde ; il ne parlait que d'assassinat, 
 encore d'assassinat, toujours d'assassmat. II avait peur 
 que son ombre ne I'assassinat." 
 
 Lady Macbeth sees this grisly resolution, and ceases 
 to remonstrate or interfere. Her soul is bowed down 
 before his, and he communicates with her no longer. 
 He tells her to be ignorant of what he plans, until she 
 can applaud him for what he has done. When he 
 abruptly asks her, 
 
 " How say'st thou, — tliat MacduflF denies his person 
 At our great bidding ?" 
 
 she, well knowing that she has not said anything about 
 it, and that the question is suggested by his own fear 
 and suspicion, timidly inquires, 
 
 " Have you sent to him, sir ? " 
 
 * Cames secretes de la Revolution de 9 au 10 Thermidor ; by 
 VUate, ex -jure revolutionnaire de Paiis.
 
 183 SHAKSPEARE PAPEES : 
 
 The last word is an emphatic proof that she is wholly 
 subjugated. Too well is she aware of the cause, and 
 the consequence, of Macbeth' s sending after Macduff; 
 but she ventures not to hmt. She is no longer the 
 stern-tongued lady urging on the work of death, and 
 taunting her husband for his hesitation. She now 
 addresses him in the humbled tone of an inferior; 
 we now see fright and astonishment seated on her face. 
 He tells her that she marvels at his words, and she 
 would fain persuade herself that they are but the 
 feverish effusions of an over-wrought mind. Sadly she 
 says, 
 
 " You lack the season of all nature, — sleep." 
 
 Those are the last words we hear from her waking lips; 
 and with a hope that repose may banish those murky 
 thoughts from her husband's mind, she takes, hand 
 in hand with him, her tearful departure from the 
 stage ; and seeks her remorse-haunted chamber, there 
 to indulge in useless reveries of deep-rooted sorrow, 
 and to perish by her own hand amid the crashing ruin 
 of her fortunes, and the fall of that throne which she 
 had so fatally contributed to win. 
 
 He now consigns himself wholly to the guidance of the 
 weird sisters ; and she takes no part in the horrors 
 which desolate Scotland, and rouse against him the
 
 PICTURES, OEAVE AND GAY. 183 
 
 insurrection of the enraged thanes. But she clings to 
 him faithfully in his downfall. All others except the 
 agents of his crimes, 2nd his personal dependents, have 
 abandoned him; but she, \nth mind diseased, and a 
 heart weighed down by the perilous stuff of recollec- 
 tions that defy the operation of oblivious antidote, 
 follows him to the doomed castle of Dunsinane. It is 
 evident that he returns her affection, by his anxious 
 solicitude about her health, and his melancholy recital 
 of her mental sufferings. He shows it still more 
 clearly by his despairing words when the tidings of 
 her death are announced. Seyton delays to com- 
 municate it ; but at last the truth must come, — that 
 the queen is dead. It is the over-flowing drop in his 
 cup of misfortune. 
 
 " She should have died hereafter ; — 
 There would have heen a time for such a word." 
 
 I might have borne it at some other time ; but now — 
 now — now that I am deserted by all — penned in my 
 last fortress — feeling that the safeguards in which I 
 trusted are fallacious, — now it is indeed the climax of 
 my calamity, that she, who helped me to rise to what 
 she thought was prosperity and honour, — who clung to 
 me through a career that inspired all else with horror 
 and hate, — and who, in sickness of body, and agony of
 
 184 SHAKSPEAEE PAPEES ! 
 
 mind, follows me in the very desperation of my fate, 
 should at such an hour be taken from me, — I am now 
 undone indeed. He then, for the first time, reflects on 
 the brief and uncertain tenure of life. He has long 
 dabbled in death, but it never before touched him 
 so closely. He is now aweary of the sun — now finds 
 the deep curses which follow him sufiiciently loud to 
 pierce his ear, — now discovers that he has already 
 lived long enough, — and plunges into the combat, 
 determined, if he has lived the life of a tyrant, to die 
 the death of a soldier, with harness on his back. 
 Surrender or suicide does not enter his mind ; with his 
 habitual love of bloodshed, he feels a savage pleasure 
 in dealing gashes all around; and at last, when he 
 finds the charms on which he depended, of no avail, 
 flings himself, after a slight hesitation, into headlong 
 conflict with the man by whose sword he knows he is 
 destined to fall, with all the reckless fury of despair. 
 What has he now to care for? The last tie that 
 bound him to human kind was broken by the death of 
 his wife, and it was time that his tale of sound and 
 fury should come to its appropriate close. 
 
 Thus fell he whom Malcolm in the last speech of the 
 play calls " the dead butcher." By the same tongue 
 Lady Macbeth is stigmatized as the fiend-like queen.
 
 PICTURES, GEAVE AND GAY. 185 
 
 Except her share in the murder of Duncan, — which is, 
 however, quite sufficient to justify the epithet in the 
 mouth of his son, — she does nothing in the play to 
 deserve the title ; and for her crime she has been suffi- 
 ciently punished by a life of disaster and remorse. She 
 is not the tempter of Macbeth. It does not require 
 much philosophy to pronounce that there were no such 
 beings as the weird sisters; or that the voice that told 
 the Thane of Glamis that he was to be King of Scot- 
 land, was that of his own ambition. In his own bosom 
 was brewed the hell-broth, potent to call up visions 
 counselling tyranny and blood; and its ingredients 
 were his own evil passions and criminal hopes. Mac- 
 beth himself only believes as much of the predictions 
 of the witches as he desires. The same prophets, who 
 foretold his elevation to the throne, foretold also that 
 the progeny of Banquo would reign; and yet, after 
 the completion of the prophecy so far as he is himself 
 concerned, he endeavours to mar the other part by the 
 murder of Fleance. The weird sisters are to him, no 
 more than the Evil Spirit which, in Faust, tortures 
 Margaret at her prayers. They are but the personi- 
 fied suggestions of his mind. She, the wife of his 
 bosom, knows the direction of his thoughts; and, 
 bound to him in love, exerts every energy, and sacri-
 
 l86 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 fices every feeling, to minister to his hopes and aspira- 
 tions. This is her sin, and no more. He retains, in 
 all his guilt and crime, a fond feeling for his wife. 
 Even when meditating slaughter, and dreaming of 
 blood, he addresses soft words of conjugal endearment ; 
 he calls her " dearest chuck," while devising assassi- 
 nations, with the fore -knowledge of which he is unwilling 
 to sully her mind. Selfish in ambition, selfish in fear, 
 his character presents no point of attraction but this 
 one merit. Shakspeare gives ■ us no hint as to her 
 personal charms, except when he makes her describe 
 her hand as " little." We may be sure that there were 
 few " more thoroughbred or fairer fingers," in the land 
 of Scotland than those of its queen, whose bearing in 
 public towards Duncan, Banquo, and the nobles, is 
 marked by elegance and majesty ; and, in private, by 
 affectionate anxiety for her sanguinary lord. He duly 
 appreciated her feelings, but it is pity that such a 
 "woman should have been united to such a man. If she 
 had been less strong of purpose, less worthy of con- 
 fidence, he would not have disclosed to her his ambitious 
 designs, less resolute and prompt of thought and action, 
 she would not have been called on to share his guilt ; 
 less sensitive or more hardened she would not have suf- 
 fered it to prey for ever like a vulture upon her heart.
 
 PICTURES, GEAVE AND GAT. 187 
 
 She affords, as I consider it, only another instance of 
 what women will be brought to, by a love which listens to 
 no considerations, which disregards all else beside, when 
 the interests, the wishes, the happiness, the honour, or 
 even the passions, caprices, and failings of the beloved 
 object are concerned; and if the world, in a com- 
 passionate mood, will gently scan the softer errors of 
 sister- woman, may we not claim a kindly construing for 
 the motives which plunged into the Aceldama of this 
 blood-washed tragedy the sorely urged and broken- 
 hearted Lady Macbeth ? 
 
 TIMON OF ATHENS; 
 
 The story of Timou the Misanthrope was popular 
 not only in his native land of Greece, but in the 
 English literature Of the Middle Ages. Classical 
 readers, who are of course acquainted with the lively 
 dialogue of Lucian, were once apt to look upon the 
 philosopher of Samosata as affording the original of 
 the play of Shakspeare ; but I doubt if Lucian, though 
 familiar to the learned, was popularly known even at 
 the end of the sixteenth century m England. Shak- 
 speare was indebted for the hint, and the principal
 
 188 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 incidents of his drama, to Plutarch, translated from 
 the French of Amyot by Sir Thomas North, and to 
 Painter's Palace of Pleasure. Dr. Farmer, in his 
 very shallow and pretending Essay on the Learning of 
 Shakspeare, announces this important fact among others 
 equally important, with much flourish ; and those who 
 feel inclined for such inquiries, will find sufficient to 
 satisfy their curiosity in the voluminous notes gathered 
 by the industry of Malone, Steevens, and Boswell. 
 
 To use the phrase of Dr. Farmer, which immediately 
 succeeds his notice of Timon, " were this a proper place 
 for such a disquisition," I should have something to 
 say, not merely on the learning of Shakspeare, — a 
 point on which I differ exceedingly with the Master 
 of Emanuel, — but on the utility of learning to a 
 dramatist. I should be prepared to contend, that 
 though the greater the store of knowledge, no matter 
 whence derived, — from books, from observation, from 
 reflection, — possessed by a writer on any subject, and 
 the larger the field whence an author of works of 
 imagination can cull or compare, so much more copious 
 will be his sources of thought, illustration, ornament, 
 and allusions; yet that the dramatist, and indeed the 
 poet in general, (the exceptions are few, and easily 
 accounted for,) should not travel far out of the ordi-
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 189 
 
 nary and beaten path for the main staple and material 
 of his poem. Without immediately referring to the 
 question of classical learning, many reasons exist for 
 thinking that Richard the Third was not so deformed 
 either in mind or body as he is represented in the 
 two plays in which he appears in Shakspeare, or in 
 the smgle one into which they are both clumsily rolled 
 for the stage ; but popular opinion, and the ordinary 
 chronicles of the times, so represented him. Northern 
 antiquaries are generally of opinion that Macbeth was 
 the true king, and that the blood-stained mantle of 
 cruelty and oppression ought to be shifted to the 
 shoulders of the " gracious Duncan," who was in 
 reality the usurper. In like manner we can conceive 
 that if the authorities of Saxo-Grammaticus or Geoffry 
 of Monmouth could be hmited up, a diflferent colourmg 
 might be given to the tales of Hamlet or Lear. But 
 what is all this to the purpose? It is no part of 
 the duty of the dramatist to invade the province of 
 the antiquary or the critic; and yet, for confining 
 himself to his proper department, he incurs the censure 
 of Farmer, and other persons of the same calibre of 
 intellect. If Shakspeare had had all the concentrated 
 knowledge of all the antiquarian societies of Denmark, 
 Scotland, Norway, or "Wales, he would have completely
 
 190 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 forgotten, what it was utterly impossible "he should 
 forget, — the first principles of dramatic art, if he 
 depicted Macbeth, Lear, or Hamlet in any other man- 
 ner than that which he has chosen. He would not have 
 taken the trouble, even if editions of Saxo-Gramma- 
 ticus or Hector Boethius were as plenty as blackberries, 
 to turn over a single page of their folios. He found 
 all that his art wanted in the historians or romance- 
 writers of the day, — in Hall or Holinshed, or the 
 Tragical History of Hamhlet, and that, too, translated, 
 not from the Latin of the Danish annalist, but from 
 the French of the story-teller Belleforest. Common 
 sense would dictate this course; but if the learned 
 languages be wanted to support it, I may quote 
 Horace, who, being eminently the poet of common 
 sense, speaks for all times and countries. 
 
 " Eecti^s Iliacum carmen deducis in actus, 
 QuSm si proferres ignota indictaque primus." 
 
 Take the tale or the legend as it is popularly believed 
 for the foundation of your drama, and leave to others 
 the obscure glory of hunting after new lights, or 
 unheard-of adventures. 
 
 In his classical plots the same principle holds. In 
 his Antony and Cleopatra^ Julius Qcesar^ Coriolanus^
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 191 
 
 and Timon of Athens, " it is notorious," to use the 
 words of Dr. Farmer, " that much of his matter-of-fact 
 knowledge is deduced from Plutarch ; but in what 
 language he read him, hath yet been the question." 
 A more idle question could not have been asked. He 
 might, for anything we know to the contrary, have 
 read him in Greek ; but for dramatic purposes he used 
 him in English. Sir Thomas North's translation of 
 Plutarch was a remarkably popular book ; and Shak- 
 speare, writing not for verbal critics, anxiously collating 
 the version with the original, and on the look-out to 
 catch slips of the pen or mistakes of the press,* but 
 
 * Such as Lydia for Lihrja, in Antony and Cleopatra. Act iii. 
 Sc. 6. 
 
 " — ' — - made her 
 Of Lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia, 
 Absolute queen." 
 
 Upton, correcting it from the text of Plutarch, substituted Libya / 
 and Dr. Johnson and other commentators adopted the coiTection. 
 Farmer had the great merit of discovei-iag that the word is Lydia 
 in North, whom Shakspeare foUowed. Tt was a great shame indeed 
 that he had not noticed the error, and collated the Enghsh with 
 the Greek ! In the same spirit of sagacious criticism it is re- 
 marked, that Csesar is made to leave to the Koman people his 
 gardens, &c. "on this side Tiber," whereas it should be " on that 
 side Tiber," — the original being wepav row Trora^oi). North trans- 
 lates it, however, " on this side," and Shakspeai-e again follows him 
 without turning to the Greek. Farmer, with an old rhetorical
 
 192 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 for the ordinary frequenters of the theatre, consulted 
 the volume of the English knight, not that of the 
 Boeotian biographer. If he had been as learned as 
 Isaac Casaubon, he would have acted precisely in the 
 same manner. The minute and unceasing study of 
 
 artifice, says, " I could fumisli you with many more instances, but 
 these are as good as a thousand." He had given three — and I ex- 
 tremely doubt if he could have given three more. He bids us 
 " turn to the translation from the French of Amyot, by Thomas 
 North, in foho, 1579, and you will at once see the origin of the 
 mistake." It is hard to say in what sense Farmer uses the word 
 " origin ; " but the mistakes originate in Amyot, who translates the 
 former passage "Koyne d'Egj^ite, de Cypre, de Lydie," and the 
 latter "et qu'il laissoit au peuple des jardins et vergers dega la 
 riviere du Tybre." I agree with Fanner, however, in thinking that, 
 if he could adduce the thousand instances of which he speaks, his 
 argument would be nothing the better. It would only prove that 
 Shakspeare, for the pui-poses of his plays, consulted North in 
 EngUsh, and not Plutarch in Greek ; a fact which may be readily 
 conceded, and, as I have said in the text, completely justified on 
 the true principles of the drama. 
 
 I do not agree with Upton and others in their proposed altera- 
 tion of these two passages, which, however they may differ from 
 the text of Plutarch, I would suffer to remain as they appear in the 
 foHo, because I am sure that Shakspeare so wrote them. Of the 
 third, referred to by Dr. Farmer, I am not so clear. In Antony and 
 Cleopatra, Act iv. Sc. 1. Augustus, in reply to Antony's challenge, 
 says: 
 
 " Let the old rufiian know 
 
 I have many other ways to die — meantime. 
 
 Laugh at his challenge."
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 193 
 
 classical literature since the days of Sliakspeare lias 
 banished blunders from our editions and translations, 
 and not even the most carelessly educated would deem 
 
 " What a reply is this !" says Upton : " it is acknowledging he 
 should fall under the unequal combat. But if we read, 
 
 Let the old ruffian know 
 He hath many other ways to die : meantime, 
 I laugh at his challenge. 
 
 we have the poignancy and the very repartee of Ciesar in Plutarch." 
 To this reading, which has been generally adopted. Dr. Farmer 
 objects that, though it is certainly so in the Greek and the modem 
 translation, " Shakspeare was misled by the ambiguity of the old 
 one." Antonius sent again to challenge Csesar to fight him, to 
 which Csesar answered, " That he had many other ways to die." 
 The doctor ought to have told us that the ambiguity here proceeded 
 from Amyotj " Cesar luy fit reponse, qu'// avoit beaucoup d'autres 
 moyens de mourir que celuy-la ;" but it is not an ambiguity of a 
 very puzzling kind. It appeal's to me that Shakspeare would have 
 followed his text literally as usual, and borrowed the word " he." 
 I am, therefore, in favour of Upton's reading; especially as it 
 mends the metre, which in the present text is somewhat out of 
 joint. 
 
 " Caesar to Antony. Let the old niffian know 
 
 I have many other ways to die — meantime. 
 
 Laugh at his challenge. 
 
 Mcec. Caesar must think," &c. 
 
 The proposed reading would make it much smoother. 
 
 " Caesar to Antony. Let the old ruffian 
 Know he hath many other ways to die : 
 Meantime, I laugh at 's challenge. 
 Mcec. Cajsar must think," (fee. 
 
 O
 
 194 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 it pedantic or misplaced in a dramatist to write with a 
 constant reference to the original, no matter in what 
 language, from which he drew his story ; but, on the 
 other hand, we should deem him a very dull critic 
 indeed who would insist upon it that in a play 
 avowedly written after Hooke, or Gibbon, or Mitford, 
 its author should verify every quotation, and take 
 care that their authorities were given with all the 
 perfections of the last " editio aliis longe locupletior." 
 
 Ben Jonson took another course, and his success was 
 as indifferent as that of Shakspeare was overwhelming. 
 His Sejanus and Catiline are treasures of learning. 
 Gifford truly says of the latter, that " the number of 
 writers whom Jonson has consulted, and the industry 
 and care with which he has extracted from them every 
 circumstance conducive to the elucidation of his plot, 
 can only be conceived by those who have occasion to 
 search after his authorities. He has availed himself of 
 almost every scattered hint from the age of Sallust to 
 that of Elizabeth for the correct formation of his cha- 
 racters, and placed them before our eyes as they appear 
 in the writings of those who lived and acted with them." 
 The consequence is, that Catiline is absolutely mibear- 
 able on the stage, and fails to please in the closet, 
 because the knowledge with which it abounds is con-
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 195 
 
 veyed in an inappropriate form. If Jonson had bestowed 
 the same pains, and expended the same learning, upon a 
 history of the Catilinarian conspiracy, he might have 
 produced a historical treatise to be applauded, instead 
 of a tragedy to be at most but tolerated. His learning 
 oppressed him. He was too full of knowledge to borrow 
 his plots, not to say from North, but from Plutarch 
 himself. The inaccuracies of the old story-teller would 
 have constantly shocked his scholar-like mind ; and, 
 instead of drawing characters or inventing situations, 
 he would have been in perpetual quest of authorities to 
 corroborate or contradict his principal text. Had there 
 been any such thing as a Plutarchian life of Catiline, or 
 " a Tragical History of the bloody conspiracy of Rome, 
 showing how they swore upon a bowl of blood to burn 
 the town, and murder the senators ; with the particulars 
 of the execution of some of the conspirators, and the 
 killing of the rest in a bloody battle near unto the 
 Italian mountains called the Alpes," the subject might 
 have attracted the attention of Shakspeare, who would 
 have assuredly looked no farther. The gossiping bio- 
 grapher or the prating ballad-monger would suffice for 
 his purpose; and all other authors, from the age of 
 Sallust to that of Elizabeth, might rest unconsulted in 
 peace. We should, however, have had characters which, 
 
 o3
 
 196 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 if they were not as correctly formed, " and placed 
 before our eyes as they appear in the writings of those 
 who lived and acted with them," would have been placed 
 before us as they appeared in the eyes of men them- 
 selves who saw them live and act. He would not have 
 dressed up the dry-bones of history, skeleton-fashion ; 
 but clothed them with flesh, and sent upon the stage, 
 not critical abstractions, but actual men. It is usual 
 to talk of the art of Jonson as something opposed to the 
 genius of Shakspeare. With deference to those who 
 employ tliis language, it is not over-wise. Li every- 
 thing material the possession of genius includes the 
 possession of art ; and in their common pursuit it would 
 be easy to prove that Jonson was as much inferior in 
 dramatic art, as it is admitted he was in dramatic genius, 
 to his illustrious contemporary. I am much mistaken 
 if I could not support my opinion by the authority of 
 no less a person than Aristotle himself, of whom Jonson 
 thought so highly as to write a commentary on his 
 Poetics. I do not say this out of any disparagement of 
 that great writer, whose name, on many accounts, stands 
 eminently high for erudition and genius in our own, as 
 it would in any other literature, and whose memory was 
 shamefully used by some of the Shakspearian commenta- 
 tors of the last century ; but I refer to him because the
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 197 
 
 acknowledged failure of his learned dramas affords, in 
 my miud, a full justification of the course pursued by 
 Shakspeare, and ought to put an end to the idle gabble 
 as to the learning of him whom Dr. Farmer so compla- 
 cently calls " the old bard." But the full discussion of 
 this question, with the numberless incidental disquisi- 
 tions to which it must give rise, would occupy too large 
 a space to be ventured upon in these fleeting essays ; 
 and might make the readers of Bentley's Miscellany set 
 me down, if its editor were rash enough to inflict such 
 toil upon them, as a bore of the first magnitude for 
 intruding my dry criticisms upon his pleasant and 
 festive pages. I am rather afraid that they are some- 
 thing inclined to think me so already, and am unwilling 
 farther to jeopardy my reputation on that score. I 
 must confine myself to Timon. 
 
 Lucian introduces Timon after his fall from riches, 
 besieging Jupiter with a storm of epithets, and railing 
 at the dotage into which the god has fallen, and his im- 
 becility in permitting so much evil in the world. He 
 reminds him of the former times, in which his lightning 
 and thunder were in constant occupation ; when his segis 
 was perpetually shaken, his bolts darted like clouds of 
 arrows, his hail rattled down as through a sieve ; and 
 how once on a great occasion he drowned the world in
 
 198 SHAKSPEABR PAPERS : 
 
 an universal deluge, leaving but a spark of life behind 
 in a cock-boat stranded upon Lycorea for the propaga- 
 tion of greater wickedness. After some general reflec- 
 tions, he comes to his own particular case, and upbraids 
 the god for allowing him to be treated with so much in- 
 gratitude, especially as he had so often sacrificed at the 
 jovial festivals with so much liberality. His clamours 
 succeed in arresting the attention of Jupiter, who had 
 been scared away for some time from looking into Athens 
 by the noisy disputes of the philosophers ; and, recog- 
 nizing his claims on divine attention, he despatches 
 Mercury to find Plutus, and bring him to Timon in the 
 desert. The messenger of the gods willingly undertakes 
 the commission ; and a pleasant dialogue between him 
 and Plutus, on the difficulty of keeping or retaining 
 wealth, the difference its possession and its want makes 
 in the human character, and other similar topics, ensues. 
 Plutus is soon introduced to Timon, drives away Poverty, 
 and defends himself against the accusations of the 
 misanthrope, by referring to his own reckless extrava- 
 gance, and want of discrimination in the choice of asso- 
 ciates. Recommending Timon to dig vigorously, he 
 departs. The digging is abundantly successful. It 
 turns up gold in countless quantities, and presently 
 arrive troops of flatterers, allured by the mere smell of
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 199 
 
 the metal. Some who had treated him with remarkable 
 ingratitude are among the number, and Timon resolves 
 on vengeance. As one by one they approach, — some 
 under pretence that their visits were paid for the sake of 
 doing him service, others promising him public honours 
 and dignities, — he assaults them with his spade, and 
 sends them home battered and broken-headed. At last 
 the visitors become too numerous for this close combat ; 
 and determined, like the old man in the story, to try 
 what virtue is in stones, he commences a battery upon 
 them, which soon compels them to retreat, but " not," 
 as Timon says in the concluding sentence of the dia- 
 logue, " bloodless or unwounded." 
 
 Such is a hasty sketch of what is generally looked 
 upon to be one of the most finished compositions of Lu- 
 cian. The style throughout is gay and airy, (though 
 somewhat hampered by its mythology, for Plutus is 
 made to bear the incompatible characters of the God of 
 Gold, and of gold itself, which every now and then comes 
 in awkwardly,) and the characters are pleasantly 
 sketched. But Lucian nowhere reaches the height of 
 the comic ; and over tragic or pathetic, or satire, in its 
 loftier range, he has scarcely any power. The objects 
 of his ridicule are comprised within a small compass. 
 His readers may well exclaim with Lord Byron, " Oh !
 
 200 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 thou eternal Homer ! " for he can scarcely write two 
 pages without some jeering reference to the Iliad or 
 Odyssey, the spirit of which divine poems he did not in 
 the slightest degree comprehend. The wranglings of 
 the sophists among whom he lived, and to which he at- 
 tached a wonderful importance, form another topic of 
 which he is never tired. Sketches of Athenian manners 
 and society abound, often graphic, but perpetually filled 
 with complaints of the insolence and upstart pride of the 
 rich. He is always on the watch to remind them of the 
 transitory nature of their possessions ; and to condemn 
 them to insult and disgrace at the hands of the poorer 
 classes, whom they had treated with hauteur during life, 
 when they descend to another world. He repeats in 
 several places the comparison of life to a theatrical pro- 
 cession, in which magnificent parts are assigned to some, 
 who pass before the eyes of the spectators clothed in 
 costly garments, and bedecked with glittering jewels; 
 but, the moment the show is over, are reduced to their 
 original nothingness, no longer kings and heroes, but 
 poor players whose hour has been strutted out. It gives 
 him wonderful pleasure to call Croesus, and Midas, and 
 the other generous princes of old times on the Asiatic 
 coast, whose names are everlastingly hacked to pieces 
 in the common-place satires, or squibs, or homilies of
 
 PICTURES, GEAVE AND GAT. 201 
 
 the Greeks, wretches and offscourings ; and to exhibit 
 Cyi'us, Darius, or Xerxes, occupied in degrading tasks 
 in the infernal regions. These topics, with perpetual 
 sneers at the then tumbling mythology of Paganism, 
 almost exclusively occupy the pages of Lucian. 
 
 His vein of satire was small, and its direction not 
 elevated. It is easy to see that petty feelings of per- 
 sonal spite or envy are at the bottom of all he writes. 
 He was jealous of the attention paid to wealth, and 
 anxious to show the world its mistake in not bestowing 
 exclusive homage on those far superior persons who 
 could write witty dialogue, &])Sivk\ing persiflage, or smart 
 reviews. In the sketch which is called his Life, he lets 
 us into the secret. His father was anxious to make 
 him a sculptor, and apprenticed him to an uncle, who 
 had obtained some reputation as an artist. His uncle 
 treated him harshly, and he took a dislike to the 
 business. He then tells us of his dream, in which the 
 Goddesses of Art and Eloquence contended for him; 
 and, after hearing the pleadings of both, he decided for 
 the latter. The argument which weighed most with 
 him, was, the power conferred by a successful career on 
 a public orator of assuming the port and insolence of 
 the great. I doubt not that Lucian in his prosperous 
 circumstances — it is said that he died Procurator, i.e.
 
 209 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 Lord Lieutenant, of Egypt — was fully as arrogant, and 
 as sensible of all the privileges of his position, as the 
 most swelling and presumptuous of those whom he be- 
 labours in his Dialogues. Swift said that he wrote for 
 no other reason than that he might be treated as if he 
 were a lord ; Lucian's ambition for literary renown was 
 stimulated by the hope that he might treat others in 
 what he conceived to be lordly fashion. In other 
 respects the game he pursues is, in general, small. 
 Living in the pestilential atmosphere of a literary town, 
 he thought the squabbling and quibbling of the paeda- 
 gogues by whom he was surrounded things of vital 
 moment. It was, in his eyes, matter well worthy of 
 all the satirical powers he possessed, to quiz the slo- 
 venly dress, or the quack pretensions, of a set of poor 
 devils whose very names must have been unknown be- 
 yond the narrow precincts in which they bustled. 
 Greece, in his days, could not boast of any productions 
 of genius; the commentating and criticising age had 
 come ; and the classics of bygone times were the subject 
 of everlasting chatter among sects of reviewers anxious 
 to show off their own wit and cleverness. The country 
 had for ages ceased to take any interest in politics ; and 
 nothing remained to console national vanity but per- 
 petual declamations on Marathon and Salamis, and
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 203 
 
 vapoui'ings about their skirmishing and buccaneering 
 wars against the Persians. Philip, and his " god-like 
 son," were, for many reasons which I need not stop to 
 recapitulate, no favourites with the scribbling tribes of 
 fallen Greece, and in general they make their appear- 
 ance only for some such silly purpose as 
 
 " To point a moral, and adom a tale." 
 
 Of the events which occurred in the four or five cen- 
 turies which elapsed from the death of Alexander to the 
 days of Lucian, no notice is taken. We have scarcely 
 a hint, except in one or two essays of dubious authen- 
 ticity, of the existence and progress of Christianity, 
 which was with relentless hand knocking to pieces those 
 gods who were so often made the butts of Lucian's in- 
 effective jesting. If there remained to us nothing but his 
 writings, we should be ignorant almost of the existence of 
 the great Roman empire under which he lived. His vision 
 is confined to the gossip of Athens ; what he sees there, 
 he depicts with a pleasant and faithful hand ; his world 
 is that of sophists and reviewers, and on their concerns 
 he is shrewd, witty, and instructive. Nothing in its 
 style can be better, for example, than the Cobbler and 
 the Cock ; but the manners there depicted, and the 
 foibles satirized, are trifling. The Art of writiuir
 
 S04 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 History is a perfect model of a review ; but then it is 
 no more than a review. The Auction of Slaves is a 
 capital squib ; but nothing more than a squib. He has 
 often been compared to Rabelais, who has sometimes 
 borrowed largely from him ; (Epistemon's account of 
 what he saw in the other world, for example, is taken 
 not only in conception, but in many of its details, from 
 the Necyomantia of Lucian ;) but those who know how 
 to read the Gargantua and Pantagruel in the manner 
 recommended by Rabelais himself in his address to the 
 " beuveurs trez illustres^^ and the others to whom he 
 dedicates his writings, will appreciate the deep difference 
 between a light and sparkling wit, amusing himself with 
 offhand pleasantries on literary folly or provincial ab- 
 surdity, and the long-pondering old man filled with 
 omnigenous knowledge, rioting in bitter-souled buffoonery 
 over all that can affect the interests or agitate the pas- 
 sions of mankind. Compare Lucian's True History, 
 with the Voyage of Panurge in quest of the Holy Bottle. 
 The Greek has the merit of the original idea, which has 
 since suggested all other imaginary voyages, and sup- 
 plied no few materials to Gulliver himself, and a pleasant 
 history it must indeed be allowed to be ; but what is it 
 after all, but a quiz or parody (often an unfair one) on 
 Herodotus and Homer ? In the other, literature and
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GA3\ 905 ' 
 
 its concerns hold but a trifling place ; but as the vessel 
 steered by Xenomanes, glides onward through allegoric 
 lands, and prodigious adventures, to its final destination, 
 it leaves untouched no coast where matter is to be found 
 for reflections on law, religion, medicine, science, poli- 
 tics, philosophy, in all their ramifications, poured forth 
 from a bosom filled with unbounded erudition, and a 
 heart perfectly fearless of those to whom it could trace 
 superstition, imposture, quackery, or corruption. 
 
 I have dwelt perhaps too long — certainly longer than 
 I had mtended — on Lucian ; but I wish to point out 
 the inutility of looking to him, even if he had been at 
 Shakspeare's elbow, as supplying in any degree elements 
 for the character of the dramatic Timon of Athens. He 
 is the more energetic misanthrope. He indeed hates 
 mankind. The Greek is not in earnest. In the depth 
 of his indignation he turns away to jest upon some 
 trifle of manners. He can recollect the ill-breedinsr 
 and gluttony of the philosopher who licks up the rich 
 sauce ofl" the plate with his fingers ; and he can stop to 
 bandy jests with the hungry parasite, or the venal 
 orator. His opening address to Jupiter, commences 
 with a frolic recapitulation of the epithets addressed to 
 the Olympian ruler by the poets ; and the misanthrope 
 is so far forgotten in the litterateur, that he pauses
 
 206 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 before entering on liis own calamities and wrongs, to 
 laugh at the brain-stricken poets who are obliged to stop 
 the gap of a yawning rhythm, or to prop up a halting 
 metre, by an epithet. This misanthropy did not very 
 seriously affect the patient ; nor are the evils of which 
 he complains, amounting as they do to little more than 
 his being cut by his old acquaintances now that he is 
 poor, so dreadful or extraordinary as to make him 
 
 " tid the thunder-bearer shoot, 
 
 Or tell tales of them to high-judging Jove." 
 
 The wrath of the Timon of Shakspeare is conceived in 
 a different spirit. No jesting escapes his lips while he 
 hurls his hatred on Athens. His withering malediction 
 touches all the points on which we are most sensitive ; 
 many, from the mere consideration of which we in- 
 stinctively turn away. He prays for the incontinence 
 of matrons, the disobedience of children, the degradation 
 of nobles before slaves and fools, the foul desecration of 
 virgins beneath the eyes of their parents, the bursting 
 of all social bonds, the preternatural cruelty of boyhood 
 to age: 
 
 " Son of sixteen, 
 Pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire, 
 And beat his brains out ! "
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 307 
 
 The utter uprooting of all the civilized institutions, all 
 the charitable feelings, all the honourable or holy 
 thoughts that link mankind together : 
 
 " Piety and fear, 
 Eeligion to the gods, peace, justice, truth, 
 Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood, 
 Instruction, manners, mysteries and trades, 
 Degrees, observances, customs and laws, 
 Decline to your confounding contraries. 
 And yet confusion live." 
 
 This is no mock hatred; it is the harrowing lan- 
 guage of a man thoroughly aroused to indignation, and 
 desperate against his kind. Compare it with the 
 parallel passage of Lucian, and we shall see, without 
 recurring to any such foolish inquiry as to what was 
 the precise quantity of the '^ less Greek " allowed to 
 Shakspeare by Ben Jonson, that to no other source 
 than that which supplied the maledictions of Lear, or 
 Constance, or Margaret, need we look for the bursting 
 imprecations of Timon. 
 
 He is introduced, at the commencement of the play, 
 surrounded with all the pomp and circumstance of pro- 
 fuse wealth. The poet, the painter, the jeweller, await 
 his appearance with the tributes of the pen, the pencil, 
 and the mine. The noblest men of his city bow before
 
 208' SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 him, cap in hand ; the humble look up to him as their 
 surest stay in distress, and none depart disappointed. 
 All conditions and all minds, the poet sajs in the florid 
 
 style, 
 
 "As well of gUb and slippery creatures* as 
 Of grave and austere quality, tender down 
 Their sei'vice to Lord Timon. His large fortune, 
 Upon his good and gracious nature hanging, 
 Subdues and properties to his love and tendance 
 All sorts of hearts ; yea, from the glass-faced Hatterer, 
 To Apemantus, that few things loves better 
 Than to abhor himself." 
 
 His first appearance on the stage is to release a 
 prisoner by paying the debt ; to give the dowry re- 
 quired to make two lovers happy in their union ; to 
 bestow lavish recompense, and, what is fully as dear to 
 the ear of painter or poet, commendations equally 
 lavish on the productions offered to his patronage ; to 
 receive with abounding hospitality Alcibiades and his 
 train ; to preside at a magnificent banquet, heaping his 
 guests with gifts, and entertaining them with all the 
 splendour that taste and prodigal expense can command. 
 His own heart, proud and gratified, swells with a strong 
 desire to do still more : 
 
 * Should not this be " creature," i. e. creation ?
 
 PICTUKES, GEAVE AND GAY. 209 
 
 " Metliinks I could deal kingdoms to my friends, 
 And ne'er be weary." 
 
 He is liappy in being the instrument of contributing to 
 the happiness of others. It is his delight — his pleasure 
 — his hobbj. Not to be generous, is not to be himself. 
 His profuse and liberal habit blinds him to all sus- 
 picions that the rest of the world is not of the same 
 temper. The time comes when he is to be cruelly 
 undeceived, and when his sincerity in these professions 
 of universal love and benevolence is to be severely 
 tested. His wealth, which he thought inexhaustible, 
 has taken to itself wings and fled. But even this does 
 not make any very deep impression upon him. He 
 listens with characteristic impatience to the tale of his 
 ruin told by the disconsolate Flavius. He answers in 
 brief and hasty sentences, and soon bids him " sermon 
 no further." He has his own resources left, his own 
 plans to fall back upon. He remembers his wish when 
 in the height of imagined prosperity ; he had often 
 desired to be poorer, in order that he might come 
 nearer his friends. He had been affected even to tears 
 when, with overflowing heart, he thought of the 
 precious comfort of having so many persons knit 
 together so closely, that, like brothers, they com- 
 manded each other's fortunes. He reflects with a
 
 210 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 justifiable pride, that his generosity was not directed 
 to unworthy purposes, or called forth by unworthy 
 feelings : 
 
 " No villanous bounty yet hath past my heart ; 
 Unwisely, not ignobly have I given." 
 
 He will not listen to the suggestions of his steward 
 that he can find any difficulty in borrowing. Even 
 when he learns that the senators, on whom he had 
 public claims, and from whom he expected a large sum 
 of money for the mere asking, have turned a deaf ear 
 to applications made in his name, he is not dis- 
 couraged. He utters a slight expression of spleen, 
 " You gods reward them ! " and at once bidding 
 Flavius look cheerly, proceeds to account for their 
 ingratitude as an exception to the general rule, arising 
 from the lack of kindly warmth in cold-blooded age. 
 Elsewhere he is secure of success : 
 
 " Ne'er sj^eak or think 
 
 That Tinaon's fortunes 'moug his friends can sink," 
 
 All these hopes are dashed to the ground in a moment. 
 His attempts at borrowing are worse than unsuccessful ; 
 they make his difficulties notorious, and, instead of 
 assisting his wants, cause his house to be besieged 
 with clamorous creditors. Shakspeare has not written
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. Sll 
 
 tlie scene in which the ungrateful refusals of his 
 friends are communicated to him ; but he shows us 
 the effect of the communication on Timon's mind. It 
 strikes him with instant sickness. " Take it on my 
 soul," says his servant Servilius, 
 
 " My lord leans wondrously to discontent. 
 His comfortable temper has forsook him ; 
 He is much out of health, and keeps his chamber." 
 
 This is the cold fit of the ague by which he is smitten. 
 The hot fit of fever is soon at hand. He bursts in 
 controlless rage thi'ough the files of opposing duns ; 
 plans a whimsical, but a decisive revenge ; and 
 having executed it, parts from the crowd of 
 
 " Smiling, smooth, detested parasites. 
 Courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears, 
 The fools of fortune, trencher-friends, time-flies, 
 Cap-and-knee slaves, vapours, and minute-jacks," 
 
 whose prodigious ingratitude had driven him almost 
 mad, with a stern resolution never more to expose 
 himself to similar causes of grief and indignation, by 
 herding again with mankind. 
 
 It is useless to say that such a determination was 
 unjust. He who afiects to be a misanthrope, is a 
 pitiful and troublesome coxcomb ; real misanthropy 
 is madness, and in the concluding acts of the play, 
 
 p3
 
 213 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 Timon is actually insane. He had no friends. His 
 money and his dinners attracted dependents and guests 
 in abundance ; but he ought to have known that they 
 went for the money and the dinner, and nothing else. 
 The entertainer and the entertained were on a level. 
 If they had the pleasure of receiving, he had the 
 glory of giving, and neither party had a right to 
 complain. The course of life he led, was calculated 
 expressly to drive from him all who were possessed 
 of qualities capable of inspiring respect and friendship. 
 No honourable or high-minded man would frequent the 
 house of Timon, to be exposed to the suspicion of 
 going there with sordid or selfish views. He gathered 
 around him throngs of people whom he corrupted into 
 sycophancy, and he is unreasonable enough to complain 
 of the very meanness which was chiefly of his own 
 creation or encouragement. He set no value on what 
 he flung away with lavish hand, and in reality cared 
 as little for those to whom he flung it. While dis- 
 pensing his boundless hospitalities, or scattering his 
 magnificent gifts, he had in him, though undeveloped, 
 and even by himself unsuspected, the seeds of mis- 
 anthropy as deeply set as when he was howling 
 against 
 
 " All feasts, societies, aud throngs of men,"
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 213 
 
 in the desert. He consulted merely his own whim 
 in giving. He thought that no profusion could exhaust 
 his wealth ; and he therefore was profuse, as he ima- 
 gined, in security. If we held the purse of For- 
 tunatus, or could chain 
 
 " Volatile Hermes, and call up unbound, 
 In various forms, old Proteus from the sea. 
 Drawn through a limbeck to his native form," 
 
 and achieve the discovery of the philosopher's stone, 
 where would be our merit in dispensing gold all around ? 
 We give nothing when we give that which costs us 
 nothing. We do not see that Timon makes any sacri- 
 fice, or puts himself to any inconvenience ; and we must 
 esteem but lightly that liberality which looks forward 
 to recompense or return. In his prosperity he cherished 
 chance companions without consideration; and with 
 equal want of consideration, he curses all mankind in 
 his adversity. The difference between his feelings in 
 the two cases amounts to no more than this, that Timon, 
 rich, quietly showed his contempt of the ill-chosen circle 
 of parasites with which he had surrounded himself, by 
 a careless bounty showered without distinction on the 
 base as on the worthy ; and Timon, poor, clamorously 
 exhibited his hatred of all mankind, hastily judging
 
 214 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 them bj tlie wretched sample with which he had asso- 
 ciated, in a strain of general imprecation as reckless and 
 undiscriminating. 
 
 A servile or sensual mind would have adopted the 
 plan of Gnatho in the Eunuchus, who, after he had 
 wasted in " riotous living " whatever property he pos- 
 sessed, — after patria ahligurierat hona, — seized on such 
 a gull as Thraso, and have endeavoured to live upon 
 others, as others had lived upon him. A good-natured 
 or thoughtless fellow would have tried to mend his luck, 
 called for fresh cards, and begun again. He, no doubt, 
 would be at first especially annoyed by the loss of his 
 money, and still more by the reflection that he had 
 been choused and ill-treated by those whom he took to 
 be his friends, and who, at all events, were the partners 
 of his gayer hours. But the fit would soon pass, the 
 bile would be got rid of, and (if of English tongue) 
 after a few of those national prayers which have ob- 
 tained us a celebrated sobriquet among all the other 
 people of the earth, liberally distributed to all and 
 sundry, he would regain his temper, and philosophically 
 sing 
 
 Why should we quarrel for riches, 
 
 Or other such gHttering toys ? 
 A light heart and a thin pair of breeches 
 
 Will go through the world, my brave boys !
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 215 
 
 He would struggle on, and puzzle it out in one way 
 or another ; and, if Fortune smiled once more, be as 
 ready as ever to commence the old game, forgetting and 
 forgiving everything and everybody, and as open as 
 before to be imposed upon by those who gave them- 
 selves the trouble to do so. 
 
 But Timon could not adopt either of these courses. 
 Too high-bred, too haughty of thought, he could never 
 have descended to be a trencher-slave : too selfishly 
 awake to his own importance, he could never have par- 
 doned those who had hurt his pride, or mortified his 
 vanity. 
 
 Such contrasts as these, Shakspeare had no notion of 
 opposing to him. But he has chosen the appropriate 
 contrast in Apemantus, the snarling philosopher,"^ who 
 is modelled after the cynics, particularly after Diogenes. 
 In Timon' s prosperity, he haunts his entertainments 
 for the purpose of indulging his impertinent humour of 
 carping at the company he meets there. Like Diogenes 
 himself, he is no more than an ill-mannered hound, who 
 
 * He is thus introduced at Timon's banquet. " Then comes, 
 dropping after all, Apemantus discontentedly, like himself." There 
 has been some deep criticism on these words ; but, as they do not 
 convey any veiy brilliant meaning, I incline to think the direction 
 was, " Then comes, dropping after all, Apemantus discontentedly, 
 hy himself."
 
 216 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 deserves perpetual kickings, and is tolerated only for his 
 wit. It is a character easy to assume and to support, 
 requiring nothing more than a sufficient' stock of cool 
 impudence and effrontery. Vanity is at the bottom. 
 A desire to brazen out the inconveniences of low breed- 
 ing and awkward manners, an.d a love of notoriety, no 
 matter how obtained, are enough to make a cynic. The 
 well-known repartees of Plato and Aristippus set the 
 character of Diogenes in its true light : we may be 
 certain that Alexander, in their celebrated dialogue, 
 looked upon him merely as a buffoon, tumbling about 
 for his diversion in a peculiar fashion ; but he was 
 undoubtedly possessed of much wit and humour. The 
 jesting of Apemantus, is as plain-spoken and ill-natured, 
 if not as good, as that of the famed tenant of the tub ; 
 and Timon keeps him at his table as an original — a 
 sort of lion, who is as much a part of the diversion of 
 the evening, as the masque of the Amazons, or the 
 lofty strain of the hautboys. There are some touches 
 of nature in the fellow, however; for he sees with 
 regret the approaching downfall of his liberal host, and 
 warns him against the consequences of the course he is 
 pursuing, with a grumbling kindness. 
 
 His cynicism is not misanthropy ; it is of the same 
 stamp as that of the hero of a celebrated play, which
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 217 
 
 its celebrated author intended as an exhibition of the 
 feelings and propensities of a man-hater, and gave it 
 accordingly the name of Le Misanfrope. It would be 
 absurd to offer eulogies to Moliere, but it is undeniable 
 that he has lilade a mistake in the title of his play. 
 Alceste is a testy and fretful man ; nothing more. 
 There is none of the insane rage, and consequently 
 none of the poetry, of the misanthrope about him. It 
 is hard to say what puts him out of humour ; and, 
 indeed, he can hardly tell the reason, except that 
 
 " JMoi, je veux me facher, et ue veux point entendre." 
 
 When he comes to matters more specific, we find him 
 repeating the complaints, almost the phrases, of Ape- 
 mantus : 
 
 " Non : je ne puis soiiffiir cette lache m^thode 
 Qu'affectent la plu^^ait de vos gens a-la-mode ; 
 Et je ne hay lien tant que les eontorsions 
 De tous ces grands faiseurs de protestations : " 
 
 or agam. 
 
 ' Mes yens sont trop blesses ; et la cour et la ^ille 
 Ne m'offi-ant i-ien qu'ol jets a mechauffer la bile, 
 J'entre en une humeur noii-e, en un chagrin profond, 
 Quand je vols vivre entre eux les hommes comme Us font. 
 Je ne trouve par-tout que lache flaterie, 
 Qu'iajustice, interet, trahison, fourberie ;
 
 218 SHAKSPEAKE PAPEES : 
 
 Je ne puis plus tenir, j'enrage, et mon dessein 
 Est de rompre en visiere a tout le genre hunaain." 
 
 It was hardly worth while to come to so desperate a 
 determination for so small a cause. His friend Philinte 
 may well say • 
 
 " Je ne vols pas, moi, que le cas soit pendable." 
 
 Even Apemantus is of higher strain on the same sub- 
 ject of insincere politeness : 
 
 " Aches contract and starve your supple joints ! 
 That there should be small love 'mongst these sweet knaves, 
 And all this courtesy ! The strain of man 's bred out 
 Into baboon and monkey. 
 
 Who lives that 's not 
 Depraved, and depraves ? who dies, that bears 
 Not one spurn to their graves of their friends' gift ? 
 I should fear, those that dance before me now 
 Would one day stamp upon me. It has been done ; 
 Men shut their doors against a setting sun. 
 
 What a coU 's here ! 
 Serving of becks, and jutting out of bums ! 
 I doubt whether their legs be worth the sums 
 That are given for them. Friendship 's full of dregs ; 
 Methinks, false hearts should never have sound legs. 
 Thus honest fools lay out their wealth on courtesies." 
 
 In this strain Apemantus is consistent throughout. 
 Alceste is not. Oronte reads to him a silly sonnet, and 
 le Misantrope is as careful of the usages of society in
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 919 
 
 conveying his censure, as any of the flatterers he 
 condemns. His disapproval is conveyed indirectly; 
 instead of saying at once that the verses are sad trash, 
 he veils his criticism under the pretence of its having 
 heen addressed to another : 
 
 " Mais, un jour, a quelqu'un dont je tairai le nom, 
 Je disois," &c. 
 
 The treatment which the poet experiences from Ape- 
 mantus is of a more decisive character. Alceste, 
 besides, so far from having determined to break " en 
 visiere a tout le genre humain," is in love, and in love 
 ■with a flirt of the first magnitude. He is desperately 
 jealous of his rivals ; and instead of supporting his 
 misanthropical character is ready to defy them a 
 Voutrance for laughing at him. A duellist, not a 
 misanthrope, would have said, 
 
 " Par le sangbleu ! messieurs, je ne croyois pas etre 
 Si plaisant que je suis." 
 
 He experiences all the usual vicissitudes of love, — 
 jealousy, anger, quarrels, reconciliations, and so forth. 
 If we did not find it in the Misantrope, we should be 
 inchned to ascribe the following tender morgeau — and 
 there are more beside — to as love-smitten a swain as 
 ever talked " softely to his ladye love."
 
 220 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 Alceste says to Celimone ; 
 
 " Ah ! que vous s^avez Men ici contre moi-meme, 
 Perfide ! vous servir de ma foiblesse extreme, 
 Et manager pour vous I'exces prodigieux 
 De ce fatal amour, ne de vos traitres yeux ! " 
 
 We find nothing like this, in the misanthrope drawn 
 by a more vigorous hand. Moliere himself seems to 
 have a sharp misgiving as to the consistency of his 
 character, for he makes Philinte say with astonishment 
 
 " De I'humeur dont le Ciel a voulu le former, 
 Je ne sijai pas comment il s'avise d'aimer." 
 
 He may indeed be well amazed ; but it is also not a 
 little to be wondered that the same consideration did 
 not induce the author to choose a different title for his 
 comedy. 
 
 The snarler living in society, and the furious man 
 who has fled from it, meet in the wood. The scene 
 which ensues is the master-piece of the play. The 
 contrast between the hardened practitioner in railing at 
 mankind, the long-trained compound of impudent hu- 
 morist and sturdy beggar, who never had felt an 
 honourable or generous emotion, and whose career 
 had been devoted to procure under the cover of 
 philosophy and independence, an inglorious living in 
 lazy idleness, by amusing those whose taste lay that
 
 PICTUBES, GRAVE AND GAY. 291 
 
 way with scurril ribaldry ; and the man who, born in 
 lofty rank, had enjoyed all the luxuries and the splen- 
 dours of life, who had the mouths, the tongues, the 
 eyes, and hearts of men paying homage to him, who 
 had never bent for favour, save when he thought that 
 he did honour to those of whom he asked it ; and now 
 deprived of all that had been his glory and happiness, 
 the gods of his idolatry shattered at one blow, his 
 brilliant sky suddenly overcast, and the rich and bright- 
 coloured rainbow reduced to its original mist and 
 vapour ; — the contrast between these, — one content 
 with his lot, and even vain of the position into which 
 he has. thrust himself; the other, torn by all the 
 passions of anger and mortification, — is finely con- 
 ceived and admirably executed. Apemautus tells 
 Timon that his present character springs only from 
 change of fortune ; that he is a fool to expose himself 
 to the rigour of woods which have outlived the eagle, 
 while his flatterers wear silk, drink wine, lie soft, and 
 have forgotten his existence ; that his sour cold habit 
 has been put on enforcedly ; that he w^ould again be a 
 courtier, if he were not a beggar ; and, as a moral of 
 his discourse, recommends him to imitate the practices 
 of those who ruined him, — to hinge his knee, crouch, 
 flatter, and betray in turn :
 
 222 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 " 'Tis most just 
 That thou turn rascal ; hadst thou wealth again, 
 Rascals should have it." 
 
 Timon scarcely replies to the railing of the cynic, 
 and utterly disdains to notice the scoundrel advice 
 with which he concludes : but he retorts on his unwel- 
 come visitor, that his character also was framed by his 
 circumstances ; that he was born a beggar, and bred a 
 dose ; that his nature commenced in suiferance, and that 
 time made him hard in it; and that, if he had not 
 been from the earliest moment of his life the most 
 degraded of mankind, he would be a knave and flat- 
 terer. In these mutual censures there is a mixture 
 of truth and injustice. That Timon's misanthropy 
 was forced upon him by the downfall of his fortunes, 
 and the faithlessness of his friends, is true ; but Ape- 
 mantus does not do him justice when he says, that he 
 would return to his old mode of life, if he were to 
 regain his former wealth. The iron has entered too 
 deeply into his soul. Nor has the cynic properly 
 appreciated the character of Timon, when he recom- 
 mends him to turn rascal. Here he speaks from him- 
 self, and is laid defencelessly open to the powerful 
 
 I* 
 retort of the fallen gentleman. " Hadst thou," says 
 
 Timon,
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 223 
 
 " Like us, from our first swath, proceeded 
 The sweet degrees that this hrief world affords 
 To such as may the passive drugs of it 
 Freely commaud, thou wouldst have plunged thyself 
 Id general riot ; melted down thy youth 
 In different beds of lust, and never learned 
 The icy precepts of respect ; but followed 
 The sugared game before thee." 
 
 The same selfish mood of temper that rendered the 
 beggar Apemantus insolent, and desirous of vexing 
 whomsoever he met, " always a villain's office, or a 
 fool's," would have made the high-born Apemantus 
 pursue such a course as is here described by Timon ; 
 and, if he had broken down in his career, there can 
 scarcely be a doubt that he would have followed the 
 servile advice he tenders. The beggared prodigal 
 would have become a sycophant. But Timon, too, is 
 unjust towards Apemantus when he says, 
 
 " All villains that do stand by thee are pure ; " 
 
 for the cynic had no other villany than impudence and 
 idleness. The fact is, that neither can defend his own 
 conduct, and each is driven to take the ground of im- 
 pugning that of his accuser. Such a conversation can 
 have but the one end. It must conclude, as it does 
 here in a torrent of mutual abuse ; and they depart 
 with increased scorn and contempt of each other.
 
 224 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 With the fourth act, the Shakspearian Timon may 
 be said to begin and end. The first act, exhibiting his 
 prodigal extravagance ; the second his tottering estate; 
 and the third, his mortification and revenge, are taken 
 from Plutarch ; or, if we must speak by the card, from 
 North. There is nothing remarkable in the characters 
 of a prodigal host, a confiding friend, or an irritated 
 benefactor soured by unlooked-for ingratitude. The 
 fourth act is Shakspeare's own. Alarm had made way 
 for rage; rage now bursts into madness uncontrolled. 
 In the other sketches of Timon, he is shown as a sple- 
 netic wit; and those who visit him in the hour of his 
 returning wealth are no more than ordinary parasites, 
 plying their well-understood vocation. In the fifth act 
 Shakspeare dramatizes some of the old traditionary 
 stories of the man-hater, and the force and energy 
 which he had imparted to the character are immediately 
 weakened. The invitation of all Athenians " in the 
 sequence of degree " to hang themselves, is a touch of 
 mere comedy;* and even his answers to the senators, 
 
 * Shakspeare, in introducing this story of the tree, did not take 
 the trouble of recollecting that it is a town stoiy, and not suited for 
 the desert. 
 
 " I have a tree, which grows here in my close 
 That mine own use invites me to cut down, 
 And I must fell it."
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 225 
 
 thouo-h savao!;e enougli, are far removed from the in- 
 tensity of frenzied hatred exhibited in the fourth act. 
 There he is indeed the misanihrojws who hates mankind. 
 The poetry of the misanthropic feeling is there fully 
 developed. In Apemantus, his hatred of mankind is a 
 tolerated impertinence, which obtains admission to 
 lordly tables, and affords an opportunity of railing and 
 carping without being exposed to their proper conse- 
 quences. In Alceste, there is in reality no misanthropy 
 at all ; Philinte may well call it a folly : 
 
 " C'est une folie, a nulle autre seconde, 
 Devouloir se meler de corriger le monde." 
 
 In Timon it is absolute madness. He goes not about 
 displaying his wit or his ill -nature at the expense of 
 those whom he meets. He flies from all society, and 
 confounds the universal race of man in one common 
 curse. As for correcting the world, he dreams not of 
 such folly. It suits him better to pray for its universal 
 ruin and damnation. 
 
 This is the only light in which misanthropy can be 
 
 He hardly had a close of his own, or indeed a tree of his own, ia 
 the desert, where he dwelt ia a cave ; besides, he had no necessity 
 for felling any particular tree, or, if he had, there remained enough 
 for the purposes he recommended. 
 
 Q
 
 226 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 considered for the purposes of poetry. If we do not look 
 upon it as madness, it becomes contemptible. Timon, 
 born to great estate, wastes it in riotous living ; and, 
 when his money is gone, he finds it not quite so easy to 
 borrow as it had been with him to lend. The case is 
 far from being uncommon ; and it is borne in different 
 ways, according to the different temperaments of men. 
 It drives Timon out of his senses. Gold, and the pomps 
 and vanities which it procures, had been to him every- 
 thing. Nature had not supplied him with domestic 
 attachments ; he is without wife or children, kindred or 
 relations, and he has made no friend. All that he re- 
 garded, vanished with his wealth. His soul, like that 
 of the licentiate, Perez Garcia, lay in his purse ; when 
 the purse was lost, he lost his senses too. In his pros- 
 perity we do not find any traces of afiection, honourable 
 or otherwise, for women. In his curses, disrespect for 
 the female sex is remarkably conspicuous. The matron 
 is a counterfeit, her smiling babe is spurious ; the virgin 
 is a traitor, there is no chastity which is not to be sacri- 
 ficed for Gold, that 
 
 " Ever young, fresh, loved, and delicate wooei', 
 Whose hlush doth thaw the consecrated snow 
 That lies on Dian's cheek ; " 
 
 and those who do make the sacrifice are instantly con-
 
 PICTUEES, GEAVE ANB GAT. 227 
 
 verted into tlie plagues and torments of mankind. 
 " There's more gold," he says to Phryne and Timandi'a, 
 after a speech of frenzied raving ; 
 
 " Do you damn others, and let this damn you, — 
 And ditches grace you all ! " 
 
 These philosophical ladies assure him that they will do 
 anything for gold, and thank him for his compliments ; 
 
 " More counsel with more money, bounteous Timou ! " 
 
 He readily believes them to be no worse than the rest of 
 their sex ; and, as gold had been his all-in-all, feels no 
 scruple in thinking that its operation ought to be resist- 
 less in subverting the honour of women, as well as the faith 
 of men. Nothing, I repeat, except insanity, could raise 
 such a character from contempt ; but invest him with 
 madness, and poetry will always be able to rivet our 
 attention, and excite our sympathies for the moody 
 passions of the man hated of the gods, wandering alone 
 over the limitless plain of life without end or object, 
 devouring his own heart, and shunning the paths of 
 men. 
 
 No women appear in this play except Phryne and 
 Timandra, and they but in one short scene, when they 
 do not speak, between them, fifty words. This, of itself, 
 is sufficient to keep the play off the stage, for few 
 
 q3
 
 328 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 actresses will be desirous of appearing in such cha- 
 racters. They are precisely the description of women 
 suited to confirm Timon in his hatred of the human 
 race, and his conviction of the power of money over all. 
 It is unnecessary to say that ladies of a different class 
 of soul are to be found in Shakspeare, but their place is 
 not here. Isabels and Imogens, Juliets and Desdemonas, 
 would have scorned the riot and sycophancy of his 
 prosperous hours, and would have scared away by their 
 unpurchaseable purity the degrading visions of his mis- 
 anthropical fancies in the wood. The mistresses of 
 Alcibiades [the real Alcibiades, I should imagine, was 
 much "better accommodated" than he appears to be in 
 this play] are Timon's patterns of womankind ; as the 
 parasite train, who infested his house, are his patterns 
 of mankind. Yet even he might have seen that his 
 estimate was unjust. The churlish Apemantus, who 
 ate roots while others revelled at his overloaded board, 
 seeks him in the forest to offer something better than 
 roots to mend his feast. His steward, Flavins, ap- 
 proaches him in his calamity with a tender of his 
 duteous service. Alcibiades, the most honoured of his 
 guests, and who never had received any favours at his 
 hands, offers him assistance unasked. These touches of
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 229 
 
 kindness might have abated his censure, and made him 
 waver in his opinion that he should find in the woods 
 
 " The unkindest beast more kinder tJian mankind." 
 
 But no. The feeling which was at the root of his mad- 
 ness is as conspicuous in his reception of these offers, 
 as in all other parts of his conduct. He patronizes to 
 the end. He is touched by the devotion of Flavius, 
 because he recognises Timon in the light of a master ; 
 he declines the gold of Alcibiades, because he wishes to 
 show that he has more gold, and can still lavish it ; but 
 Apemantus he spurns. He will not accept assistance 
 from a beggar, and a beggar upon whom it would be no 
 matter of pride to waste his bounty, even if the perverse 
 snarler would receive it. 
 
 Insanity, arising from pride, is the key of the whole 
 character ; pride indulged, manifesting itself indirectly 
 in insane prodigality, — pride mortified, directly in in- 
 sane hatred. Apemantus was wrong when he told him 
 that he was long a madman, and then a fool. He should 
 have reversed it. Timon was first a fool, and then a 
 madman. Alcibiades sees at a glance that 
 
 " his wits 
 Are drowned and lost in his calamities ; "
 
 230 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 and for such a catastrophe nothing can be a more un- 
 erring preparation than the stubborn "will of pride. 
 " Assuredly," says the Laureate, " in most cases, 
 madness is more frequently a disease of the will than 
 of the intellect. When Diabolus appeared before the 
 town of Mansoul, and made his oration to the citizens 
 at Eargate, Lord Will-be-will was one of the first that 
 was for consenting to his words, and letting him into 
 the town." Well may Dr. Southey conclude his specu- 
 lations on this subject by saying, " In the humorist's 
 course of life, there is a sort of defiance of the world and 
 the world's law ; indeed, any man who departs widely 
 from its usages, avows this ; and it is, as it ought to 
 be, an uneasy and uncomfortable feeling wherever it is 
 not sustained by a high state of excitement, and that 
 state, if it be lasting, becomes madness."* The Lau- 
 reate in this sentence has written an unconscious com- 
 mentary on the Timon of Shakspeare. The soul-stung 
 Athenian, when he 
 
 " made his everlasting mansion 
 Upon the beached verge of the salt flood," 
 
 called himself a misanthrope : — he was a madman ! 
 
 W. M. 
 
 * The Doctor, &c. vol. iii. pp. 272 and 281. I believe no secret 
 is violated ia attributing this work to Dr. Southey.
 
 PICTUEES, GEAVE AND GAY. 231 
 
 *^* The text of Timon of Athens is about the most corrupt of the 
 plays. I suggest a few alterations. 
 
 Act iii. Scene 1. LucuUus, wishing to bribe Flavius, says, 
 " Here's three solidores for thee." Steevens declares this coin to be 
 from the mint of the poet. It is saludores, i. e. saluts-d'or, — apiece 
 coiued in France by our Hemy V. See Holinshed, Kuding, Du- 
 cange, &c. It is mentioned by Eabelais more than once. 
 
 Act iv. Scene 3. " Eaise me this beggar, and denude the lord, 
 The senator shall bear contempt hereditary. 
 The beggar native honour." 
 Read — " Eobe me this beggar," i. e. array the beggar in the robes 
 of the senator, and reduce the senator to the nakedness of the 
 beggar, and contempt and honour will be awai-ded according to their 
 appearance. 
 
 Act iv. Scene 3. Timon, addressing gold, says, 
 
 " O thou sweet king-ldUer, and dear divorce 
 'T^vist natural son and sire ! " 
 H&didL^Mn-'killer" i.e. destroyer of all Idndred aifection. King, 
 killing was no crime in Athens, where, as Shakspeare knew, there 
 was no king ; and all Timon's apostrophes to the wicked power of 
 gold relate not to the ailiflcial laws of society, but to the violation of 
 natural ties, as between son and sire, husband and wife. 
 
 Same scene. 
 
 " Thou bright defiler 
 
 Of Hymen's j)urest bed ! thou valiant Mars ! 
 
 Thou ever young,//-es/;, loved, and delicate wooer," &c. 
 
 Perhaps, fresh-lived.
 
 232 SHAKSPEABE PAPEES : 
 
 POLONIUS. 
 
 This is a character which few actors like to perform. 
 Custom exacts that it must be represented as a comic 
 part, and yet it wants the stimulants which cheer a 
 comedian. There are no situations or reflections to 
 call forth peals of laughter, or even fill the audience 
 with ordinary merriment. He is played as a buffoon ; 
 but the text does not afford the adjuncts of buffoonery ; 
 and, in order to supply their place, antic gesture and 
 grimace are resorted to by the puzzled performer. It 
 is indeed no wonder that he should be puzzled, for he 
 is endeavouring to do what the author never intended. 
 It would not be more impossible — if we be allowed 
 to fancy degrees of impossibility — to perform the pan- 
 tomimic Pantaloon seriously in the manner of King 
 Lear, than to make the impression which Shakspeare 
 desired that Polonius should make, if he be exhibited 
 in the style of the dotard of Spanish or Italian 
 comedy, or the Sg«narelle whom Moliere has bor- 
 rowed from them. There is some resemblance in Lord 
 Ogleby; but we cannot persuade ourselves to think 
 that George Colman, elder or younger, could have
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 933 
 
 written any part in Hamlet. I doubt not tliat both 
 thought their own comedies far superior. 
 
 Polonius is a ceremonious courtier; and no more 
 ridicule attaches to him than what attaches to lords 
 of the bedchamber, or chamberlains, or other such 
 furniture of a court in general. It is deemed neces- 
 sary that khigs should be hedged not only by the 
 divinity of their regal honours, but by the more 
 corporal entrenchments of officers of state. In fact 
 it must be so ; and in every history of the world we 
 find these functionaries, differmg only in name. We 
 know not the internal arrangements of the palaces of 
 the kings that reigned in the land of Edom before there 
 reigned any kmg over the children of Israel;^ but 
 we may be sure that Bela the son of Beor, and Hadad 
 the son of Bedad, who smote Midian in the field of 
 Moab, and Saul of Rehoboth by the river, and Hadar, 
 whose city was Pau, and whose wife was Hatred, the 
 daughter of Mezahab, and the other princes of the 
 house of Esau, who appear for a brief moment in the 
 earliest record of human afiairs in the book of the 
 world's generation, but to die and make way for others 
 to reign in their stead, had courtiers around them, to 
 whom were allotted duties in fashion difierent, in spiiit 
 * Gen. xxjL\i. 31—39.
 
 234 SHAKSPEABE PAPEKS I 
 
 the same as those which were performed by the courtly 
 officials of the Byzantium emperors, the togaed comites 
 of the Caesars, the ruffled and periwigged gens de la 
 cour of the Grand Monarque, or the gold sticks and 
 silver sticks of Queen Victoria ; — and performed, no 
 doubt, for the same reason — for that con-si-de-ra-ti-on, 
 which, whether in the shape of flocks and herds, or 
 land and beeves, or the more easily managed commodity 
 of shekels and sovereigns, when the secret of " a 
 circulating medium" was discovered, has ever been 
 the stimulants of the general herd attracted to a 
 court. It would be indeed travelling far from the 
 purpose of these papers to talk morals or politics on 
 such a subject ; but there can be no harm in saying 
 that, in times of difficulty or danger, when " uneasy is 
 the head that wears a crown," it is not to them its 
 wearer must look for zeal or assistance. The dog loves 
 the master — the cat loves the house. The nobler 
 animal who couches not in the drawing-room, and is 
 not casressed and pampered with soothing and officious 
 hand, but who guards the dwelling, and follows to 
 the field, may, if treated with kindness, be depended 
 upon to the last. He will die at the feet of a 
 master returning in the twentieth year — will couch 
 upon his grave — will seize his murderer by the throat.
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 235 
 
 The mere domestic creature, following her instinct, 
 will cling to the house through every change of dy- 
 nasty, ready to welcome with gratulatory purr what- 
 ever hand may rub down her glossy coat, and supply 
 her with customary food, even if that hand should 
 be reeking with the blood of the fallen owner of the 
 mansion in which she had been reared. But the cat 
 is not to be blamed. She acts as nature meant her 
 to act ; and what nature is to a cat, habit is to a 
 courtier. Nothing can be more improbable than that 
 the Queen should bother herself — I talk Hibernically — 
 with reading these papers ; — nothing is more certain 
 than that, if she does, she will not believe a word 
 of what I am saying. Yet if she lives to the age of 
 the gi'eat lady in whose days the creator of Polonius 
 flourished, — and may she so live, equally glorious in 
 her character of Queen, and far happier in her cha- 
 racter of woman! — she may be inclined to think that 
 I am right, and that the profession of etiquette, well 
 calculated as it may be to dignify the ceremonial of 
 state, is not to be confounded with the loyalty which 
 inspires 
 
 " The manly hearts to guard a throne." 
 
 But it is perfectly natural that the professors of the
 
 S3 6 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 science should set a high value upon it. The cham- 
 berlain who gave up the monarchy as lost when he 
 saw M. Roland enter the presence of the king with 
 ribbons in his shoes'^ was perfectly sincere. It was 
 no part of his business to inquire farther than what 
 he saw before him ; he had not to ask mto the remoter 
 causes which gave M. Roland the courage or the pre- 
 sumption to violate the laws of court decorum, which 
 the staff-bearer had throughout his life considered to 
 be as steadfast as the laws that regulated the motions 
 of the earth, if indeed he ever condescended to think 
 on such uncourtly trifles. It is easy to laugh at this 
 chamberlain ; but he was substantially right. The 
 kingdom of the doomed Louis did not depend upon 
 stockings or buckles ; but it depended upon the belief 
 that the person of the king was inviolate, and the 
 breach of decorum was but the first step leading to 
 the scaffold. The clown, who troubles not himself 
 with astronomical, meteorological, or chemical studies, 
 knows well that harvest is to follow seed-time, and 
 prognosticates with unerring certainty that the grain 
 which he is scattermg in the ground is to ripen into 
 a golden ear ; so our court functionary, who had never 
 dreamt of political speculations, never consulted any 
 * " Eoland the Just with ribbons in his shoes." — Anti-Jacobin.
 
 PICTURES, GEAVE AND GAY. 237 
 
 philosoplaical observers — ^looked not beyond the circle 
 of the Tuilleries, and would not have understood a 
 smgle word of Mr. Carlyle's eloquent theories — saw 
 in this one grain of disrespect the coming crop of de- 
 struction. I know nothing of his after history — perhaps 
 he emigrated with others of his order; but if he did 
 not originally commit that false step, — and I hope 
 for the honour of so shrewd an observer that he did 
 not — [for what had he to do with chivalry ?] — ^I have 
 little doubt that he found his fitting place among the 
 gold-laced suite of the Emperor, — welcomed with well- 
 trained bows the return of Louis the Eighteenth, — 
 served Charles the Tenth with appropriate ceremony, — 
 and is, I trust, now in his old age discussing the glories 
 of the powdered and rapiered circle of Louis Quinze, 
 beneath the approving smile of Louis Philippe. 
 
 Of this race was Polonius. Let not the abstracted 
 sage or the smug sneerer imagine that it was a race 
 of fools. In such courts as those which Shakspeare 
 contemplated they were far from it indeed. They had 
 been bred in camps and colleges — [Polonius had been 
 at the university, where in the dramatic entertainments, 
 usual in the seats of learning in Shakspeare' s time, 
 he was selected to perform no less a part than that 
 of Julius Caesar] — had acquired the polish of courts,
 
 238 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 if, indeed, we should not rather say they created it — • 
 mingled habitually among the great and the witty, the 
 graceful and the wise; — but, from perpetually con- 
 fining themselves to one class of society, and that 
 the most artificial of all classes, and deeming all other 
 interests depending upon that of their masters, as they 
 saw all other persons bowing in subservience before 
 them, it is no wonder that their world was bounded 
 by the precincts of a palace, and their wisdom or 
 ability exerted, as everybody's ability or wisdom is ex- 
 erted, to shine or thrive by the arts which contributed 
 to make way in the world wherein their lot was cast. 
 Their sphere of courtly duty made them appear to 
 be frivolous; — it does not follow that they were so 
 in life elsewhere. 
 
 This distinction is admirably kept up in Polonius. 
 In the presence he is all ceremony and etiquette. He 
 will not open the business of Hamlet's addresses to his 
 daughter, while the ambassadors from Norway are 
 waiting an audience. 
 
 " Give first admittance to the ambassadours, 
 Thy news shall be the fruit of that great feast." 
 
 Who could be better qualified to introduce them with 
 due honours ? The king appoints him to the duty at 
 once : —
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 239 
 
 " Thyself do grace to them, and bring them in." 
 
 He performs his courtly mission, and waits its con- 
 clusion before lie commences to speak on what concerns 
 his daughter. 
 
 " This business is well ended ;" 
 
 and now for a speech. 
 
 " My Hege, and madam, to expostulate 
 What majesty should be, what duty is, 
 "WTiy day is day, night night, and time is time, 
 Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time." 
 
 This is the exordium. We now proceed to the pro- 
 positio. 
 
 " Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, 
 And tediousness the limbs and outwai'd flourishes, 
 I will be brief. Your noble son is mad." 
 
 The narratio should follow ; but a parenthetical remark 
 cannot be resisted. 
 
 " Mad call I it." 
 
 You must take it on my assertion-— 
 
 " For to deiine tme madness, 
 What is 't but to be nothing else but mad ? 
 But let that go." 
 
 The queen agrees with the orator that it might as well 
 be let go, — for she desires " more matter," with less 
 art. Her chamberlain, of course, like all rhetori- 
 cians, disclaims the employment of rhetorical artifice, —
 
 240 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS: 
 
 " Madam, I swear, I use no art at all," 
 and proceeds to the narratio, "which is again stopped for 
 a moment by a trick of the art which he denies that 
 he is using. 
 
 " That he is mad, 'tis true ; 'tis true, 'tis pity ; 
 And pity 'tis, 'tis true : a foolish figure ; 
 But farewell it, for I will use no art. 
 Mad let us grant him then : and now remains 
 That we find out the cause of this efiect; 
 Or, rather say, the cause of this defect ; 
 For this effect, defective, comes of cause." 
 
 [The argument is strictly logical. It being granted 
 that he is mad, we must find the cause of what 
 logicians call effect — which in common parlance, as 
 applied to the madness of Hamlet, would be called 
 a defect, — we must find it, I say ; because whatever 
 an effect may be, defective or not, it must arise from a 
 cause.] 
 
 " Thus it remains, and the remainder thus perpend.* 
 I have a daugliter," &c. 
 
 In due course of reasoning he exhibits his proofs — 
 Hamlet's verses and letter, and Ophelia's confessions. 
 
 * This Kne is unnatural. The metre would be right, and the 
 technical an-angement of the style more in character if we read, 
 Thus it remains : remainder thus perpend.
 
 PICTUEES, GRAVE AND GAY. 241 
 
 In equally strict order follows the argument, consisting 
 of an elaborately arranged enumeration of the circum- 
 stances attendant on Hamlet's madness : 
 
 " And he, repulsed, (a short tale to make) 
 Fell into a sadness ; thence into a fast ; 
 Thence to a watch ; [and] thence into a weakness ; 
 Thence to a lightness ; and, by this declension, 
 Into the madness wherein now he raves. 
 And all we mourn for." 
 
 At this period of the speech, if it were delivered in 
 the House of Commons, there would be loud cries of 
 " Hear, hear," and the right honourable gentleman 
 would be obliged to pause for several minutes. If he 
 were a rising member, all his friends would come up to 
 congratulate him on his success, and the impression 
 he had obviously made ; if an established speaker, the 
 friends of his party would exclaim, " How admirable !" 
 — " Polonius surpasses himself to-night," — " Did you 
 ever hear anything so fine, so close, so logical," &c., 
 &c. The opposite side would oe obliged to look candid, 
 and say that it certamly was clever. 
 
 All that remains is the peroratio. Cheered by the 
 success of his arguments, he proceeds triumphantly in 
 gratulation of his own sagacity. 
 
 B
 
 242 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 "Hath there been such a time (I 'cl fahi know that) 
 
 That I have positively said, 'Tis so, 
 . When it proved othenvise ? " 
 
 [The king says, "Not that I know" — which is 
 equivalent to " cheers from the ministerial benches."] 
 
 " Take this from this, if this be othenvise." 
 
 [This is a sample of gestus. He points to his head 
 and shoulder.] 
 
 " If circumstances lead me, I vrill find 
 Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed 
 Within the centre." 
 
 The speech is over, complete in all its parts. There 
 is scarcely an oratorical figure which is omitted, and it 
 might serve as an unequalled model for many a crack 
 speech " elsewhere." Who is there that has not heard 
 promises of brevity made preludes to tediousness, 
 and disclaimers of art vehicles of rhetorical flourish? 
 What figure more used than amplification such as that, 
 — prefaced, as usual in such cases, by a declaration 
 that the tale will be short, — in which Polonius employs 
 half a dozen lines to detail the degrees of the madness 
 of Hamlet ? — and what practice more common than 
 passionate appeals to the past conduct of the speaker 
 as guarantees for the wisdom and uprightness of the 
 course which on the present occasion he is about to
 
 PICTDEES, GKAVE AND GAT. 243 
 
 pursue? The speech of Polonius translated into Cice- 
 ronian Latin would be worthy of Cicero himself; — 
 expanded into three columns of a newspaper report, 
 would be the topic of conversation the day after its 
 delivery in all the clubs, and the welcome theme of 
 applause or confutation by the leading-article-manufac- 
 turers of both sides of the question. 
 
 Here Polonius was in his character of courtier and 
 privy councillor. He had the ear of the King, and he 
 held it fast. His Majesty and his royal consort duly 
 appreciated the merits of the old orator ; but as usual 
 in courts, he does not win the same favour in the eyes 
 of Hamlet. The ministers of the existing prince are 
 seldom favourites with his heir- apparent — his imme- 
 diate Camarilla never. Youth also generally thinks 
 itself wiser than age ; and we wonder not to find in the 
 next scene that Hamlet treats Polonius as a driveller. 
 The old gentleman bears courteously with the incivil- 
 ities of one whom he considers to be either a mere 
 madman or a prankish jester, and, recurring to the 
 days of his youth, excuses the prince for indulging in 
 feelings which lead to derangement of ideas. Even the 
 recollections, however, of the days when, like his 
 contemporary the gravedigger, " he did love, did love," 
 cannot overcome him to the degree of confessing that 
 
 b3
 
 244 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 he was actually mad. He suffered much extremity ; 
 hut, after all, he was only " very near madness."* 
 When the players are introduced, it is only he- 
 
 * Is not this dialogue in blank verse ? The speech of Polonius 
 certainly is, 
 
 " Still harping on 
 My daughter ! Yet he knew me not at first. 
 He said, I was a fishmonger. He is 
 Far gone, far gone ; and truly, in my youth 
 I suffered extremity for love : 
 Very near this. I '11 speak to hiai again." 
 
 I recommend all future editors of Hamlet to restore the original 
 reading of the i^assage immediately preceding, — 
 
 " For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog. 
 Being a f/ood-]dssing carrion. Have you a daughter?" 
 
 in spite of Warburton's magnificent comment, which, according to 
 Johnson, sets the critic on a level with the author. " The illa- 
 tive particle [for]," says the bishop, "shows the speaker to be 
 reasoning from something he had said before : what that was we 
 learn in these words, ' To be honest, as this world goes, is to be 
 one picked out of ten thousand.' Ha\ing said this, the chain of 
 ideas led him to reflect upon the argument which libertines bring 
 against Providence from the circumstance of abounding evil. In 
 the next speech, therefore, he endeavours to answer that objection, 
 and vindicate Pro\'idence even on a supjjosition of the fact that 
 almost all men were wicked. His argument in the two hnes in 
 question is to this purpose. But why need we loonder at .this 
 abounding of -evil? For, if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, 
 which though a god, yet shedding its heat and influence upon car- 
 rion. Here he stops short, lest, talking too consequentially, the 
 hearer might suspect his madness to be feigned, — and so turns
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 245 
 
 coming that he who had so long known what was 
 the mode should be their principal critic, — and his 
 criticisms are in the most approved style of politesse. 
 
 him off from the suhject by inquiiing of his daughter. But the 
 inference which he intended to make was a veiy noble one, and 
 to this pm-pose: If this (says he) be the case, that the effect 
 follows the thing operated upon Icarrion'}, and not the thing 
 operating [a god] , why need we wonder that the Supreme Cause 
 of all things diffusing its blessings on mankind, who is as it 
 were a dead canion, dead in original sin, — man, instead of a 
 proper return of duty, should breed only con-uption and -vices ? 
 This is the ai-gument at length, and is as noble a one in behalf 
 of proAidence as could come from the schools of divinity. But 
 this wonderful man had an art not only of acquainting the audience 
 ^ith what his actors say, but with what they think. The senti- 
 ment, too, is altogether in character: for Hamlet is perpetually 
 moralizing, and his circumstances make this reflection veiy 
 natural." 
 
 Surely never before nor since was any poor illative paiticle, 
 for, pressed to i^erform such hai'd duty. If Hamlet had said all 
 that his theological commentator makes him think, Polonius 
 would have set bim down as mad, beyond all hope of recovery. 
 I have often thought, while reading this note, that it was a pity 
 Wai'burton had not written a commentary on the pleadings of 
 the Lord of Baisecul and his antagonist before Pantagruel, and 
 on the judgment deKvered in the case by that renowned giant. If 
 he discovered an essay on original sin in this illative particle for, 
 he would assuredly have dug up a whole Coi^pus Theologicum 
 in the law-arguments in Kabelais. The etc. of Lyttleton which 
 conveyed so much meaning to the mind of Coke, is not to be 
 compared with the /or of Warburton. He changed the old reading, 
 " a good-kissing carrion," into " a god kissing carrion."
 
 246 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 When Hamlet speaks his part of the tragedy, of 
 course Polonius compliments him for the good accent 
 and good discretion with which he has spoken it. 
 
 The meaning of the passage is this. Hamlet suspects that 
 Polonius knows of his love for Ophelia, and that he intends to 
 " loose his daughter to him." He therefoi-e calls him a fish- 
 monger, i. e. a purveyor of loose fish. It would not he agreeahle 
 in pages which must full into the hands of the young and fair to 
 follow up the allusion. Polonius interprets the word literally, 
 and is instantly assured that the chances are ten thousand to one 
 if he is as honest as the mere tradesman who sells actual fish. 
 The prince, in his affectation of craziness, proceeds to hint that 
 the consequences of exposing a young lady to the temptations of 
 persons in high rank or of warm hlood may be dangerous, and 
 couples the outrd assertion that the sun can hreed maggots with a 
 reference to Polonius's daughter. Let her not walk in the sun. 
 Let her not put herself in the peculiar danger to which I aUude, 
 and to which her father's performing the part of fishmonger may 
 lead. The sun is a good-kissing carrion — [carogne — it is a word 
 which elsewhere occurs in Shakspeare. Quickly, in the Merry 
 Wives of Windsor, is called a carrion, &c.] — a baggage fond of 
 kissing. In Henry IV. Prince Hal compares the sun to a fair 
 hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta; and if the sun can breed 
 maggots in a dead dog, who knows what may happen elsewhere ? 
 
 There is a troublesome word in King Lear, of which I have 
 never seen a satisfactoiy interpretation. In the stonn of abusive 
 epithets which Kent jjours upon the steward, he calls him " a 
 barber-monger." The guesses at the meaning are all insufficient. 
 Perhaps it should read " barbe^monger," — that is, fishmonger in a 
 peculiar sense. I throw out my conjecture to be rejected at 
 pleasure, I must remark, however, that those who are puzzled 
 by the meaning of a " hundred-pound knave " may fijid it in
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 
 
 24'; 
 
 When the player delivers the remainder of the speech, 
 the critic finds it too long. Rebuked by the prince 
 for his censure, he takes the earliest opportunity of 
 declaring that an affected phrase, which startles Hamlet 
 somewhat, to declare that it is good. In the end, 
 ■when the player displays an emotion roused by his 
 art, Polonius, according to the rules of goid, desires 
 that an end should be put to the performance. When 
 the play is actually performed before the king, eti- 
 quette keeps him silent until he sees that there is 
 something in it displeasing ^' in a high quarter," and 
 then the shrewd courtier stops it at once. It is his 
 voice which directs that they should " give o'er the 
 play." He is throughout the ceremonious but saga- 
 cious attache of a palace ; and the king and queen 
 accordmgly treat him with the utmost deference, and 
 
 Kabelais or Sir Thomas Urquhart. It is a word of reproach 
 addressed to the heavy pondres-pondres Germans. It occurs in 
 Bridlegoose's famous story of the pugnacious Gascon in the camp 
 at Stockholm. Sir John Hawkins, in his absurd life of Dr. 
 Johnson, imagines that it is a word invented by Urquhart, witli no 
 more meaning than the ordinary slang words of the day. 
 
 In the conclusion of the scene between Hamlet and Polonius, 
 the former exclaims, " These tedious old fools ! " Would it not 
 be better, " Thou teilious old fool ! " — for it is plain that Hamlet 
 is thinking only of the troublesome old man who has been pester- 
 ing him.
 
 948 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 consult him in tlieir most critical emergencies. He 
 dies in tlieir service, fitly practising a stratagem in 
 perfect accordance with the morale of the circle in 
 which he has always moved, and in which he has 
 engaged to show his wisdom, devotion, and address."^ 
 Hamlet well characterizes the class of men to which 
 the slain courtier belonged in his farewell to the body. 
 
 " Thou busy, rash, mtrucling fool, farewell; 
 I took thee for thy better, — take thy fortune. 
 Thou findest to be too busy is some danger." 
 
 But Polonius is no fool, though he is so called here. 
 Hamlet is annoyed by his meddling and ofificiousness, 
 and therefore applies the epithet. He marks his sense 
 of his general respect for the old man, even when 
 he is most pestered by his interference. In a peevish 
 exclamation he styles him a '^ tedious old fool ; " but 
 when he sees that the players are inclined to follow 
 
 " Behind the arras I '11 convey myself, 
 To hear the process ; I '11 warrant she '11 tax him home. 
 And, as you said, and wisely was it said, 
 'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, 
 Since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear 
 The speech of vantage. Fare you well, my Uege. 
 I '11 call upon you ere you go to bed, 
 And tell you what I know."
 
 PICTUEES, GRAVE AKD GAT. 949 
 
 his own example, lie checks them by an authoritative 
 command, 
 
 " Follow tliat lord, and look you mock him not." 
 
 If he calls him to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern " a 
 great baby, not yet out of his swaddling clouts," and 
 jeers him in their presence, it is partly to show that 
 he is but mad north-north-west, and can know a hawk 
 from a hand-saw when the wind is southerly, and 
 partly to mark that he has discovered the conspiracy 
 against him, and to display his contempt for all en- 
 gaged in it. 
 
 Abstracted from his courtier-character, Polonius is 
 a man of profound sense, and of strict and affectionate 
 attention to his duties. A man whom his children love 
 can never be contemptible. No one, it is said, can be 
 a hero to his valet de chamhre, because he sees all the 
 petty physical wants and moral defects of his master. 
 How much more difficult to be the object of esteem and 
 devotion in the eyes of those who have turned their 
 eyes upon us from childhood. Natural affection will, 
 of course, do much ; but the buffoon of the stage never 
 could have inspired the feelings exhibited by his chil- 
 dren, who must have been perpetually grieved and 
 disgraced by antic buffoonery, of which they, from their
 
 250 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 'connexion with the court, must have been constant 
 ■witnesses. Laertes, a fine high-spirited young gentle- 
 man, and Ophelia, the Rose of May, the grace and 
 ornament of the circle in which she moved, could not 
 have so deeply reverenced and so bitterly deplored their 
 father, if he had been indeed a great baby still in his 
 swaddling clouts. The double of Pantaloon, whom we 
 see tumbling about in Drury Lane or Covent Garden, 
 would not have roused the blood of Laertes to fury, 
 still less led him to justify assassination in avenging 
 his fall ; nor would his death have driven Ophelia to 
 madness. Such a father might be dead and gone, 
 
 " And at his head a grass-green turf, 
 And at his heels a stone," 
 
 according to the inflexible laws of mortality ; but his 
 son would soon wipe the natural tears he might drop, 
 and let him lie in his grave without any complaint of 
 
 " His obscure funeral ; 
 No trophy, STVord, nor hatchment o'er his bones ; 
 No noble rite, nor formal ostentation." 
 
 Nor would his daughter, in her broken-hearted insanity, 
 have imagined that at his death violets, the sweetest 
 flowers of the spring, had universally withered. Let 
 me observe, that by this remark I mean no disrespect
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 251 
 
 to our actors, many of the most eminent of whom have 
 performed the part. They yield to long-established 
 custom, and, as the part is not of the same importance 
 in the play as Shylock in the Merchant of Venice, it is 
 not probable that any Macklin will arise to rescue him 
 from buffoonery. Besides, as it is necessary that he 
 should in one part of the play designedly act up to the 
 follies of Hamlet, it would be difficult to make the dis- 
 tinction between the assumed and the natural character ; 
 and yet perhaps it ought to be attempted, for, as it is 
 played at present, it is perhaps the least attractive of 
 the prominent dramatis personcB of Shakspeare. 
 
 Even in the very part to which I have just alluded, 
 where he is fooling Hamlet to the top of his bent, he 
 cannot avoid displaying glances of his habitual shrewd- 
 ness. He suspects the reality of the madness from the 
 beginning. The insulting taunts addressed to him at 
 second hand from Juvenal only call forth the reflection 
 that there is method in the madness. In the end he 
 plainly considers it as nothing more than a prank. He 
 bids the Queen 
 
 " Tell him Ms pranks have been too broad to bear with. 
 And that your grace hath screened and stood between 
 Much heat and him," 
 
 Neither Laertes nor Ophelia are present while he is
 
 252 
 
 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 engaged in bandying folly against folly, and lie there- 
 fore does not such before those by whom he most desires 
 to be respected. When alone with them, his true cha- 
 racter appears ; — and what can be more sensible ? His 
 counsels to his son have never been for worldly wisdom 
 surpassed. The ten precepts of Lord Burleigh, ad- 
 dressed to his son Robert, on which it is generally 
 supposed the apophthegms of Polonius are based, are 
 perhaps equal in shrewdness, but they want the pithi- 
 ness and condensation of verse. Neither are they as 
 philosophical, being drawn, to talk logically, a posteriori^ 
 while those of Shakspeare are deduced a priori. Take, 
 for example, Lord Burleigh's fifth maxim on borrowing 
 and lending money : — 
 
 " Beware of suretyship for thy best friends. He that 
 payeth another man's debts seeketh his own decay. 
 But if thou canst not otherwise choose, rather lend thy 
 money thyself upon good bonds, although thou borrow 
 it ; so shalt thou secure thyself, and pleasure a friend. 
 Neither borrow money of a neighbour or a friend, but 
 of a stranger, where, paying for it, thou shalt hear no 
 more of it, otherwise thou shalt eclipse thy credit, loose 
 thy freedom, and pay as dear as to another. But in 
 borrowing of money be precious of thy word, for he that
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 253 
 
 takes care of keeping payment is lord of another man's 
 purse." 
 
 Full of practical good sense, no doubt, as indeed is 
 everything that " wise Burleigh spoke ;" but it might 
 occur to minds of smaller calibre than that of the Lord 
 High Treasurer. Polonius takes higher ground. 
 
 " Neither a bon-ower nor a lender be; 
 For loan oft loses both itself and friend; 
 And bon'owing dulls the edge of husbandly." 
 
 Lord Burleigh gives us but the petty details, — in 
 Shakspeare we find the principle. 
 
 Again, his Lordship's ninth precept is : — 
 
 " Trust not any man with thy life, credit, or estate ; 
 for it is mere folly for a man to enthrall himself to a 
 friend, as though, occasion being offered, he should not 
 eare to become thine enemy." 
 
 It is good advice; but how much better done by 
 Polonius ! 
 
 " This above all. To thine own self be true, 
 And it must follow, as the night the day, 
 Thou canst not then be false to any man." 
 
 A comparison of all the precepts of the poet and 
 the statesman would yield a similar result. And yet no- 
 body ever thought of exhibiting Burleigh, inferior as he is
 
 254 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 in dramatical wisdom, as an object of merriment upon 
 the stage for many a year after he had been gathered 
 to his fathers, until it pleased the author of the Qritic 
 to put him forward to make his oracular nod. There 
 is no use in moralizing, but we cannot help reflecting 
 that Sheridan would have done better in life if he could 
 have followed the prudential advice of the great minister 
 ■whom he mocked. It is certain that if he had avoided 
 mimicking him at humble distance elsewhere, and 
 never thought of playing at Parliament, — if, content 
 with winning dramatic honours only second to those of 
 Moliere, he had eschewed throwing himself into paths 
 where the half-nods of the less than tenth- rate Bur- 
 leighs are of more weight than all the wit and genius 
 of the School for Scandal, there would not have been 
 any necessity that his death should be neglected and 
 his funeral honoured, with a contempt and a sympathy 
 equally characteristic of those whom his Lordship calls 
 " the glow-worms, I mean parasites and sycophants, 
 who will feed and fawn upon thee in the summer of 
 prosperity, but in adverse storms they will shelter thee 
 no more than an arbour in winter." 
 
 That the austere Lord Hio;h Treasurer miffht have 
 been the mark for the covert wit of the dramatist, — 
 covert indeed, for in his time, or in that which imme-
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 355 
 
 (liately succeeded it, there was no safety in making 
 unseemly jests too openly about him, — is highly pro- 
 bable ; and the enemy of Essex and Raleigh* could not 
 be an object of admiration in the eyes of Shakspeare. 
 Lord Burleigh, in his courtly demeanour, was as ob- 
 servant of etiquette as Polonius, and as ready in using 
 indirections to find thereby directions out. The Queen 
 was fond both of ceremony and statecraft : but I doubt 
 much that the old gentleman in Hamlet is intended for 
 anything more than a general personification of cere- 
 monious courtiers. If Lord Chesterfield had designed 
 to write a commentary upon Polonius, he could not 
 have more completely succeeded than by writing his 
 famous letters to his son. His Lordship, like every man 
 of taste and virtue, and what Pope has comprehended 
 in the expressive term of " all that," in his time utterly 
 
 * Even in these precepts his lordship cannot avoid a " gii-d " at 
 those remarkable men whose accomplishments were, however, much 
 more likely to please poets and adventurers than sober statesmen. 
 We know how Spenser immortaUzes the Shexjherd of the Ocean, 
 and with what pomp of verse " the general of our gracious em- 
 peress " is introduced almost by name in the chorus of Henry V, 
 Shakspeare's most national play, as a fit object of comparison with 
 the hero of Azincour himself. In Lord Burleigh they only appear 
 as suiteth examples to point the moral of a maxim. " Yet I advise 
 thee not to affect or neglect popularity too much. Seek not to he 
 Essex — shun to he Raleigh."
 
 250 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 despised Sliakspeare. There is nothing to blame in 
 this. What can we talk on but of what we know? 
 One of the grandest of the herd, Horace Walpole, wrote 
 the Mysterious 3Iother, and therefore he had a right 
 (had he not?) to offer an opinion on Macbeth, and 
 to pronounce Midsummer NigliCs Dream a bundle of 
 rubbish, far more ridiculous than the most absurd 
 Italian opera. Lord Chesterfield wrote nothing, that 1 
 know of, to give him a name as an author, except his 
 letters. Of course he wrote despatches, protocols, and 
 other such ware, worthy, no doubt, of the Red Tapery 
 of which he was so eminent a member. 
 
 lAGO. 
 
 I HAVE been accused by some who have taken the 
 trouble of reading these papers, that I am fond of para- 
 doxes, and write not to comment upon Shakspeare, but 
 to display logical dexterity in maintaining the mitenable 
 side of every question. To maintain that Falstaff was 
 in heart melancholy and Jaques gay, to contrast the 
 fortunes of Romeo and Bottom, or to plead the cause 
 of Lady Macbeth, is certainly not in accordance with
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 257 
 
 the ordinary course of criticism ; but I have given my 
 reasons, sound or unsound as they may be, for my 
 opinions, which I have said with old Montaigne, I do 
 not pretend to be good, but to be mine. What appears 
 to me to be the distinguishing feature of Shakspeare is, 
 that his characters are real men and women, not mere 
 abstractions. In the best of us all there are many 
 blots, in the worst there are many traces of goodness. 
 There is no such thing as angels or devils in the world. 
 We have passions and feelings, hopes and fears, joys and 
 sorrows, pretty equally distributed among us ; and that 
 which actuates the highest and the lowest, the most 
 virtuous and the most profligate, the bravest and 
 meanest, must, in its original elements, be the same. 
 People do not commit wicked actions from the mere 
 love of wickedness ; there must always be an incentive 
 of precisely the same kmd as that which stimulates to 
 the noblest actions — ambition, love of adventure, pas- 
 sion, necessity. All our virtues closely border upon 
 vices, and are not unfrequently blended. The robber 
 may be generous — the miser, just — the cruel man, con- 
 scientious — the rake, honourable — the fop, brave. In 
 various relations of life, the same man may play many 
 characters as distinct from one another as day from 
 night. I venture to say that the creatures of Boz's 
 
 s
 
 958 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 fancy, Fagin or Sikes, did not appear in every circle as 
 the unmitigated scoundrels we see them in Oliver Twist. 
 It is, I suppose, necessary to the exigencies of the tale, 
 that no other part of their characters should be exhi- 
 bited; but, after all, the Jew only carries the commer- 
 cial, and the housebreaker the military principle, to an 
 extent which society cannot tolerate. In element, the 
 feeling is the same that covers the ocean with the 
 merchant-flags of England, and sends forth the hapless 
 boys to the trade of picking pockets — that inspires the 
 highwayman to stop a traveller on Hounslow, and spirits 
 the soldier to face a cannon at Waterloo. Robber, 
 soldier, thief, merchant, are all equally men. It is ne- 
 cessary for a critical investigation of character, not to 
 be content with taking things merely as they seem. 
 We must endeavour to strip off the covering with which 
 habit or necessity has enveloped the human mind, and 
 to inquire after motives as well as look to actions. It 
 would not be an unamusing task to analyze the career 
 of two persons starting under similar circumstances, 
 and placed in situations not in essence materially dif- 
 ferent, one ending at the debtors' door of Newgate, 
 amid hootings and execrations, and the other borne to 
 his final resting-place in Westminster Abbey, graced by 
 all the pomps that heraldry can bestow.
 
 PICTUEES, GRAVE AND GAT. 259 
 
 As Shakspeare therefore draws men, and not one- 
 sided sketches of character, it is always possible to 
 treat his personages as if they were actually existing 
 people; and there is always some redeeming point. 
 The bloody Macbeth is kind and gentle to his wife ; 
 the gore-stained Richard, gallant and daring ; Shylock 
 is an affectionate father, and a good-natured master ; 
 Claudius, in Hamlet^ is fond of his foully-won queen, 
 and exhibits, at least, remorse for his deed in heart- 
 rending soliloquies ; Angelo is upright in public life, 
 though yielding to sore temptation in private ; Cloten 
 is brutal and insulting, but brave ; the ladies are either 
 wholly without blemishes, or have merits to redeem 
 them : in some plays, as Julius Qcesar, Coriolanus, An- 
 tony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, and several others, 
 no decidedly vicious character is introduced at all. 
 The personages introduced are exposed to the frailties 
 of our nature, but escape from its grosser crimes and 
 vices. 
 
 But lago ! Ay ! there's the rub. Well may poor 
 Othello look down to his feet, and not seeing them dif- 
 ferent from those of others, feel convinced that it is a 
 fable which attributes a cloven hoof to the devil. His 
 next test, 
 
 s3
 
 260 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS: 
 
 " If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee" * — 
 
 affords a proof that lago is not actually a fiend, for he 
 wounds him ; but still he cannot think him anything 
 less than a " demi-devil," being bled, not killed. Nor 
 is it wonderful that the parting instruction of Lodo- 
 vico to Oassio, should be to enforce the most cunning 
 cruelty of torture on the hellish villain, or that all the 
 party should vie with each other in heaping upon him 
 words of contumely and execration. He richly de- 
 served them. He had ensnared the soul and body of 
 Othello to do the most damnable actions ; he had been 
 the cause of the cruel murder of Desdemona ; he had 
 killed his own wife, had plotted the assassination of 
 Cassio, had betrayed and murdered Roderigo. His 
 determination to keep silence when questioned, was at 
 least judicious : 
 
 " Demand me nothing : what you know, you know ; 
 Trom this time forth I never will speak word : " 
 
 for with his utmost ingenuity he could hardly find any- 
 
 * After this line he wounds lago. Then follows : 
 
 " Lod. Wrench his sword fi-om him. 
 lago. I bleed, sir, but not killed." 
 
 This is strange language. Should it not be " I, [i. e. Ay, as usual in 
 Shakspeare,] bled, sir, but not killed ? "
 
 PICTUEES, GRAVE AMD GAY. 261 
 
 thing to say for himself. Is there nothing, then, to be 
 said for him by anybody else ? 
 
 No more than this. He is the sole exemplar of stu- 
 died personal revenge in the plays. The philosophical 
 mind of Hamlet ponders too deeply, and sees both sides 
 of the question too clearly, to be able to carry any plan 
 of vengeance into execution. Romeo's revenge on Tybalt 
 for the death of Mercutio is a sudden gust of ungovern- 
 able rage. The vengeances in the historical plays are 
 those of war or statecraft. In Shylock, the passion is 
 hardly personal against his intended victim. A swag- 
 gering Christian is at the mercy of a despised and 
 insulted Jew. The hatred is national and sectarian. 
 Had Bassanio or Gratiano, or any other of their creed, 
 been in his power, he would have been equally relentless. 
 He is only retortmg the wrongs and insults of his tribe, 
 in demanding fuU satisfaction, and imitating the hated 
 Christians in theu- own practices. 
 
 " And if you -wrong us, shall we not revenge ? 
 If we are like you in the rest, we will 
 Eesemble you in that. If a Jew wrong 
 A Christian, what is his humility? 
 Eevenge ! 
 
 [And] if a Christian wrong a Jew, what should 
 His sufferance he by Christian example ? 
 Why, [sir] revenge! The \aLlany you teach me
 
 262 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 I'll execute, and it shall go hard, but 
 I'll better the insti'uction."* 
 
 It is, on the whole, a passion remarkably seldom 
 exhibited in Shakspeare in any form. lago, as I have 
 said, is its only example, as directed against an indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 lago had been affronted in the tenderest point. He 
 felt that he had strong claims on the office of lieutenant 
 to Othello, who had witnessed his soldierly abilities 
 
 " At Ehodes, at Cyprus, and on other grounds, 
 Christian and heathen." 
 
 The greatest exertion was made to procure it for him, 
 and yet he is refused. What is still worse, the grounds 
 
 * Printed as prose in the editions. The insertion of a7id before 
 if, where it may serve as the ordinary copulative, — or as the com- 
 mon form, an if, perpetually recurring, as in Eomeo, " an if a 
 man did need a poison now," [on which form I may remark in pass- 
 ing, Home Tooke talks ignorantly enough in his Diversions of 
 Purleij,'] — and of a monosyllable between why and revenge, makes 
 the whole passage metrical. I am inclined to think that revenge 
 should be repeated in the concluding lines. " If a Jew wrong a 
 Christian, what is his humility? Ekvenge ! " If, on the contrary, 
 a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be ? 
 " Eevenge ! EEVENGE ! The villany you teach me 
 I'll execute." 
 As an editor I might scruple to exhibit the text thus. I should re- 
 commend it to an actor ia place of the prosaic and unmetrical — 
 Why, revenge.
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 263 
 
 of the refusal are military : Othello evades the request 
 of the bowing magnificoes 
 
 " with a bombast circumstance, 
 Hon-ibly stuffed with epithets of war." 
 
 He assigns to the civilians reasons for passing over lago, 
 drawn from his own trade, of which they of course could 
 not pretend to be adequate judges. And worst of all, 
 when this practised military man is for military reasons 
 set aside, who is appointed ? Some man of greater re- 
 nown and skill in arms ? That might be borne ; but it 
 is no such thing. The choice of Othello lights upon 
 
 " Forsooth, a gi-eat arithmetician. 
 One Michael Cassio, a Florentine, 
 A feUow almost damned in a fair wife,* 
 
 * This is one of the most puzzling lines in Shakspeare. All the 
 explanations ai-e forced. Cassio had no wife, and his treatment of 
 Bianca, who stands in place of one, is contemptuous : nor does he 
 let her stand in the way of his duty. She tenderly reproaches him 
 for his long absence, and he hastily sends her home, harshly sajing, 
 " T do attend here on the general. 
 
 And think it no addition, nor my wish 
 
 To have him see me icoman'd." 
 Tyrwhitt reads damned in a fair life ; interpreting it as an allusion to 
 the judgment denounced in the gospel, against those of whom aU 
 men speak well, which is veiy far-fetched indeed. If life were the 
 reading, it might signify that Cassio was damned for the rough Ufe 
 of a soldier by the fail-, i. e. the easy life he had hitherto led. John-
 
 264 SHAKSPEARE PAPEES : 
 
 That never set a squuclron in the field, 
 
 Nor the division of a battle knows, 
 
 More than a spinster ; unless the bookish theoric, 
 
 Wherein the toged consuls can propose 
 
 As masterly as he : mere prattle, without practice, 
 
 Is all his soldiership." 
 
 It is an insult hard to be borne, as many an H. P. 
 will be ready to testify. "We will find in many profes- 
 sional periodical works the complaint reiterated, that 
 
 son gives it up, as a passage " which, for the present, must be re- 
 signed to coiTuption and obscurity." A wiiter in one of the early 
 volumes of Blackwood's Magazine, proposed somewhat ingeniously 
 " A great arithmetician, 
 A fellow almost damned : in a fair wise. 
 Who never set a squadron in the field." 
 Ijut this is not satisfactoiy. 'Why is Cassio a fellow almost damned? 
 Like Dr. Johnson, " I have nothing that I can, with any approach to 
 confidence, jiropose," but I think that the word " damned" is a cor- 
 ruption of some word which signified delicate, soft, dainty, or some- 
 thing of the kind, and that for " in " we should read " as." "A fellow 
 almost as soft and deUcate as a fair wife," as dainty as a woman. I 
 am not fortunate to supply it, but I have somewhat thought it was 
 
 " A feUow almost trimmed as a fair wife." 
 Such a fellow as the "ne&t and triinly dressed" courtier, "perfumed 
 as a milliner," who excited the impatience of Hotspur. As a fair 
 wife, corresponds to rnore than a spinster, in the conclusion of the 
 sentence. I throw out my hint for the leading or misleading of 
 future editors. 
 
 I cannot help remarking that Colonel Mitchell, in his noble hfe of 
 Wallenstein, seems to have no better opinion of the " arithmeti-
 
 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAY. 265 
 
 " there's no remedy, 'tis the curse of service : 
 Preferment goes by letter and affection, 
 Not by old gradation, where each second 
 Stood heu- to the first:" 
 
 and many a ourse, loud and deep, is inflicted on that 
 account upon the Horse Guards and Admiralty, who 
 fortunately have no individual responsibilities on which 
 the disappointed ancients can fasten, I am sure that 
 no British soldier or sailor would carry his anger far- 
 ther than a passing growl, but the example of Belling- 
 ham shows that even in our assassin-hating nation, a 
 feeling of injustice done by a superior, will drive a man 
 to satiate his vengeance even upon those who have not 
 done him wrong. 
 
 cians " of Shakspeare's day than lago. George Basta, the celebrated 
 tactician, was contemporaiy vdih Shajcspeare. Wallenstein seized 
 under him, and Colonel JNIitcheU makes someAvhat the same com- 
 plaint of the want of prefennent of his hero as the disappointed an- 
 cient. " As to George Basta," he says, " if we may judge of him by 
 his system of tactics, which was then exactly what Saldera'sis now, 
 and which, when the objectof such a system is considered, must be 
 looked upon as second only^ in feebleness and insufficiency, to the 
 one followed in our own time, he was not a likely person to appre- 
 ciate talent, or to encourage and call foilh genius." Nor, indeed, is 
 the Colonel very comphmentaiy to the ai-my to which lago belongs. 
 He calls them " the worthless mercenaries of Venice, troops con- 
 stantly kept in a state of mutiny and insufficiency, by the ignorant 
 fears of their despicable government,"
 
 266 SHAKSPEAEE PAPERS : 
 
 In tlie country of lago, whether from his name we 
 conclude it to be Spain, or from his service, Italy, none 
 of the scruples, or rather principles, which actuate or 
 restrain English gentlemen, existed. Least of all were 
 they to be found in the motley armies of adventurers 
 gathered from all quarters, the outcasts 
 
 " of all foreign lands, 
 
 Unclaimed by town or tribe, to whom belongs 
 Nothing, except the universal sun :"* 
 
 and lago could not be expected to be very scrupulous 
 as to his method of compassing his revenge. But how 
 effect it ? He is obliged to admit that Othello's stand- 
 ing in the state is too important to render it possible 
 , that public injury could be done to him. He is well 
 aware that 
 
 " the state 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Cannot with safety cast him ; he's embarked 
 With such loud reasons to the Cyprits war, 
 TMiich e'en now stands in act, that for theii' souls 
 Another of his fathom they have not 
 To lead their business." 
 
 In his unhoused condition no point of vantage presented 
 itself whence harm could be wrought. Just then, when 
 
 * Schiller. The Piccolomini, Ac. iv. s. 5.
 
 PICTUEES, GEAVE AlsD GAY. 267 
 
 lago's heart was filled with rage, and his head busily 
 but vainly occupied in devising means for avenging 
 himself on the man by whom that rage was excited, 
 just then Ate, the Goddess of Mischief, supplies him 
 with all that deepest malignity could desire, by the 
 hasty, ill-mated, and unlooked-for marriage of Othello. 
 It was a devil-send that the most sanguine spirit could 
 not have anticipated, and lago clutched it accordingly 
 with passionate eagerness. He was tempted and 
 he fell. 
 
 When he first conceived his hatred against Othello, 
 he had no notion that it would be pushed to such dire 
 extremity. Revenge is generally accompanied by 
 vanity, indeed there must be always a spice of vanity 
 in a revengeful disposition. He who so keenly feels 
 and deeply resents personal injury or affront, must set 
 no small value upon himself. The proud are seldom 
 revengeful — the great never. We accordingly find 
 that lago engages in his hostilities against Othello, 
 more to show his talents than for any other purpose. 
 He proudly lauds his own powers of dissimulation, which 
 are to be now displayed with so much ability, 
 
 " When my outward action doth demonstrate 
 The native act and figure of my heart 
 In comphment extern, 'tis not long after
 
 268 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 But I will wear my heai-t upon my sleeve 
 For daws to peck at. I am not what I am."* 
 
 He fancies himself superior to all around in art and 
 knowledge of the world. Roderigo is a mere gull : — 
 
 " Thus do I ever make my fool my purse ; 
 For I mine own gaufd knowledge should profane, 
 If I should time expend with siich a snipe. 
 But for my sport and profit." 
 
 Cassio he considers to be not merely unskilled in war, 
 but a fool : — 
 
 "For while this honest fool 
 Plies Desdemona to repair his fortunes," A'C. 
 
 Othello is an ass in his estimation : — 
 
 " The Moor is of a free and open nature, 
 That thinks men honest that but seem to he so, 
 And wiE as tenderly he led by the nose 
 As asses are." 
 
 The ^' inclining ^^ Desdemona he utterly despises, as 
 one who fell in love with the Moor merely for his brag- 
 ging, and telling fantastical lies. His wife he calls a 
 
 * Can these last words be intended as a somewhat profane allu- 
 sion to the title by which the Almighty reveals himself to Moses? 
 Exod. iil 14. I AM THAT I KM is the name of the God of 
 truth. I am not ichat I am is therefore a fitting description of a 
 premeditated Uar.
 
 PICTUEES, GBAVE AND GAY. 269 
 
 fool ; and with these opinions of his great superiority 
 of ■wisdom and intellect, he commences operations to 
 enmesh them all, as if they were so many puppets. It 
 would be a strange thing, indeed, he reflects, if I were 
 to permit myself to be insulted, and my rights with- 
 held, by such a set of idiots, whom I can wind round 
 my finger as I please. 
 
 He seated him in the seat of the scorner, a character 
 which he who is accounted the wisest of men continually 
 opposes to that of true wisdom. " Seest thou," says 
 Solomon, in the Proverbs copied out by the men of 
 Hezekiah, King of Judah, which, whether they be 
 inspired or not, are aphorisms of profound and concen- 
 trated wisdom, — " seest thou a man wise in his own 
 conceit ? there is more hope of a fool than of him."'^ 
 And the career of lago ends with his own destruction, 
 amid the abomination set down in another chapter of 
 Proverbs as the lot of the scorner. The jealousy of 
 Othello is not more gradually and skilfully raised and 
 developed than the vengeance of lago. At first angry 
 enough, no doubt ; but he has no defined project. He 
 follows the Moor to take advantage of circumstances 
 to turn them to his own use. Nothing of peculiar 
 
 * Prov. xxvi. 12. " The scorner is an abomination to men," 
 occurs in chap. sxiv. 9.
 
 270 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 malignity is thouglit upon : if he can get Cassio's place, 
 he will he satisfied. 
 
 " Cassio 's a proper man : let me see now, 
 To get his i)lace ." 
 
 The marriage and the sight of Desdemona point out 
 to him a ready way of accomplishing this object. The 
 thought occurs suddenly, and he is somewhat startled 
 at first. He asks himself with eager repetition, 
 
 " How ? bow ? " 
 
 and pauses to think — 
 
 " Let me see ." 
 
 It is soon settled. 
 
 " After some time, to abuse Othello's ear, 
 That he is too familiar with his wife." 
 
 But it still alarms him : 
 
 " I have it — It's engendered : Hell and night 
 Must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light." 
 
 The plot is not matured even when they all arrive at 
 Cyprus. 
 
 " 'Tis here, but yet confused— 
 Knaveiy's plain face is never seen till used." 
 
 When once fairly entered upon, however, it progresses 
 with unchecked rapidity. He is himself hurried resist- 
 lessly forward by the current of deceit and iniquity in
 
 PICTURES, GRATE AND GAY. 271 
 
 Tyliicli lie has embarked. He is as much a tool or pas- 
 sive instrument as those whom he is using as such. 
 
 Some critics pronounce his character unnatural, as 
 not having sufficient motive for the crimes he commits. 
 This is not wise. He could not help committing them. 
 Merely to put money in his purse, he gulled Roderigo 
 into a belief that he could assist the poor dupe in his 
 ^uit to Desdemona. There is no remarkable crime in 
 this. Nor can we blame him for being angry at being 
 somewhat scornfully passed over ; we can, at all events, 
 enter into his feelings when he wishes to undermine one 
 whom he considers to be unworthily preferred to him, 
 and to obtain a place which he thmks should be his 
 own, if patronage had been justly dispensed. It was a 
 base thing, indeed, to malign a lady, and possess her 
 husband with jealousy; but he could not have cal- 
 culated on the harvest of death and crime which the 
 seed of suspicion that he was sowing was destined to 
 bring up. When he makes Cassio drmik, he only an- 
 ticipates that he will put him in such action as may 
 offend the isle. When framing the device that is to 
 destroy the lieutenant, no thoughts of murder arise 
 before him. 
 
 He has no regard for the feelings of Othello, but 
 dreams not that he will kill Desdemona, whom he says
 
 273 SHAKSPEARE PAPERS : 
 
 he loves. As for the Lady herself, his low estimation 
 of woman would of course lead him to think but little 
 about her peace and quiet. He excuses himself, be- 
 sides, by referring to the rumour that Othello had 
 given him cause to be jealous. It is plain that he does 
 not pretend to lay any great stress upon this ; nor can we 
 suppose that, even if it were true, it would deeply affect 
 him ; but he thinks lightly of women in general, and has 
 no respect whatever for his wife. Indeed, Othello does 
 not hold Emilia in much esteem ; and her own conver- 
 sation with Desdemona, as she is undressing her for bed 
 (act iv. scene 3), shows that her virtue was not impreg- 
 nable. The injury, therefore, lago was about to do 
 Desdemona, in lessening her m the respect of her hus- 
 band by accusing her of such an ordmary offence as a 
 deviation from chastity, and one which he did not visit 
 with any particular severity on his own wife, must have 
 seemed trivial. He could not have been prepared for 
 the dire tempest of fury which his first hint of her 
 unfaithfulness aroused in the bosom of Othello. Up to 
 that moment he had done nothing more than gull a 
 blockhead, and endeavour by unworthy means to under- 
 mine a rival; trickery and slander, though not very 
 honourable qualities, are not of such rare occurrence in 
 the world as to call for the expression of any peculiar
 
 PICTUEES, GRAVE AND GAY. 973 
 
 indignation, when we find them displayed by a clever 
 and plotting Italian. 
 
 They have, however, led him to the plain and wide 
 path of damnation. He camiot retract his insinuations. 
 Even if he desired, Othello will not let him : 
 
 " Villain, be siu'e you prove my love a whore." 
 
 [We may observe that he still, though his suspicions 
 are so fiercely roused, calls her his love. It is for the 
 last time before her death. After her guilt is, as he 
 thinks, proved, he has no word of affection for her. 
 She is a convicted culprit, to be sacrificed to his sense 
 of justice.] 
 
 " Be sure of it ; give me the ocular proof : 
 Or, by the worth of mine eternal soul, 
 Thou hadst been better have been born a dog 
 Than answer my waked wi'ath, 
 
 Make me to see 't, or, at the least, so prove it, 
 That the probation bear no hinge, nor loop 
 To hang a doubt on'; or woe upon thy life ! " 
 
 lago, therefore, had no choice but to go forward. He 
 was evidently not prepared for this furious outburst; 
 and we may acquit him of hypocrisy when he prays 
 Othello to let her live. But Cassio must die : —
 
 274 SHAKSPEARE PAPEES. 
 
 " He hath a daily beauty in his life 
 That makes me ugly." 
 
 A more urgent reason immediately suggests itself: — 
 
 •' And besides, the Moor 
 May unfold me to him : there stand I in much peril. 
 No — he must die," 
 
 The death of Desdemona involves that of Roderigo :— 
 
 " Live Koderigo ? 
 He calls me to a restitution large 
 Of gold and jewels, that I bobb'd from him 
 As gifts to Desdemona. 
 It must not he." 
 
 Here is the direct agency of necessity. He must re- 
 move these men. Shortly after, to silence the clamorous 
 testimony of his wife, he must kill her. He is doomed 
 to blood.
 
 PICTURES, 
 GRAVE AND GAY. 
 
 t3
 
 277 
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ELDEELY 
 GENTLEMAN ; 
 
 CONTAINING HIS LAST LOVE. 
 
 The Countess of Blessington need not be afraid that 
 I shall interfere with her work in the unhappy tale 
 which I am about to begin; my scene wiU be laid 
 in a very different walk of life, and the lady whose 
 charms have wounded my heart bear no resemblance 
 whatever to the aristocratic beauties which grace the 
 book of the Countess. My arrangement ever goes 
 upon an opposite principle to hers; her elderly gen- 
 tleman proceeds from first to last, getting through 
 his fates and fortunes in regular rotation, as if they 
 were so many letters of the alphabet, from A to Z : 
 I read mine backward, in the manner of Turks, Jews, 
 and oth^ infidels ; for worse than Turk or Jew have I 
 been treated by the fair sex ! 
 
 When I confess to being an elderly gentleman, I 
 leave my readers to their own conjectures as to the 
 precise figm-e of my age. It is sufficient to say that 
 I have arrived at the shady side of fifty, — how much 
 further it is unnecessary to add. 1 have been always
 
 278 PIOTUBES, 
 
 what is called a man in easy circumstances. My 
 father worked hard in industrious pursuits, and left 
 me, his only son, a tolerably snug thing. I started 
 in life with some five or six thousand pounds, a good 
 business as a tobacconist, a large stock-in-trade, ex- 
 cellent credit and connection, not a farthing of debt, 
 and no encumbrance in the world. In fact, I had, one 
 way or another, about a thousand a year, with no 
 great quantity of trouble. I liked business, and stuck 
 to it ; became respected in my trade and my ward ; 
 and have frequently filled the important office of com- 
 mon-councilman with considerable vigour and popu- 
 larity. As I never went into rash speculations, and 
 put by something every year, my means are now 
 about double what they were some thirty-five years 
 ago, when Mr. Gayless, sen. departing this life, left 
 the firm of Gayless, Son, and Company, to my manage- 
 ment. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at, that a man in such 
 circumstances should occasionally allow himself re- 
 laxation from his labours. I entered heartily into all 
 the civic festivities ; and, at my snug bachelor's 
 country-house on Fortress terrace, Kentish Town, did 
 the thing genteelly enough every now and then. 
 Many an excursion have I made up and down the
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 279 
 
 river, to Greenwich, Richmond, Blackwall, &c. ; have 
 spent mj summer at Margate, and once went to the 
 Lakes of Westmoreland. Some of that party pro- 
 posed to me to go over to see the Lakes of Killarney ; 
 but I had by that time come to years of discretion, 
 and was not such a fool as to trust myself among 
 the Irish. I however did go once to Paris, but, not 
 understandino; the language, I did not take much in- 
 terest in the conversation of the Frenchmen ; and as 
 for talking to English people, why I can do that at 
 home, without distressing my purse or person. 
 
 The younger portion of my fair readers may be 
 anxious to know what is the personal appearance of 
 him who takes the liberty of addressing them. I 
 have always noticed that yomig ladies are very curious 
 on this point ; and it is difficult, if not impossible, 
 to persuade them how irrational is their anxiety. It 
 is in vain to quote to them the venerable maxims of 
 antiquity, such as, " It is not handsome is, but hand- 
 some does," or, " When Poverty enters the door. Love 
 flies out of the window," or, " All is not gold that 
 glitters," or many more adages of equal wisdom. It is 
 generally of no avail to dilate upon the merits of 
 mind and intellect to persons whose thoughts run 
 after glossy locks and sparkling eyes, and to whose
 
 380 PICTURES, 
 
 imagination a well-filled ledger is of secondary im- 
 portance to a well-tripped quadrille. In my own 
 knowledge, a young lady of our ward refused to 
 accept the hand of a thriving bill-broker in Spital- 
 square, — a highly respectable middle-aged man, who 
 had made a mint of money by sharp application to his 
 business, — and chose a young barrister of the Liner 
 Temple, whose bill, to my certam knowledge, was re- 
 fused discount by the Spital- square broker at twenty- 
 five per cent. I have been assured by officers in the 
 army, that the case has sometimes occurred of girls 
 in garrison towns preferring an ensign to a major of 
 many years' service ; and I have heard, on authority 
 which I have reason to credit, of a West-end lady 
 rejecting an actual governor of a colony, on the ground 
 that he was a withered fellow as old and prosy as her 
 grandfather, — as if there was anything disgraceful in 
 that, — and shortly afterwards cocking her cap at a 
 penniless dog, because he had romantic eyes, and 
 wrote rubbish in albums and pocket-books. I really 
 have no patience with such stuff. Middle-aged ladies 
 are far less fastidious. 
 
 If I must delineate myself, however, here goes. So 
 far from deteriorating by age, I think I have im- 
 proved, like Madeu'a. A miniature of me, taken in my
 
 GRAVE ANB GAY. 281 
 
 t-wenty-first year by an eminent artist who lived in 
 Gutter-lane, and drew undeniable likenesses at an 
 hour's sitting for half-a-guinea, forms a great contrast 
 to one by Chalon, painted much more than twenty 
 years afterward. You really would never think them 
 to represent the same man, and yet both are extremely 
 alike. I was in my youth a sallow-faced lad, with 
 hollow cheeks, immense staring eyes, and long thin 
 sandy hau-, plastered to the side of my head. By 
 the coui'se of living which I have led in the city, 
 the sallow complexion has been replaced by a durable 
 red, the lean cheek is now comfortably plumped out, 
 the eyes pui'sed round and contracted by substantial 
 layers of fat, and the long hair having in general 
 taken its departure has left the remainder considerably 
 improved by the substitution of a floating silver for 
 the soapy red. Then, my stature, which, like that 
 of many celebrated men of ancient and modern times, 
 cannot be said to be lofty, gave me somewhat an air 
 of insignificance when I was thin-gutted and slim; 
 but, when it is taken in conjunction with the rotundity 
 I have attained in the progress of time, no one can 
 say that I do not fill a respectable space in the public 
 eye. I have also conformed to modern fashions ; and 
 when depicted by Chalon in a flowuig mantle, with
 
 282 PICTURES, 
 
 " Jour a gauche " (whatever that may mean) written 
 under it, I am as grand as an officer of hussars with 
 his martial cloak about him, and quite as distinct a 
 thmg from the effigy of Mr. M'Dawbs, of Gutter-lane^ 
 as the eau de Portugal which now perfumes my per- 
 son, is, from the smell of the tobacco which filled 
 my garments with the odour of the shop when first 
 I commenced my amorous adventures. 
 
 Such was I, and such am I ; and I have now said, I 
 • think, enough to introduce me to the public. My 
 story is briefly this : — On the 23rd of last December, 
 just before the snow, I had occasion to go on some 
 mercantile business to Edinburgh, and booked myself 
 at a certain hotel, which must be nameless, for the 
 journey — then rendered perilous by the weather. I 
 bade adieu to my friends at a genial dinner given, 
 on the 22nd, in the coffee-room, where I cheered their 
 drooping spirits by perpetual bumpers of port, and all 
 the consolation that my oratory could supply. I urged 
 that travelling inside, even in Christmas week, in a 
 stage-coach, was nothing nearly so dangerous as flying 
 in a balloon ; that wc were not to think of Napoleon's 
 army perishing in the snows of Russia, but rather 
 of the bark that carried the fortunes of Caesar ; that 
 great occasions required more than ordinary exertions ;
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 983 
 
 and that the last advices concernino; the house of 
 Screw, Longcut, and Co., in the High-street, rendered 
 it highly probable that their acceptances would not be 
 met unless I was personally in Edinburgh within a 
 week. These . and other arguments I urged with an 
 eloquence which, to those who were swallowing my 
 wine, seemed resistless. Some of my own bagmen, 
 who had for years travelled in black rappee or Irish 
 blackguard, shag, canaster, or such commodities, treated 
 the adventure as a matter of smoke ; others, not of 
 such veteran experience, regarded my departure as an 
 act of rashness not far short of insanity. " To do 
 such a thing," said my old neighbour, Joe Grabble, 
 candlestick-maker and deputy, " at your time of 
 life!" 
 
 I had swallowed perhaps too much port, and, feel- 
 ing warmer than usual, I did not much relish this 
 observation. "At my time of life, Joe," said I; 
 " what of that ? It is not years that make a man 
 younger or older ; it is the spirits, Joe, — the life, the 
 sprightliness, the air. There is no such thing now, 
 Joe, as an old man, an elderly man, to be found 
 anywhere but on the stage. Certainly, if people poke 
 themselves eternally upon a high stool behind a desk 
 in a murky counting-house in the city, and wear such
 
 284 PICTUEES, 
 
 an odd quiz of a dress as you do, they must be 
 accounted old." 
 
 " And yet," said Joe, " I am four years younger 
 than you. Don't you remember how we were to- 
 gether at school at old Muddlehead's, at the back of 
 Honey-lane-market, in the year seventeen hundred and 
 eighty-fou — ? " 
 
 " There is no need," said I, interrupting him, " of 
 quoting dates. It is not considered genteel in good 
 society. I do not admit your statement to be cor- 
 rect." 
 
 "I'll prove it from the parish register," said Joe 
 Grabble. 
 
 " Don't interrupt, Joe," said I ; " interrupting is 
 not considered genteel in good society. I neither 
 admit nor deny your assertion ; but how does that 
 affect my argument ? I maintain that in every par- 
 ticular I am as young as I was thirty years ago." 
 
 " And quite as ready to go philandering," said Joe, 
 with a sneer. 
 
 " Quite," replied I, " or more so. Nay, I venture 
 to say that I could at this moment make myself as 
 acceptable to that pretty young woman at the bar, 
 as nine-tenths of the perfumed dandies of the West- 
 end."
 
 GRAVE AND GAY. 985 
 
 " By your purse, no doubt," said Joe, " if even 
 that would obtain you common civility." 
 
 I was piqued at this ; and, under the impulse of the 
 moment and the wine, I performed the rash act of 
 betting a rump and dozen for the present company^ 
 against five shillings, that she would acknowledge that 
 I was a man of gaiety and gallantry calculated to win a 
 lady's heart before I left London, short as was the remain- 
 ing space. Joe caught at the bet, and it was booked in a 
 moment. The party broke up about nine o'clock, and 
 I could not help observing something like a suppressed 
 horselaugh on their countenances. I confess that, 
 when I was left alone, I began to repent of my pre- 
 cipitancy. 
 
 But faint heart never won fair lady ; so, by a series 
 of manoeuvring with which long practice had rendered 
 me perfect, I fairly, in the course of an hour, en- 
 trenched myself in the bar, and, at about ten o'clock, 
 was to be found diligently discussing a fragrant rem- 
 nant of broiled chicken and mushroom, and hobnobbing 
 with the queen of the pay department in sundry small 
 glasses of brandy-and-water, extracted from the grand 
 reservoir of the tumbler placed before me. So far all 
 was propitious ; but, as Old Nick would have it, in less 
 than ten minutes the party was joined by a mustachoed
 
 286 PICTURES, 
 
 fellow, who had come fresh from fighting — or pretend- 
 ing to fight — for Donna Isabella, or Don Carlos, — 
 Heaven knows which, (I dare say he didn't,) — and was 
 full of Bilboa, and San Sebastian, and Espartero, and 
 Alaix pursuing Gomez, and Zumalacarregui, and 
 General Evans, and all that style of talk, for which 
 women have open ears. I am sure that I could have 
 bought the fellow body and soul — at least all his 
 property real and personal — for fifty pounds ; but 
 there he sate, crowing me down whenever I ventured 
 to edge in a word, by some story of a siege, or a 
 battle, or a march, ninety-nine hundred parts of his 
 stories being nothing more or less than lies. I know I 
 should have been sorry to have bulled or beared in 
 Spanish on the strength of them ; but the girl (her 
 name is Sarah) swallowed them all with open mouth, 
 scarcely deigning to cast a look upon me. With mouth 
 equally open, he swallowed the supper and the brandy 
 for which I was paying; shutting mine every time I 
 attempted to say a word by asking me had I ever 
 served abroad. I never was so provoked in my life; 
 and, when I saw him press her hand, I could have 
 knocked him down, only that I have no practice in 
 that line, which is sometimes considered to be doubly 
 hazardous.
 
 GRAVE AND GAY. 287 
 
 I saw little chance of winning my wager, and was in 
 no slight degree out of temper ; but all things, smooth 
 or rough, must have an end, and at last it was time 
 that we should retire. My Spanish hero desired to be 
 called at four, — I don't know why, — and Sarah said, 
 with a most fascinating smile, 
 
 " You may depend upon 't, sir ; for, if there was 
 no one else as would call you, I 'd call you myself." 
 
 " Never," said he, kissing her hand, " did Boots 
 appear so beautiful !" 
 
 "Devil take you!" muttered I, as I moved up 
 stairs with a rolling motion ; for the perils of the 
 journey, the annoyance of the supper-table, the an- 
 ticipation of the lost dinner and unwon lady, aided, 
 perhaps, by what I had swallowed, tended somewhat 
 to make my footsteps unsteady. 
 
 My mustachoed companion and I were shown into 
 adjacent rooms, and I fell sulkily asleep. About four 
 o'clock I was aroused by a knocking, as I at fii'st 
 thought, at my own room, but which I soon found to 
 be at that of my neighbour. I immediately caught 
 the silver sound of the voice of Sarah summoning its 
 tenant. 
 
 " It 's just a-gone the three ke-waters, sir, and you 
 ought to be up."
 
 288 PICTURES, 
 
 "I am up already, clear girl," responded a voice 
 from inside, in tones as soft as the potations at my 
 expense of the preceding night would permit ; " I 
 shall be ready to start in a jiffy." 
 
 The words were hardly spoken when I heard him 
 emerging, luggage in hand, which he seemed to carry 
 with little difficulty. 
 
 " Good-b'ye, dear," said he ; " forgive this trouble." 
 
 " It 's none in the least in life, sir," said she. 
 
 And then — god of jealousy ! — he kissed her. 
 
 " For shame, sir ! " said Sarah. " You mustn't. I 
 never permit it ; never ! " 
 
 And he kissed her again ; on which she, having, I 
 suppose, exhausted her stock of indignation in the 
 speech already made, offered no observation. He 
 skipped down stairs, and I heard her say, with a sigh, 
 " What a nice man ! " 
 
 The amorous thought rose softly over my mind. 
 " Avaunt ! " said I, " thou green-eyed monster ; make 
 way for Cupid, little god of love. Is my rump and 
 my dozen yet lost ? No. As the song says, 
 
 " When sliould lovers breathe theii- vows ? 
 When should ladies hear them ? 
 When the dew is on the boughs, 
 "^Mien none else is near them."
 
 GRA\^ AND GAT. 989 
 
 Whether the dew was on the boughs, or not, I could 
 not tell ; but it was certain that none else was near us. 
 With the rapidity of thought I jumped out of bed, 
 upsetting a jug full of half-frozen water, which splashed 
 all over, every wretch of an icicle penetrating to my 
 very marrow, but not cooling the ardour of my love. 
 After knocking my head in the dark against every 
 object in the room, and cuttmg my shins in various 
 places, I at last succeeded in finding my dressing-gown, 
 knee smalls, and slippers, and, so clad, presented my- 
 self at the top of the staircase before the barmaid. 
 She was leaning over the balustrade, looking down 
 through the deep well after the departing stranger, 
 whose final exit was amiounced by the slamming of the 
 gate after him by the porter. I could not help think- 
 ing of Fanny Kemble in the balcony scene of Romeo 
 and Juliet. 
 
 She sighed, and I stood forward. 
 
 " Oh ! " she screamed. " Lor' have mercy upon us ! 
 what 's this ? " 
 
 " Be not afraid," said I, " Sarah ; I am no ghost." 
 
 " Oh, no," said she, recovering, " I didn't suppose 
 you were ; but I thought you were a Guy Fawkes." 
 
 " No, angelic girl, I am not a Guy Fawkes; another 
 
 u
 
 290 PICTURES, 
 
 flame is mine ! " and I caught her hand, endeavouring 
 to apply it to my lips. 
 
 " Get along, you old ." I am not quite certain 
 
 what the angelic Sarah called me ; but I thmk it was a 
 masculine sheep, or a goat. 
 
 " Sarah ! " said I, " let me press this fair hand to 
 my lips." 
 
 Sarah saved me the trouble. She gave me — not 
 a lady's " slap," which we all know is rather an en- 
 couragement than otherwise, — but a very vigorous, 
 well-planted, scientific blow, which loosened my two 
 fore-teeth ; and then skipped up stairs, shut herself 
 in her room, and locked the door. 
 
 I followed, stumbled up stairs, and approached 
 in the dark towards the keyhole, whence shone 
 the beams of her candle. I was about to explain 
 that mnocence had nothing to fear from me, when 
 a somewhat unintelligible scuffling up the stairs was 
 followed by a very intelligible barkmg. The house- 
 doo", roused by the commotion, was abroad, — an animal 
 more horrid even than the schoolmaster, — and before 
 I could convey a word as to the pm-ity of my mtentions, 
 he had caught me by the calf of the leg so as to 
 make his cursed fangs meet in my flesh, and bring 
 the blood do^yn into my slippers. I do not pretend
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 291 
 
 to be Alexander or Julius Caesar, and I confess that 
 mj first emotion, wlien the brute let me loose for a 
 moment, and prepared, with another fierce howl, for 
 a fresh invasion of my personal comforts, was to fly, 
 — I had not time to reflect in what direction; but, 
 as my enemy came from below, it was natural that 
 my flight should be upwards. Accordingly, up stairs 
 I stumbled as I could, and the dog after me, barking 
 and snapping every moment, fortunately without in- 
 flicting any further wound. I soon reached the top 
 of the staircase, and, as further flight was hopeless, 
 I was obliged to throw myself astride across the 
 balustrade, which was high enough to prevent him 
 from getting at me without giving himself more in- 
 convenience than it seems he thought the occasion 
 called for. 
 
 Here was a situation for a respectable citizen, to- 
 bacconist, and gallant! The darkness was intense; 
 but I knew by an occasional snappish bark whenever 
 I ventured to stir, or to make the slightest noise, 
 that the dog was couching underneath me, ready for 
 a spring. The thermometer must have been several 
 yards beneath the freezing pomt, and I had nothing 
 to guard me from the cold but a night-gown and shirt. 
 I was barelegged and barefooted, having lost my slip- 
 
 u3
 
 292 PICTUEES, 
 
 pers in tlae run. Tlie uneasy seat on which I was 
 perched was as hard as iron, and colder than ice. 
 I had received various bruises in the adventures of 
 the last few minutes, but I forgot them in the smart- 
 ing pain of my leg, rendered acute to the last degree 
 by exposure to the frost. And then I knew perfectly 
 well, that, if I did not keep my seat with the dex- 
 terity of a Ducrow, I was exposed by falling on one 
 side to be mangled by a beast of a dog watching my 
 descent with a malignant pleasure, and, on the other, 
 to be dashed to pieces by tumbling down from the 
 top to the bottom of the house. The sufferings of 
 Mazeppa were nothing compared to mine. He was, 
 at least, safe from all danger of falling off his unruly 
 steed. They had the humanity to tie him on. 
 
 Here I remained, with my bedroom candle in my 
 hand, — I don't know how long, but it seemed an 
 eternity, — until at length the dog began to retire 
 by degrees, backwards, like the champion's horse at 
 the coronation of George the Fourth, keeping his 
 eyes fixed upon me all the time. I watched him with 
 intense interest as he slowly receded down the stairs. 
 He stopped a long time peeping over one stair so 
 that nothing of him was visible but his two great
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 293 
 
 glaring eyes, and then tliey disappeared. I listened. 
 He had gone. 
 
 I gently descended; cold and wretched as I was, 
 I actually smiled as I gathered my di-essing-gown 
 about me, preparatory to returning to bed. Hark! 
 He was coming back again, tearing up the stairs 
 like a wild bull. I caught sight of his eyes. "With 
 a violent spring I caught at and climbed to the top 
 of an old press that stood on the landing, just as 
 the villainous animal reared himself against it, scratch- 
 ing and tearing to get at me, and gnashing his teeth 
 in disappointment. Such teeth too ! 
 
 " Why, what is the matter?" cried the beauteous 
 Sarah, opening her chamber door, and putting forth a 
 candle and a nightcap. 
 
 " Sarah, my dear!" I exclaimed, "call oflF the dog, 
 lovely vision !" 
 
 " Get along with you !" said Sarah ; " and don't call 
 me a lovely vision, or I'll scream out of my window 
 into the street. It serves you right ! " 
 
 " Serves me right, Sarah ! " I exclaimed, in a voice 
 which I am quite certain was very touching. " You'll 
 not leave me here, Sarah ; look, look at this dreadful 
 animal!"
 
 294 PICTUEES, 
 
 " You're a great deal safer there than anywhere 
 else," said Sarah ; and she drew in her head again, and 
 locked the door, leaving me and the dog gazing at each 
 other with looks of mutual hatred. 
 
 How long I continued in this position I feel it impos- 
 sible to guess ; it appeared to me rather more than the 
 duration of a whole life. I was not even soothed by 
 the deep snoring which penetrated from the sleeping 
 apartment of the fair cause of all my woes, and indi- 
 cated that she was in the oblivious land of dreams. 
 
 I suppose I should have been compelled to await the 
 coming of daylight, and the wakening of the household, 
 before my release from my melancholy situation, if 
 fortune had not so far favoured me as to excite, by way 
 of diversion, a disturbance below stairs, which called off 
 my guardian fiend. I never heard a more cheerful 
 sound than that of his feet trotting down stairs ; and, 
 as soon as I ascertained that the coast was clear, I 
 descended, and tumbled at once into bed, much annoyed 
 both in mind and body. The genial heat of the blankets, 
 however, soon produced its natural effect, and I forgot 
 my sorrows in slumber. When I woke it was broad 
 daylight, — as broad, I mean, as daylight condescends 
 to be in December, — an uneasy sensation surprised me. 
 Had I missed the coach ? Devoting the waiters to the
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 295 
 
 infernal gods, I put my hand under my pillow for my 
 watch ; but no watch was there. Sleep was completely 
 banished from my eyes, and I jumped out of bed to 
 make the necessary inquiries ; when, to my additional 
 horror and astonishment, I found my clothes also had 
 vanished. I rang the bell violently, and summoned 
 the whole posse comitatus of the house, whom I accused 
 in the loftiest tones, of misdemeanors of all descrip- 
 tions. In return I was asked who and what I was, and 
 what brouo-ht me there ; and one of the waiters sug- 
 gested an instant search of the room, as he had shrewd 
 suspicions that I was the man with the carpet-bag, who 
 went about robbing hotels. After a scene of much 
 tumult, the appearance of Boots at last cut the knot. 
 I was, it seems, " No. 12, wot was to ha' gone by the 
 Edenbry coach at six o'clock that morning, but wot had 
 changed somehow into No. 11, wot went at four." 
 
 "And why," said I, " didn't you knock at No. 12?" 
 
 " So I did," said Boots ; " I knocked fit to wake the 
 dead, and, as there warn't no a'^swer, I didn't like to 
 wake the living: I didn't knock no more, 'specially as 
 Sarah " 
 
 " What of Sarah?" I asked in haste. 
 
 " — 'Specially as Sarah was going by at the time, 
 and told me not to disturb you, for she knowd you had
 
 296 PICTURES, 
 
 been uneasy in the night, and wanted a rest in the 
 morning." 
 
 " I waited for no further explanation, but rushed to 
 my room, and dressed myself as fast as I could, 
 casting many a rueful glance on my dilapidated coun- 
 tenance, and many a reflection equally rueful on the 
 adventures of the night. 
 
 My place was lost, and the money I paid for it ; that 
 was certain : but going to Edinburgh was indispensable. 
 I proceeded, therefore, to book myself again ; and on 
 doing so, found Joe Grabble in the coffee-room talking 
 to Sarah. He had returned, like Paul Pry, in quest 
 of his umbrella, or something else he had forgotten the 
 night before, and I arrived just in time to hear him ask 
 if I was off. The reply was by no means flattering to 
 my vanity. 
 
 "I do not know nothink about him," said the indig- 
 nant damsel, " except that, whether he 's off or on, 
 he 's a nasty old willin." 
 
 "Hey-day, Peter!" exclaimed Joe, "So you are 
 not gone ? What is this Sarah says about you ?" 
 
 " May I explain," said I, approaching her with a 
 bow, " fair Sarah ? " 
 
 " I don't want your conversation at no price," was
 
 GRAVE AND GAY. 297 
 
 the reply. " You 're an old wretch as I wouldn't touch 
 ■with a pair of tongs !" 
 
 " Hey-day !" cried Joe. " This is not precisely the 
 character you expected. The rump and dozen " 
 
 But the subject is too painful to be pursued. My 
 misfortunes were, however, not yet at an end. I started 
 that evening by the mail. We had not got twenty miles 
 from town when the snow-storm began. I was one of 
 its victims. The mail stuck somewhere in Yorkshire, 
 where we were snowed up and half starved for four days, 
 and succeeded only after a thousand perils, the details 
 of which may be read most pathetically related in the 
 newspapers of the period, in reaching our destination. 
 When there, I lost little time in repairing to our agent, 
 — a W.S. of the name of M'Cracken, — who has a hand- 
 some flat in Nicholson-street, not for from the College. 
 He welcomed me cordially ; but there was something 
 dolorous in his tone, nevertheless. 
 
 "Sit ye down. Master Gayless; sit ye down, and 
 tak' a glass o' wine ; it wull do ye guid after yer lang 
 and cauld journey. I hae been looking for ye for some 
 days." 
 
 " What about the house of Screw and Longcut?" I 
 inquired, with much anxiety.
 
 298 PICTUBES, 
 
 " I am vera sorry to say, naething guid." 
 
 "Failed?" 
 
 " Why, jest that ; they cam' down three days ago. 
 They struggled an' struggled, but it wad no do." 
 
 " What is the state of their affairs ?" 
 
 "Oh! bad — bad — saxpence in the pund forby. 
 But, why were you no here by the cotch o' whilk ye 
 advised me. That cotch cam' in safe eneuch ; and 
 it puzzled me quite to see yer name bookit in the way- 
 bill, an' ye no come. I did no ken what to do. I 
 suppose some accident detained you?" 
 
 " It was indeed an accident," replied I faintly, lay- 
 ing down my untasted glass. 
 
 " 1 hope it 's of nae consequence elsewhere," said Mr. 
 M'Cracken, " because it is unco unlucky here ; for if 
 ye had been in E'nbro' on the Saturday, I think — 
 indeed I am sure — that we wad hae squeezed ten or 
 twelve shillings in the pund out o' them, — for they 
 were in hopes o' remittances to keep up ; but, when 
 the Monday cam' they saw the game was gane, and 
 they are now clane dished. So you see, Mr, Gayless, 
 ye 're after the fair." 
 
 " After the fair, indeed," said I ; for men can pun 
 even in misery. 
 
 What my man of business told me, proved to be true.
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 299 
 
 The dividend will not be sixpence in the pound, and it 
 is more than six hundred and fifty pounds odd out of 
 my pocket. I had the expense (including that of a 
 lost place) of a journey to Edinburgh and back for 
 nothing. I was snowed up on the road, and frozen up 
 on the top of a staircase. I lost a pair of teeth, and 
 paid the dentist for another. I was bumped and bruised, 
 bullied by a barmaid, and hunted by a dog. I paid my 
 rump and dozen amid the never-ending jokes of those 
 who were eating and drinking them ; and I cannot look 
 forward to the next dog-days without having before my 
 eyes the horrors of hydrophobia. 
 Such was my last love !
 
 300 PICTUEES, 
 
 A NIGHT OF TEEROK. 
 
 [This stor J is partly translated, partly imitated, from 
 the French. The French author, I suppose, was in- 
 debted to some German original. It is no great matter, 
 so the reader likes it. Let us therefore, without further 
 preface, begin.] 
 
 I. 
 
 You will recollect that, three years ago, we had a 
 dreadful winter throughout Europe. It was severe in 
 those quarters where the climate is usually genial : in 
 the north it was absolutely dreadful. My sister and I 
 
 were on a visit to our old friend, the Princess N , 
 
 at her Lithuanian castle. The thing was arranged that 
 Adelaide was to be married to the Princess's son, 
 Sobieski, who was daily expected from Spain. I sup- 
 pose my sister looked forward to the arrival with more 
 impatience than the rest of the party ; and certamly its 
 male portion were far more interested in hunting the 
 wolf all the morning through the snows, and drinking 
 down the fatigues of the chase in the evening over the 
 fire, than in anything connected with the tender passion. 
 
 The wished-for morning arrived at last. Sobieski 
 appeared in the castle of his ancestors amid the accla-
 
 GEAVE AND GAT. 301 
 
 mations of an admiring peasantry, to be kissed by bis 
 mother, shaken hands with by his friends, and looked 
 at, I suppose, by his betrothed. Foreign travel had 
 improved him, and a single year had sufficed to turn the 
 handsome stripling into a fine and noble-looking young 
 man. The Prmcess was happy, Adelaide was happy, 
 Sobieski was happy, we all were happy : but the happiness 
 was destined to be of short duration ; for we had hardly 
 risen from breakfast when a wearied courier arrived, 
 bringing in the melancholy information that my father 
 had been suddenly taken ill in Bohemia, and that our 
 attendance was instantly required, as his life was de- 
 spaired of. It was of course necessary that we should 
 start on the instant ; no time could be lost, and our ar- 
 rangements for departure were made with the utmost 
 rapidity. Sobieski wished to have gone with us ; but 
 how could he leave his mother whom he had only seen 
 for two or three hours after a year's absence? Besides, 
 why expose him to the trouble and inconvenience of the 
 journey? If, as we hoped, we found the alarm exag- 
 gerated, it would be easy to send for him, or to return : if 
 the event were what our fears suggested, it was arranged 
 that my sister's future home was to be that of the Prin- 
 cess. Adelaide and Sobieski had a long private interview 
 before we parted. What they said I do not know ; but it
 
 302 PICTURES, 
 
 could not be hard to guess at wliat was the tenor of their 
 conversation. With much reluctance he gave his con- 
 sent to remain behind ; but, farewell is a word that has 
 been, and must be ; it was spoken at last, and we set off 
 in our travelling carriage about six in the morning 
 through the snowy roads of Lithuania leading through 
 the great forest. 
 
 We got over the short day without any adventures 
 different from what might be expected. Our carriage 
 sometimes stuck in the snow, sometimes narrowly escaped 
 being upset by the stump of a tree. Relays on the 
 road were few, and the people at the post-houses seemed 
 half frozen, and afraid to open their mouths. We were 
 tolerably independent of them for supplies, as we had 
 been sufficiently stored before we started on our route. 
 We left the last post-house about six in the evening, 
 with a pair of fine, strong young horses, fit to contend 
 with the night difficulties of the forest road. Those 
 difficulties did not appear to be in any degree remarkably 
 formidable. The full moon, just risen, cast a bright 
 light all around, and a strong frost having set in, the 
 path was hard and practicable. Our driver, an old 
 retainer of the Princess, knew the forest well ; for forty 
 years, as chasseur or courier, postilion or coachman, he 
 had traversed it at all hours of the day and night, and
 
 GRAVE AND GAY. 303 
 
 was as well acquainted with every " dingle and bosky 
 bourne of tlie wild wood " as with his own stables. I 
 forgot to say that, besides Adelaide and myself, her 
 favourite French maid occupied the interior of the 
 voiture. Heinrich smoked, whistled, and cracked his 
 whip in solitary dignity without. There being nothing 
 in the scenery or its associations to captivate the Pari- 
 sian soul of Louise, who had done due justice to the 
 contents of our basket while we changed horses, she 
 speedily dropped into a profound slumber, to dream, I 
 suppose, of the glories of the Palais Royal, and to 
 transport herself from the woods and snows of Lithuania 
 to the parterre of some theatre on the Boulevards. She 
 soon gave us audible information that she was far away 
 in the land of dreams, and that, if her slumbers were 
 not melancholy, they were at least musical. 
 
 Let it not be imagined that my more delicate com- 
 panion or myself permitted Louise to enjoy our basket- 
 stored repast without co-operation. Our spirits were 
 severely depressed; the dreaded death of a beloved 
 father filled us both with sorrow and apprehension, and 
 Adelaide in partmg with Sobieski had her peculiar 
 sources of grief. But it is a sad truth, that all the 
 most sentimental emotions of the mind give place when 
 the most unsentimental organ of the body makes its
 
 304 PICTURES, 
 
 demand upon our attention ; and tlie bracing air of the 
 forest had largely contributed to the sharpening of the 
 appetite. The substantial dainties of the Princess, 
 aided by some generous hock, somewhat assisted in my 
 case by a fair proportion of brandy, disposed us also to 
 slumber, and Adelaide fell asleep on my shoulder. Her 
 sleeping thoughts reverted in all probability to a certain 
 Northern castle frowning over the flood, garnished with 
 tower and turret, buttress and bulwark, fosse and ram- 
 part, drawbridge and portcullis, and every other adjunct 
 of feudal war; but in which was also the picture- 
 studded corridor, the gay salon, and, above all, the soft 
 boudoir, where sounds more fitted for the ladies' ear 
 than the clashing of arms were uttered ; round which 
 were formed trellised gardens, where bouquets, such as 
 the North affords were culled, and where sauntering 
 walks by morning-light or moonbeam made life for- 
 gotten ; or spreading parks and chases, where some rode 
 together who thought of other joys than those which 
 the sylvan sports afforded. For my part, my mind 
 wandered to the possible change of my mode of life and 
 position in society. I loved my father with an affection 
 which few sons feel : I admired the lustre of his military 
 career ; our house had been honoured by the fame he 
 had won and the high repute he enjoyed ; and I looked
 
 GRAVE A>D GAY. 306 
 
 back ^vith mino-led love and reverence on the uniform 
 kindness which I had experienced at his hands ; — but I 
 confess, I could not keep myself from thinking "what 
 I should do with the family estates when they came 
 into my possession, of the mode in which I was 
 to regulate my conduct, of the figure I was to cut at 
 com-t, of the way I was to spend the next year, — of — 
 of — of something else that it is now not necessary to 
 speak about. In vain I reproached myself with think- 
 ing of anything but the impending death of a dear and 
 honoured father. As I dropped into drowsy half-wak- 
 ing, half-sleeping, fits of dreaminess, other visions would 
 occur, and it was only when I roused myself to look 
 out of the voiture to see how we got on, that a sensa- 
 tion of sorrow would take possession of my mind. On 
 my shoulder still slept Adelaide, on the other side snored 
 Louise ; outside smoked Heinrich, thinking, I take it 
 for granted, of nothing but his horses, and these he 
 drove steadily along. 
 
 On a sudden, however, it seemed as if they afibrded 
 him more than ordinary trouble. I was awaked from 
 one of my noddings by hearing him devoting them to 
 the infernal gods, in all the mingled dialects of Poland, 
 Russia, and Germany, — and that for a crime which 
 seldom awakens the indignation of a traveller in these
 
 306 PICTURES, 
 
 regions. In spite of all his exertions, they had burst 
 into a furious gallop. He cursed, and swore, and pulled, 
 and tugged, but in vain. With alarmed eye and erected 
 ear, the eager horses disregarded the utmost efforts of 
 curb and bridle, and dragged us forward with a velocity 
 I should have thought beyond their powers. As there 
 was no danger of accident, I was rather amused by the 
 unexpected vigour of our steeds, and the indignation of 
 the usually phlegmatic Heinrich at their apostacy from 
 the regulated pace of the road. All on a sudden, how- 
 ever, our driver ceased to swear, and, uttering a hasty 
 ejaculation, something half-way between a prayer and a 
 curse, exclaimed, 
 
 " The beasts are right — right, by a thousand devils 
 right ! I should have guessed it long ago." 
 
 And so saying, he surrendered to them the reins, no 
 longer endeavouring to control their rapidity. I asked 
 him what he meant. Turning cautiously round, and 
 whispering so as not to disturb my sister, he breathed 
 rather than spoke into my ear, 
 
 " They are coming." 
 
 " Who — who ? " said I ; " who are coming ? There is 
 not a human being in sight." 
 
 " I did not say there was," replied Heinrich ; " and 
 they are scarce in sight. But don't you hear them t "
 
 GRAVE AND GAY. 307 
 
 " I hear nothing," said I, " but the whistling of the 
 wind and the crushing of our own carriage through the 
 snow." 
 
 " Hark !" interrupted Heinrich, dropping his pipe : 
 
 " they are coming, by " But he suppressed the 
 
 oath, and crossed himself instead. " Ay, there they 
 are ; I see them plain enough now." 
 
 " The last glass of brandy is in your head, Heinrich. 
 What do you hear? What do you see? Who are 
 
 Profoundly inclining his head, he whispered with a 
 thrilling emphasis, 
 " The wolves ! " 
 
 II. 
 
 I removed Adelaide from my shoulder as gently as I 
 could, so as not to awaken her, and, standing up in the 
 voiture, looked in the direction pointed out by Hein- 
 rich. I looked, however, for a while in vain. I saw a 
 dark mass at a distance in the snow, but, as the country 
 was patched in all directions with timber, persisted, as 
 firmly as ever did Bonaparte at Waterloo, that it was 
 only trees. In about ten minutes, however, I was un- 
 deceived as completely as was the fated emperor, and 
 by the same means. The dark mass was unquestion- 
 
 x3
 
 308 PICTURES, 
 
 ably in motion ; and after I had ascertained that fact, 
 my eye, sharpened by fear and anxiety, could perceive 
 that the motion was not only rapid but accelerating. 
 The sound, too, which in the distance I had taken to be 
 the whistling of the wind, came more distinctly upon the 
 breeze, and I recognized the dismal howling of the wolf 
 rushing closer and closer every moment. The terrified 
 horses, whose instinct had discovered to them the enemy 
 long before his approach could be detected by any 
 human organ, as if they were aware of their impending 
 fate, galloped on with more desperate energy than ever, 
 and Heinrich aided their exertions by all the skill of 
 which he was master. 
 
 They came nearer and nearer. We could hear not 
 only their dreadful howls, issuing from a hundred 
 ravenous throats, but the tramp of their accursed paws 
 pattering over the snow. I had no arms but a blunder- 
 buss, a fowling-piece, and a brace of pistols : Heinrich 
 bad a long pistol. These arms, at best but inadequate 
 against the number of our assailants, were rendered 
 comparatively useless by the discovery we made at the 
 very moment, that we had omitted to bring with us 
 more powder and ball than was barely sufficient for 
 another charge in addition to that which they already 
 contained.
 
 GRAVE AND GAY. 309 
 
 " What is to be done, Heinrich ? " I asked in a 
 whisper. 
 
 " There is no use in whispering now," said the old 
 chasseur, — " they will be upon us in less than five 
 minutes, and it would be better to wake Miss Adelaide 
 and her woman, to inform them of our danger. Poor 
 things ! it would be terrible if they were taken out of 
 the world, as we are very likely to be, without some 
 notice ! " 
 
 I acquiesced in the propriety of the advice, and 
 roused Adelaide. I was about to inform her of the 
 danger, but she had been lately dwelling for too long a 
 time among huntsmen to render it necessary I should 
 speak. 
 
 " Gracious heavens !" she exclaimed, starting up, " it 
 is the howl of the wolf! Oh, Herman — Herman! 
 what will become of us ? I see them — I see them ; 
 they are gaining upon us. We are lost ! We have 
 but a few minutes to live ! Last year an English party 
 was torn to pieces and devoured by them some leagues 
 beyond our castle I I shall never see my father again ! " 
 
 Her cries woke her attendant, who, the moment she 
 comprehended the danger, burst into an agony of yell- 
 ing that almost rivalled in dissonance the cry of the 
 wolves. She cursed herself, her fate, her stars, her
 
 310 PICTURES, 
 
 foUj, that ever drew her from France to this abomi- 
 nable country. She vowed to all the infernal powers 
 she could think of, that if she were to escape this peril, 
 she would never again commit a fault so unpardonable. 
 She raved about herself, and her life, and her dress, and 
 her Alphonse, (a smart gargun cuisinier in Paris, with 
 whom she kept up an amatory correspondence, much to 
 the detriment of King Louis-Philippe's French,) and all 
 sorts of matters, horrible or flimsy, that crossed her dis- 
 tracted brain. I remember, particularly, that death 
 itself did not seem to affect her with so much terror as the 
 prospect of being devoured afterwards by a nasty wolf. 
 Her grotesque lamentations had the good effect of 
 recalling my sister to her natural firmness of mind. 
 She felt that in this trying occasion it became her to 
 set an example of courage and resignation, and in an 
 instant, (the whole scene I have been just describing 
 did not occupy two minutes,) she was herself again. 
 She assured me in a couple of words of her constancy, 
 and pressed my hand to her heart to show that it 
 was not beating with any undue emotion. 
 
 " It is no time to agitate you now, Herman," she 
 said ; " chances of escape, I know, are but small : but 
 still, people have escaped from dangers as dreadful, and, 
 under God, our hopes principally depend upon your
 
 GRATE AND GAT. 311 
 
 presence of mind. Our defence is in your hands, and 
 there I am content to leave it. With these words, she 
 turned to her shrieking attendant, whom she endea- 
 voured to soothe with all the topics of consolation — 
 they were few enough in all conscience — she could 
 thmk of, and to enn-a^'e in some thoughts of relicj-ion. 
 but all equally in vain : Louise could hear nothing but 
 the howling of the wolves outside, and the howling of 
 her own fears within. 
 
 The chase continued. I stood ready with my blun- 
 derbuss to discharge it on the herd the moment they 
 approached within shot. I had too soon an oppor- 
 tunity. The fleetest of the pack in a few minutes 
 approached within four or five paces of the voiture, 
 and I fired. It was impossible to miss, and I saw two 
 or three fall killed or wounded. To those who were hit 
 it was soon matter of- little importance whether the 
 wound which brought them down was mortal or not, 
 for they were in an instant surrounded by the rest, who 
 fought for the fallen bodies. This obtained us the 
 respite of a few minutes, which was occupied by the 
 contest among themselves and the devouring of their 
 slain brethren. We made the best of the time ; but, 
 the carcasses once demolished, and the bones left to 
 whiten in the snow, the hunt recommenced, and we had
 
 312 PICTURES, 
 
 not gained a mile when tliey came up with us again. 
 My blunderbuss had been reloaded in the meanwhile, 
 and on their near approach I again fired, with similar 
 effect. But this time the respite was briefer. The 
 wolves had now tasted blood, and their fury was ex- 
 cited, so that the devouring of their companions did 
 not occupy half the space it did before, and speedily 
 they renewed the chase with bowlings far more terrific 
 than ever. 
 
 I appealed to Heinrich, who drove his panting horses 
 at their utmost speed. 
 
 " I have not," I said, " enough for another charge 
 for the blunderbuss. What is best to be done ? " 
 
 " It is of no use," said he, " to fire our fowling- 
 pieces among them, for we could not expect to kill 
 more than one, and that, so far from delaying would 
 only spur them on faster. We had better reserve our 
 fii-e for our last chance." 
 
 " Is there any?" 
 
 " One, and that but slight. Not far from this, but 
 I do not know how far, — perhaps a mile, perhaps three, 
 — is the old hunting-lodge built for the chasseurs of 
 the forest. If we could reach that, — but what use is 
 there in talking ? — you see these poor devils of horses 
 can scarcely hold out — they are almost sinking under
 
 GRAVE AND GAY. 313 
 
 the liell of a pace tliey have been keeping up this half- 
 hour. Have you your pistols about you ? " 
 
 " I have; why? " 
 
 " Do not discharge your last pistol on any account ; 
 no, not to save your own life. Keep it until " 
 
 Something choked the old man's utterance, and pass- 
 ing his hand over his face, he wiped off some moisture, 
 which bore as much resemblance to a tear as anything 
 his eyes could muster, and, applying to his lips his 
 cherry-tree pipe, which was never forgotten in the 
 extremest danger, he discharged a more than usually 
 voluminous effusion of smoke. This done, he beckoned 
 me to put my head out of the voiture, so that whatever 
 he said should reach my ear alone. I complied. 
 
 " Keep it until these damned brutes, — God forgive me 
 for using such words now! — until they are completely 
 masters of the day, and we have no further chance, 
 and then," sinking his voice to the lowest possible whis- 
 per, " discharge it into the brains of INIiss Adelaide ; 
 put it to her temple, and be sure you do not miss." 
 
 God ! how his words thrilled through my heart ! — 
 not even the horror of my own impending death, of the 
 hideous manner in which it seemed inevitable that I 
 should be cut off from existence in the flower of my 
 youth, far from my friends, would how perhaps for
 
 314 PICTURES, 
 
 ever remain ignorant of my untimely fate — not the 
 fierce forms which I saw hurrying to my destruction, 
 and anticipating with savage howl their bloody repast 
 — not all the terrors of my situation so palsied me as 
 this whisper of Heinrich. I looked at my sister. She 
 was eminently beautiful ; and if the dreadful scene 
 around her had banished the colour from her cheeks, it 
 had inspired her figure with an ah" of exalted courage, 
 and filled her eyes with a blended fire of heroism and 
 religion, that rendered her one of the most majestic 
 beings I ever beheld. And this noble creature, I 
 thought, — she, full of all that renders life one scene of 
 happiness — she, qualified to inspire love and admira- 
 tion into all hearts, the blessing or the ornament of every 
 circle in which she moves — she, who yesterday was wrap- 
 ped in visions of delight, who this morning woke to 
 welcome the chosen of her heart, and whose present 
 mission, melancholy as it is, was hallowed by filial duty 
 and soothed by the recollection that she has been all that 
 father could pray for, — is she to die — and so to die ? — 
 by the hand of me, her brother — her brother, who 
 would gladly lay down his life for her ? Alas ! alas ! 
 
 Perhaps I said these last words aloud, perhaps Hein- 
 rich divined what was passing in my bosom, for he 
 continued in a whisper,
 
 GKAVE AND GAT. 315 
 
 " To be sure, it is hard enough ; but it is better than 
 that she should die many deaths by the mangling of the 
 wolves. You and I -vvill fight the damned brutes, — God 
 pardon me ! — with our pistols to the last, and die like 
 men ; and it is no great matter how men die. And, 
 indeed, it is little matter how that screaming baggage, 
 who is almost as great a plague as the wolves them- 
 selves, comes to an end : she's fit food enough for them. 
 But that dear young lady, just think from what a horrid 
 death you save her ! She must not be torn by the jaws 
 of a wolf. I'd shoot her myself, dear master, with 
 pleasure, but it would not become me, as you are here. 
 It is you are to do it, for you are the head of the 
 family. So don't flinch." 
 
 This conversation occupied only a few seconds. It 
 was carried on in the most subdued voice, and I 
 thouo-ht Adelaide had not heard it. I learned from her 
 afterwards that she had distinctly heard every word. 
 When I looked at her, she was busily endeavouring to 
 soothe Louise. She told me that she had purposely 
 avoided returning my glance, lest it might shake my 
 resolution. " There was but one other hand in the 
 world," she said afterwards, " by which I should have 
 preferred to have died, if such death was inevitable. 
 He was not there in person ; he was indeed too vividly
 
 316 
 
 PICTURES, 
 
 present in my heart, though his name escaped not my 
 lips ; and to whom^ dear brother, could I look for 
 deliverance but to you?" Such was the effect of the 
 "whispering on my sister. It had not passed unnoticed 
 by Louise ; though, as it was carried on in German, 
 she would not have understood a word of it, even if 
 spoken aloud. She failed not, however, to interpret it 
 in her own manner. 
 
 " Ah, Heinrich ! ah, dear baron ! " she cried with an 
 agony more intense than ever ; " ah ! do not — do not — 
 do not ! I am sure you cannot be so cruel. Ah, 
 dear sweet Heinrich. of whom I was so fond ! " 
 
 Even at that moment, Heinrich, who hated everything 
 French in general, and liOuise in particular for her 
 especial impertinence towards him and his brother Ger- 
 mans in the service of the Princess, could not refrain 
 from giving a most dissentient grunt. 
 
 " Dear Heinrich! dear Monsieur le Baron! do not be 
 so cruel, I know what you are whispering about : I 
 know you are going to throw me to the wolves, that you 
 may get off while they are eating me. Oh, mon Dieu ! 
 men Dieu ! " 
 
 Adelaide endeavoured to edge in a word, but in vain, 
 
 " Oh ! dear Monsieur le Baron, remember what be- 
 came of the wicked prince who did the same to his
 
 GRAVE AND GAY. 317 
 
 courier : he was torn by his own dogs for it. Remember 
 the wicked woman who threw her children: she was 
 boiled alive for it. Oh ! dear Mr. Heinrich, dear 
 Monsieur le Baron, — oh ! oh ! oh! " 
 
 [Louise in her agony remembered two stories, one 
 German and one French. The German story is, that 
 some Polish prince, travelling through a forest, was pur- 
 sued by wolves; and that a faithful heyduck devoted 
 himself to save his master's life, by descending from the 
 carriage, and making with his sabre a courageous fight 
 against them as lono; as he could. He knew that he 
 sacrificed himself, but he did it without a second thought, 
 in order that, by delaying them first by whatever oppo- 
 sition he could ofier, and then by the time it would take 
 them to devour his body, his master might escape. His 
 devotion was successful, and the grateful master, ac- 
 cording to our version, provided for his family, and 
 heaped his memory with honours. A difierent version 
 is, that the selfish prince who consented to the sacrifice 
 of so faithful a servant, reaped his reward, by being 
 torn to pieces on entering his own gate by his dogs, who 
 did not know him in the absence of his attendant, under 
 whose immediate care they had been placed. — The other 
 story is, I fear, true : it is that of a wretched mother, 
 who with her three children were overtaken by wolves
 
 3l8 PICTURES, 
 
 somewhere in the East of France, when, to save her own 
 life, she flimg away the chiklren one by one to be eaten. 
 The wolves pursued her to the gates of a neighbouring 
 town, which was opened to save her ; but when she told 
 her story, the populace, indignant at the unnatural con- 
 duct of this worse than Medea, stoned her to death in 
 the market-place. As a story never loses by the telling, 
 it is currently said ,that they put her into a cauldron 
 and boiled her alive.] 
 
 We had not time to pay any attention to the lament 
 of the unfortunate suivante, for the wolves were by this 
 time quite close upon the carriage. Fast they came as 
 a dark cloud, scouring with inconceivable rapidity over 
 the snow. Their dreadful howls reverberated through 
 the forest, waking its every echo. We could see their 
 flaming eyes, their snorting nostrils, their mouths and 
 tongues red and dripping with the fresh blood of their 
 mangled companions. Another moment and they would 
 be upon us. The moment came, and there they were. 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Ileinrich, " keep them off one minute 
 — one single minute, and we are at the hunting lodge. 
 that the horses may hold out ! " 
 
 The poor animals exerted their last efforts. If we 
 had been pressed too closely by the wolves, no other 
 chance remained but to sacrifice them, and make our
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 319 
 
 way as best we could to the lodge, while our assailants 
 were fighting around the spoil. But there was no need ; 
 one wolf only succeeded in reaching the window of the 
 voiture, and him I instantly shot with my fusil. An- 
 other was making the attempt ; but I knocked him on 
 the head with the butt end, and at least stunned him. 
 Before a third could come up, the horses had made some 
 desperate plunges forward, and the welcome lodge was 
 gained. Heinrich jumped down at once, loudly calling 
 me to follow him. I did so, and with the help of Ade- 
 laide dragging on Louise, who had fainted the moment 
 the first wolf had put his nose into the carriage, in less 
 than a second we found ourselves inside the iron-bound 
 gate of the lodge. 
 
 " Thank God," I exclaimed, " we are safe !" 
 
 III. 
 
 " A pretty safety indeed! " said Heinrich, who had 
 lingered behind for a moment, as he firmly secured the 
 gate. " However, here we are at all events. I had 
 just time to take something out of the voiture that we 
 shall find of use, and unharness the poor horses, to whom 
 we all ought to be so much obliged, so as to give them 
 a run for their lives, though there is hardly a run in 
 them, before the brutes were upon me. I could barely
 
 820 PICTUEES, 
 
 say, ' Take that, canaille,' as I slapped my sliot among 
 them, which gave me an instant to get in. Ay ! there 
 you are, my beauties 1 howl away as you like, but you 
 shall be baulked of your expected supper to-night." 
 
 The lodge in which we had taken refuge, like all such 
 buildings, consisted of four bare walls of rough but 
 uncommonly strong masonry, with stone benches built 
 all round for the purpose of sitting or sleeping upon. It 
 contained a rude fireplace without a chimney ; and fur- 
 niture it had none, except an iron pot, left behind by 
 chance or design by its last tenants. It contained, how- 
 ever, a treasure to us of inestimable value, — the ex- 
 pected legacy of an immense heap of firewood, which the 
 experienced hand of Heinrich speedily discovered in 
 spite of the intense darkness. What he had risked his 
 life to bring from the voiture, was my lamp and tinder- 
 box ; and, by their assistance, he soon succeeded in 
 lighting an ample fire. Though the exertions of the 
 preceding half-hour had sufiiciently prevented our blood 
 from stagnating, the tomb-like coldness of the lodge 
 chilled us, now that the excitement was over, to the very 
 soul. The genial warmth was, therefore, very accept- 
 able, and even Louise began to revive. She at first 
 uttered a cry of despair, when she saw herself in a 
 gloomy vault beside a roaring fire, enveloped in thick
 
 GRAVE AND GAY. 391 
 
 clouds of smoke, through which she could but dimly 
 discern our figures. She fancied she had descended 
 to the other world, and did her old friend Heinrich the 
 compliment of supposing him to be the devil. 
 
 " I am in no humour, •woman," said he, " to listen 
 to your prate. Thank your master and mistress, there, 
 for saving you from the wolves, for the devil a hand I'd 
 have stirred towards it. However, as you are here, 
 take this drop of brandy ; and that may call back your 
 brains again, if you ever had any in your paper 
 skull." 
 
 He proffered her the draught of what he considered 
 a panacea for all the ills of life, and which, to do him 
 justice, he did not prescribe without having duly tried 
 its qualities upon himself. While hastily running back 
 for the tinderbox, he could not resist the temptation of 
 carrying off a small basket of provisions, which hap- 
 pened to contain a brandy-bottle, and it was put into 
 immediate requisition. Louise received the glass with 
 unfeigned politeness in spite of the ungallant speech by 
 which it was prefaced, and, cheered by the restorative, 
 and delighted beyond measure with her escape, was 
 beginning a long story of her own courage during 
 the adventure, when she was suddenly interrupted by a 
 piercing shriek from outside.
 
 392 PICTUEES, 
 
 " Silence ! " said Heinrich mournfully. " I thought 
 so. It is the poor horses, sir. They stand a great deal, 
 the dumb beasts, without making cry or moan ; but 
 when one comes to be torn to pieces by wolves, it is 
 quite a different thing. Ay, there's the other. There's 
 an end of them both, poor things ! I feared they had 
 not a run in them ; and the blackguard brutes outside 
 have 'a supper after all, — and little good may it do 
 them ! " 
 
 " What ! " said Louise with a fresh access of terror, 
 " are the wolves outside ? " 
 
 " Indeed they are," replied the chasseur, beginning 
 to smoke. " You will soon hear them, my dear, and 
 perhaps see them too. Don't be afraid, however, for a 
 while," continued he, as he saw her clinging to her 
 mistress ; "all in good time — you are safe for a 
 bit yet." 
 
 It was not long, indeed, before we heard them ; for, 
 apparently, after they had eaten the horses, they sur- 
 rounded the building on all sides. We could hear them 
 scraping and pushing against the gates, and endeavour- 
 ing to climb up the wall. The only exit for the smoke 
 was by an aperture in the roof, through which at first 
 it issued in volumes, and seemed to serve as a sort of 
 guide to the wolves ; at least we heard them clambering
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 323 
 
 along the roof, as if in search of an entrance. After a 
 short time the smoke began to clear, and a fresh wind 
 having arisen, it was so far blown away, that, looking 
 up, we could plainly behold the blue sky studded with 
 stars. You may believe me when I tell you that we 
 had no taste for admiring heaven's clear azure, as we 
 saw plainly that the aperture would enable the wolves 
 to come down upon us. Our fears were not without 
 foundation, for in a short time a wolf appeared and 
 looked in. Louise fainted outright ; but we lost no 
 time in striking the intruder with our fowling-pieces, • 
 and the brute fell through the hole. We speedily 
 knocked him on the head. Heinrich then thrust a 
 large blazing spar through the aperture, and waved it 
 about for a few minutes, uttering the cry used by the 
 chasseurs when they hunt the wolf We heard what 
 appeared to us to be a general flight from the roof. 
 
 " They will not try that way again," said Heinrich, 
 and he was right, " during the darkness ; for they are 
 scared off by the fire, and they have sufficient instinct 
 to know that one of their party is killed. We are then 
 safe all night." 
 
 " I wish," said I, " it was morning." 
 
 *' It is a wise wish," said the old man ; " for why 
 should you wish for morning ? Our horses are killed ; 
 
 y3
 
 324 PICTURES, 
 
 vfe have near twenty miles to get througli snow to the 
 next post-house ; and how could Miss Adelaide, to say 
 nothing of this helpless jade here, walk that distance 
 before nightfall, when we should have the wolves on us 
 again, if we had them not before ? We must not ex- 
 pect another lodge like this. Nay, though this fire 
 keeps away the wolves during the night, yet when day- 
 light returns it will shine so much more dimly, that it 
 will lose its effect, and daunt them no more." 
 
 " I thought," said I, " the wolves retired by day, and 
 prowled only at night." 
 
 " Ay, that's generally the case ; but when there is 
 so strong a pack as this, and they know that prey is at 
 hand, and see nobody to scare them away, they some- 
 times take courage, and do not dread the daylight. 
 Besides, it must have been hunger that drove them so 
 early into these parts ; and what brought them here 
 will keep them from going back." 
 
 " We, then, have no chance of escape ? " 
 
 " Nay, I don't say that neither : while there's life, 
 there's hope. Something may fright the brutes off; or 
 some travellers, seeing our carriage, may stop and come 
 to our assistance ; or " 
 
 " Or, in short," said I, *' some angel in seven-leagued 
 boots may descend from the sky. But no matter, dear
 
 GRAVE AND GAY. 335 
 
 Adelaide, we have at least another day's provision; 
 and if the vrorst comes to the worst, as we lived 
 together we shall die together. Strangers must close 
 the eyes of our father, and strangers sit in his halls." 
 
 '' It is the will of God, dear Herman," said Adelaide; 
 " and God's will be done ! " 
 
 We wrapped ourselves in our cloaks, and tried to 
 sleep during that dismal night. Louise, who had 
 shrieked and moaned away all her powers, did, I believe, 
 at last fall into an exhausted slumber. Heinrich 
 smoked, and sipped brandy, and alternately sung 
 snatches of ballads or mumbled forth fragments of 
 prayers, until he was as soundly asleep as if he was in 
 bed. Adelaide and I were silent, ruminating on our 
 condition, on the blighting of budding hopes and the 
 darkening of brilliant prospects — on the melancholy fate 
 for which we were reserved, and on our father waiting 
 in the sickly suspense of hope deferred for his children, 
 and perhaps sinking down to die chiding us for the un- 
 kindness of our delay. In reflections such as these 
 passed the night, undisturbed by any sound but that of 
 the ceaseless howling of the wolves outside, and the 
 crackling of the faggots within. 
 
 All things must have an end, and so had this night. 
 The tardy day broke at last, and Heinrich, rousing him-
 
 326 PICTUKES, 
 
 self, flung numerous logs on the fire to excite as great 
 a blaze as possible. 
 
 " It will be all of no use," muttered the old chasseur 
 as he plied this work ; " they will come in spite of us : 
 but one should never give up. In the meantime, let us 
 take whatever we can get for breakfast ; for, believe 
 me, we shall want all the strength and spirits we can 
 muster before long." 
 
 He prepared breakfast accordingly, as well as his 
 materials allowed, and we partook of it with heavy 
 hearts. The sun soon shone brightly through the 
 aperture, and the logs began to " pale their ineffectual 
 fire." We made ourselves ready for the expected 
 attack ; for, as Heinrich anticipated, the wolves had 
 not withdrawn. A sufiicient charge for the blunder- 
 buss, which I committed to the chasseur, was scraped 
 together from our united stores, and, except my 
 pistols, one of which, to say the truth, I had re- 
 served for myself, if dire necessity imposed on me 
 that use of the other on which I dreaded to think, 
 we had no other means of defence but the butt-ends 
 of our fusils. Nothing beyond howling occurred until 
 about three hours after sunrise, — and what awful hours 
 were they ! — when suddenly our eyes, which were 
 scarcely for a moment diverted from the aperture,
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 327 
 
 saw the object of their fear. Two or three wolves 
 of the largest size had climbed up the roof, and were 
 preparing to jump in. A discharge of the blunderbuss 
 drove them away, and the body of one huge brute 
 dropped dead into the lodge. Short respite ! — the 
 way was found, and the sun had deprived the fire- 
 brand of its power. Another and fiercer relay was 
 soon on the roof, and we had no means of preventing 
 their descent. 
 
 "Now," whispered Heinrich, "may God help us! 
 for there is no help for us in this world. Have you 
 the pistol ready ? " 
 
 I assented by a glance. 
 
 The shaggy wolves, howling incessantly, glared 
 down upon us with ravenous eyes from the top, 
 waiting the moment to spring. Below stood Heinrich 
 and I, illuminated in the blaze of the faggots, our 
 reversed fowling-pieces in our hands ready to strike. 
 Louise lay at our feet prostrate, fainting on the 
 ground ; and Adelaide, sunk upon her knees, seemed, 
 as the light from above streamed upon her uplifted 
 countenance, emerging in radiant beauty from the 
 smoke and glare, like an angel about to wing her way 
 back to her native heaven from the darkness and the 
 turmoil of a hapless and uncongenial world. 
 
 •^ ^ * * ■}«•
 
 328 PICTURES, 
 
 " And is this all ?" said my cousin Lucy. 
 
 " I have not time," said I, "to write any more, for 
 I am going out to shoot with your brother Dick." 
 
 " But I tell you this will never do : you must put an 
 end to it. How were they saved?" 
 
 " Are you sure they were saved?" 
 
 " Yes, quite sure ; else how could you hear Herman 
 tell the story ? And he says, beside, that Adelaide 
 told him how she overheard his whispering." 
 
 " Ah ! I forgot that ; but I must be off." 
 
 " Not before you finish the story." 
 
 " Finish it yourself." 
 
 "I can't — it's not my business." 
 
 " Why, you will never thrive in it, if you cannot 
 devise some way of bringing in the lover to the rescue, 
 with his train of huntsmen and wolf-dogs. He must 
 have heard of the bursting down of a pack of wolves, 
 and following on their traces just at the right moment 
 to save the party, to kill the marauders, to put fresh 
 horses to the carriage, to whirl off to papa, and to come 
 in time for his blessing. Then the rest is easy. Herman 
 gets the estate, — Sobieski gets his wife ; — they both 
 get back to his mother's ; there they get — very happy, 
 — and I get rid of the story." 
 
 Waylac.
 
 GKAVE AND GAT. 829 
 
 THE TWO BUTLEES OF KILKENNY. 
 
 In all countries and all languages we have the story 
 of II Bondocani. May I tell one from Ireland ? 
 
 It is now almost a hundred years ago — certainly 
 eighty — since Tom — I declare to Mnemosyne I forget 
 what his surname was, if 1 ever knew it, which I 
 doubt, — It is at least eighty years since Tom emerged 
 from his master's kitchen in Clonmell, to make his way 
 on a visit to foreign countries. 
 
 If I can well recollect dates, this event must have 
 occurred at the end of the days of George the Second, 
 or very close after the accession of George the Third, 
 because in the course of the narrative it will be dis- 
 closed that the tale runs of a Jacobite lord living 
 quietly in Ireland, and that I think must have been 
 some time between 1740 and 1760, — or say '65. 
 Just before the year of the young Pretender's burst, 
 a sharp eye used to be kept upon the " honest men " 
 in all the three kingdoms ; and in Ireland, from the 
 peculiar power which the surveillance attendant on 
 the penal laws gave the government, this sharp eye 
 could not be surpassed in sharpness, — that is to say.
 
 330 PICTURES, 
 
 if it did not clioose to wink. Truth, nevertheless, 
 makes us acknowledge that the authorities of Ireland 
 were ever inclined at the bottom of their hearts to 
 countenance lawlessness, if at all recommended by 
 anything like a noble or a romantic name. And no 
 name could be more renowned or more romantic than 
 that of Ormond. 
 
 It is to be found in all our histories well recorded. 
 What are the lines of Dryden ? — and Dryden was a 
 man who knew how to make verses worth reading. 
 
 And the rebel rose stuck to the house of Ormond 
 for many a day ; — but it is useless to say more. 
 Even I who would sing, " Lilla buUalero buUen a 
 la," — if I could, only I can't sing, — and who give 
 " The glorious, pious, and immortal memory," be- 
 cause I can toast, — even I do not think wrong of the 
 house of Ormond for sticking as it did to the house of 
 Stuart. Of that, too, I have a long story to tell some 
 time or another. 
 
 Never mind. I was mentioning all this because 
 I have not a "Peerage" by me; and I really do not 
 know who was the Lord Ormond of the day which I 
 take to be the epoch of my tale. If I had a " Peer- 
 age" I am sure I could settle it in a minute; but I 
 have none. Those, therefore, who are most interested
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 331 
 
 in the affair ought to examine a " Peerage," to find 
 who was the man of the time ; — I can only help them 
 by a hint. My own particular and personal reason for 
 recollecting the matter is this : I am forty, or more — 
 never mind the quantity more ; and I was told the 
 story by my uncle at least five-and-twenty years ago. 
 That brings us to the year 1812, — say 1811. My 
 uncle — his name was Jack — told me that he had heard 
 the story from Tom himself fifty years before that. If 
 my uncle Jack, who was a very good fellow, considera- 
 bly given to potation, was precise in his computation of 
 time, the date of his story must have fallen in 1762 — 
 or 1763 — no matter which. This brings me near the 
 date I have already assigned ; but the reader of my 
 essay has before him the grounds of my chronological 
 conjectures, and he can form his opinions on data as 
 sufficiently as myself. 
 
 I recur fearlessly to the fact that Tom — whatever his 
 surname may have been — emerged from the kitchen of his 
 master in Clonmell, to make his way to foreign countries. 
 
 His master was a very honest fellow — a school- 
 master of the name of Chaytor, a Quaker, round of 
 paunch and red of nose. I believe that some of his 
 progeny are now men of office in Tipperary — and 
 why should they not? Summer school- vacations in
 
 332 PICTURES, 
 
 Ireland occur in July ; and Chaytor — by the by, I 
 think he was Tom Chaytor, but if Quakers have 
 Christian names I am not sure — gave leave to his 
 man Tom to go wandering about the country. He 
 had four, or perhaps five days to himself. 
 
 Tom, as he was described to me by my uncle over 
 a jug of punch about a quarter of a century ago, was 
 what in his memory must have been a smart-built 
 fellow. Clean of limb, active of hand, light of leg, 
 clear of eye, bright of hair, white of tooth, and two- 
 and-twenty: in short, he was as handsome a lad as you 
 would wish to look upon in a summer's day. I mention 
 a summer's day merely for its length ; for even on a 
 winter's day there were few girls that could cast an 
 eye upon him without forgetting the frost. 
 
 So he started for the land of Kilkenny, which is 
 what we used to call in Ireland twenty-four miles 
 from Clonmell. They have stretched it now to thirty ; 
 but I do not find it the longer or shorter in walking 
 or chalking. However, why should we grumble at 
 an act of "justice to Ireland?" Tom at all events 
 cared little for the distance ; and, going it at a slap- 
 ping pace, he made Kilkenny in sLx hours. I pass 
 the itinerary. He started at six in the morning, and 
 arrived somewhat foot-worn, but full not only of bread,
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 333 
 
 but of Avine (for wine was to be found on country road- 
 sides in Ireland in those days), in the ancient city of 
 Saint Canice about noon. 
 
 Tom refreshed himself at the " Feathers," kept in 
 those days by a man named Jerry Mulvany, who 
 was supposed to be more nearly connected with the 
 family of Ormond than the rights of the church 
 could allow; and having swallowed as much of the 
 substantial food and the pestiferous fluid that mine 
 host of the " Feathers " tendered him, the spirit of 
 inquisitiveness, which, according to the phrenologists, 
 is developed in all mankind, seized paramount hold 
 of Tom. Tom — ? ay, Tom, it must be, for I really 
 cannot recollect his other name. 
 
 If there be a guide-book to the curiosities of Kil- 
 kenny, the work has escaped my researches. Of 
 the city it is recorded, however, that it can boast 
 of fire without smoke, air without fog, and streets 
 paved with marble. And there's the college, and the 
 bridge, and the ruins of St. John's Abbey, and St. 
 Canice, and the Nore itself, and last, not least, the 
 castles of the Ormonds, with its woods, and its walks, 
 and its stables, and its gallery, and all the rest of it, 
 predominating over the river. It is a very fine-looking 
 thing indeed; and, if I mistake not, John Wilson
 
 334 PICTURES, 
 
 Croker, in his youtli, wrote a poem to its honour, 
 beginning with 
 
 " High on the sounding banks of Nore," 
 
 every verse of which ended with " The castle," in 
 the manner of Cowper's " My Mary," or Ben Jon- 
 son's "Tom Tosspot." If I had the poem I should 
 publish it here with the greatest pleasure ; but I have 
 it not. I forget where I saw it, but I think it was in 
 a Dublin magazine of a good many years ago, when 
 I was a junior sophister of T. C. D. 
 
 Let the reader, then, in the absence of this docu- 
 ment, imagine that the poem was infinitely fine, and 
 that the subject was worthy of the muse. As the 
 castle is the most particular lion of the city, it of 
 course speedily attracted the attention of Tom, who 
 swaggering in all the independence of an emancipated 
 footman up the street, soon found himself at the gate. 
 " Rearing himself thereat," as the old ballad has 
 it, stood a man basking in the sun. He was somewhat 
 declining towards what they call the vale of years in 
 the language of poetry ; but by the twinkle of his eye, 
 and the purple rotundity of his cheek, it was evident 
 that the years of the valley, like the lads of the 
 valley, had gone cheerily-o ! The sun shone brightly
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 885 
 
 upon his silver locks, escaping from under a somewhat 
 tarnished cocked-hat guarded with gold lace, the gild- 
 ing of which had much deteriorated since it departed 
 from the shop of the artificer ; and upon a scarlet 
 waistcoat, velvet certainly, but of reduced condition, 
 and in the same situation as to gilding as the hat. 
 His plum-coloured breeches were unbuckled at the 
 knee, and his ungartered stockings were on a down- 
 ward progress towards his unbuckled shoes. He had 
 his hands — their wrists were garnished with unwashed 
 rufiles — in his breeches pockets ; and he diverted him- 
 self with whistling " Charley over the water," in a 
 state of g'wasi-ruminant quiescence. Nothing could be 
 plainer than that he was a hanger-on of the castle off 
 duty, waiting his time until called for, when of course 
 he was to appear before his master in a more carefully 
 arranged costume. 
 
 Ormond Castle was then, as I believe it is now, a 
 show-house, and the visitors of Kilkenny found little 
 difficulty in the admission ; but, as in those days 
 purposes of political intrusion might be suspected, 
 some shadow at least of introduction was considered 
 necessary. Tom, reared in the household of a school- 
 master, where the despotic authority of the chief 
 extends a flavour of its quality to all his ministers,
 
 336 PICTURES, 
 
 exhilarated by the walk, and cheered by the eatables 
 and drinkables which he had swallowed, felt that there 
 was no necessity for consulting any of the usual points 
 of etiquette, if indeed he knew that any such things 
 were in existence. 
 
 " I say," said he, " old chap ! is this castle to be 
 seen ? I 'm told it 's a show ; and if it is, let 's have 
 a look at it." 
 
 "It is to be seen." replied the person addressed, 
 " if you are properly introduced." 
 
 "That's all hum!" said Tom. "I know enough 
 of the world, though I 've lived all my life in Clon- 
 mell, to know that a proper introduction signifies 
 a tester. Come, my old snouty, I '11 stand all that 's 
 right if you show me over it. Can you do it?" 
 
 " Why," said his new friend, " I think I can ; 
 because, in fact, I am " 
 
 " Something about the house, I suppose. Well, 
 though you've on a laced jacket, and I only a plain 
 frieze coat, we are both brothers of the shoulder- 
 knot. I '11 tell you who I am. Did you ever hear 
 of Chaytor the Quaker, the schoolmaster of Clon- 
 mell?" 
 
 " Never." 
 
 "Well, he's a decent sort of fellow in the propria
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 337 
 
 qu(B marihus Vme, and gives as good a buttock of beef 
 to anybody that gets over the threshold of his door as 
 you 'd Tvish to meet ; and I am his man, — his valley de 
 sham, head gentleman " 
 
 " Gentleman usher ?" 
 
 " No, not usher," responded Tom indignantly ; " I 
 have nothing to do with ushers; they are scabby 
 dogs of poor scholards, sizards, half-pays, and the 
 like ; and all the young gentlemen much prefer me : 
 — but I am his Jiddleus Achates, as Master Jack Toler 
 calls me, — that's a purty pup who will make some 
 fun some of these days, — his whacktotum, head-cook, 
 and dairy-maid, slush, and butler. What are you 
 here?" 
 
 " Why," replied the man at the gate, " I am a 
 butler as well as you." 
 
 " Oh ! then we 're both butlers ; and you could as 
 well pass us in. By course, the butler must be a 
 great fellow here ; and I see you are rigged out in the 
 cast clothes of my lord. Isn't that true?" 
 
 " True enough ; he never gets a suit of clothes that 
 
 it does not fall to my lot to wear it ; but if you wish to 
 
 see the castle, I think I can venture to show you all that 
 
 it contains, even for the sake of our being two butlers." 
 
 It was not much sooner said than done. Tom 
 
 z
 
 338 PICTUEES, 
 
 accompanied his companion over tlie house and 
 grounds, making sundry critical observations on all 
 he saw therein — on painting, architecture, garden- 
 ing, the sublime and beautiful, the scientific and 
 picturesque — in a manner which, I doubt not, much 
 resembled the average style of reviewing those matters 
 in what we now call the best public instructors. 
 
 " Rum-looking old ruffians ! " observed Tona^ on 
 casting his eyes along the gallery containing the 
 portraitures of the Ormonds. *'Look at that fellow 
 there, all battered up in iron ; I wish to God I had as 
 good a church as he would rob." 
 
 " He was one of the old earls," replied his guide, 
 " in the days of Henry the Eighth ; and I believe he 
 did help in robbing churches !" 
 
 " I knew it by his look," said Tom ; " and there 's a 
 chap there in a wilderness of a wig. . Gad ! he looks 
 as if he was liked to be hanged." 
 
 " He was so," said the cicerone ; " for a gentleman 
 of the name of Blood was about to pay him that com- 
 pliment at Tyburn." 
 
 " Serve him right," observed Tom ; " and this 
 fellow with the short stick in his hand ; — what the 
 deuce is the meaning of that ? — was he a constable ? " 
 
 " No," said his friend, " he was a marshal ; but he
 
 GRAVE AND GAY. 839 
 
 Lad much to do with keeping out of the way of con- 
 stables for some years. Did you ever hear of Dean 
 Swift?" 
 
 " Did I ever hear of the Dane ? Why, my master 
 has twenty books of his that he 's always reading, and 
 he calls him Old Copper-farthing ; and the young 
 gentlemen are quite wild to read them. I read some of 
 thenp wance (once) ; but they were all lies, about 
 fairies and giants. Howsoever, they say that the 
 Dane was a larned man." 
 
 " Well, he was a great friend of that man with the 
 short stick in his hand." 
 
 **By dad!" said Tom, "few of the Dane's friends 
 was friends to the Hanover succession ; and I 'd bet 
 anything that the flourishing-looking lad there was a 
 friend to the Pretender." 
 
 " It is likely that if you laid such a bet you would 
 win it. He was a great friend also of Queen Anne. 
 Have you ever heard of her ?" 
 
 " Heard of Brandy Nan ! To be sure I did — merry 
 be the first of August ! But what 's the use of look- 
 ing at those queer old fools ? — I wonder who bothered 
 themselves painting them ? " 
 
 " I do not think you knew the people ; — they were 
 
 Vandyke, Lely, Kneller." 
 
 z3
 
 840 ricTUEES, 
 
 " I never heard of them in Clonmell," remarked Tom. 
 " Have you anything to drink?" 
 
 " Plenty." 
 
 "But you won't get into a scrape? Honour above 
 all ; I 'd not like to have you do it unless you were 
 sure, for the glory of the cloth." 
 
 The pledge of secm-ity being solemnly offered, Tom 
 followed his companion through the intricate pagf^ges 
 of the castle until he came into a small apartment, 
 where he found a most plentiful repast before him. 
 He had not failed to observe that, as he was guided 
 through the house, their path had been wholly un- 
 crossed, for, if anybody accidentally appeared, he 
 hastily withdrew. One person only was detained for a 
 moment, and to him the butler spoke a few words in 
 some unknown tongue, which Tom of course set down 
 as part of the Jacobite treason pervading every part of 
 the castle. 
 
 " Gad ! " said he, while beginning to lay into the 
 round of beef. "I am half inclined to think that the 
 jabber you talked just now to the powder-monkey we 
 met in that corridor was not treason, but beef and 
 mustard : ain't I right ?" 
 
 " Quite so." 
 
 "Fall to, then, yourself. By Gad! you appear to
 
 GRAVE AND GAY, 341 
 
 have those lads under your thumb — for this is great 
 eating. I suppose you often rob my lord? — speak 
 plain, for I myself rob ould Chaytor the schoolmaster ; 
 but there's a long difference between robbing a school- 
 master and robbing a lord, I venture to say many a 
 pound of his you have made away with." 
 
 "A great many indeed. I am ashamed to say it, 
 that for one pound he has lost by anybody else he has 
 lost a hunch'ed by me." 
 
 " Ashamed, indeed ! This is beautiful beef. But 
 let us wash it down. By the powers ! is it champagne 
 you are giving me ? Well, I never drank but one glass 
 of it in my life, and that was from a bottle that I stole 
 out of a dozen which the master had when he was giving 
 a great dinner to the fathers of the boys just before 
 the Christmas holidays the year before last. My 
 service to you. By Gor ! if you do not break the 
 Ormonds, I can't tell who should." 
 
 " Nor I. Finish your champagne. What else will 
 you have to drink ? " 
 
 " Have you the run of the cellar ? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " Why, then, claret is genteel ; but the little I drank 
 of it was mortal cold. Could you find us a glass of 
 brandy?"
 
 342 PICTURES, 
 
 " Of course :" and on the sounding of a bell there 
 appeared the same valet who had been addressed in the 
 corridor; and in the same language some intimation 
 was communicated, which in a few moments produced 
 a bottle of Nantz, rare and particular, placed before 
 Tom with all the emollient appliances necessary for 
 turning it into punch." 
 
 " By all that 's bad," said the Clonmellian butler, 
 " but you keep these fellows to their knitting. This is 
 indeed capital stuff. Make for yourself. When you 
 come to Clonmell, ask for me — Tom — at old Chaytor's, 
 the Quaker schoolmaster, a few doors from the Globe. 
 This lord of yours, I am told, is a bloody Jacobite ; 
 here's the Hanover succession ! but we must not drink 
 that here, for perhaps the old fellow himself might 
 hear us." 
 
 " Nothing is more probable." 
 
 " Well, then, mum 's the word. I 'm told he puts 
 white roses in his dog's ears, and drinks a certain per- 
 son over the water on the tenth of June ; but no matter, 
 this is his house, and you and I are drinking his drink, 
 — so why should we wish him bad luck ? If he was 
 hanged, of course I 'd go to see him, to be sure ; would 
 not you ? " 
 
 " I should certainly be there."
 
 GKAVE AXD GAT. 343 
 
 Bj this time Tom was subdued by the champagne 
 and the brandy, to say nothing of the hot weather ; and 
 the spirit of hospitality rose strong upon the spirit of 
 cognac. His new friend gently hinted that a retreat 
 to his gite at the " Feathers" would be prudent ; but to 
 such a step Tom would by no means consent unless the 
 butler of the castle accompanied him to take a parting 
 bowl. With some reluctance the wish was complied 
 with, and both the butlers sallied forth on their way 
 through the principal streets of Kilkenny, just as the 
 evening was beginning to assume somewhat of a dusky 
 hue. Tom had, in the course of the three or four 
 hours passed with his new friend, informed him of all 
 the private history of the house of Ormond, with that 
 same regard to veracity which in general characterises 
 the accounts of the births, lives, and educations of per- 
 sons of the hio;her classes, to be found in fashionable 
 novels and other works drawn from the communications 
 of such authorities as our friend Tom ; and his com- 
 panion offered as much commentary as is usually done 
 on similar occasions. Proceeding in a twirling motion 
 along, he could not but observe that the principal per- 
 sons whom they met bowed most respectfully to the 
 gentleman from the castle ; and, on being assured that 
 this token of deference was paid because they were
 
 344 PICTURES, 
 
 tradesmen of the castle, who were indebted to the butler 
 for his good word in their business, Tom's appreciation 
 of his friend's abilities in the art of " improving " his 
 situation was considerably enhanced. He calculated 
 that if they made money by the butler, the butler 
 made money by them ; and he determined that, on his 
 retm-n to Clonmell, he too would find tradesfolks ready 
 to take hats ofi" to him in the ratio of pedagogue to 
 peer. 
 
 The Kilkenny man steadied the Clonmell man to the 
 " Feathers," where the latter most potentially ordered a 
 bowl of the best punch. The slipshod waiter stared ; 
 but a look from Tom's friend was enough. They were 
 ushered into the best apartment of the house, — Tom 
 remarking that it was a different room from that which 
 he occupied on his arrival ; and in a few minutes the 
 master of the house, Mr. Mulvany, in his best array, 
 made his appearance with a pair of wax candles in his 
 hands. He bowed to the earth as he said, 
 
 " If I had expected you, my " 
 
 " Leave the room," was the answer. 
 
 " Not before I order my bowl of punch," said Tom. 
 
 " Shall I, my " 
 
 " Yes," said the person addressed ; whatever he 
 likes."
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 345 
 
 " Well," said Tom, as Mulvany left the room, " if 
 ever I saw anything to match that. Is he one of the 
 tradespeople of the castle ? This does bate everything. 
 And, by dad, he's not unlike you in the face neither ! 
 Och ! then, -what a story I'll have when I get back to 
 Clonmell." 
 
 " WeU, Tom," said his friend, " I may perhaps see 
 you there ; but good- by for a moment. I assure you I 
 have had much pleasure in your company." 
 
 " He's a queer feUow that," thought Tom, " and I 
 hope he'll soon be back. It's a pleasant acquaint- 
 ance I've made the first day I was in Kilkenny. Sit 
 down, Mr. Mulvany," said he, as that functionary en- 
 tered, bearing a bowl of punch, " and taste your brew- 
 ing." To which invitation Mr. Mulvany acceded, 
 nothing loth, but still casting an anxious eye towards 
 the door. 
 
 " That's a mighty honest man," said Tom. 
 
 " I do not know what you mean," replied the cautious 
 Mulvany ; for " honest man" was in those days another 
 word for Jacobite. 
 
 " I mane what I say," said Tom ; " he's just showed 
 me over the castle, and gave me full and plenty of the 
 best of eating and drinking. He tells me he's the 
 butler."
 
 346 PICTUBES, 
 
 " And so he is, you idiot of a man !" cried Mulvany. 
 " He 's the chief Butler of Ireland." 
 
 "What?" said Tom. 
 
 " Why, him that was with you just now is the Earl 
 of Ormond." 
 
 My story is over — 
 
 " And James Fitzjames was Scotland's king." 
 
 AH the potations, pottle-deep, the roadside drinking, 
 the champagne, the cognac, the punch of the "Feathers," 
 vanished at once from Tom's brain, to make room for 
 the recollection of what he had been saying for the last 
 three hours. Waiting for no further explanation, he 
 threw up the window (they were sitting on a ground- 
 floor), and leaving Mr. Mulvany to finish the bowl as 
 he pleased, proceeded at a hand-canter to Clonmell, not 
 freed from the apparition of Lord Ormond before he 
 had left Kilcash to his north ; and nothing could ever 
 again induce him to wander in the direction of Kil- 
 kenny, there to run the risk of meeting with this 
 fellow-butler, until his lordship was so safely bestowed 
 in the family vault as to render the chance of collision 
 highly improbable. Such is my II Bondocani. 
 
 T. C. D.
 
 GRAVE AND GAY. 347 
 
 A LOVE STOKY IN THREE CHAPTERS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " ■ ■ Whence springs this deep despair? 
 From such a cause as fills mine eyes with tears, 
 And stops my tongue, while heart is drown'd in cares." 
 
 Henry the Sixth. Third Part, Act ui. Sc. 3. 
 
 I HAD not seen Russell for many years — nearly a 
 dozen. We were contemporaries in college, but many 
 events kept us asunder. I spent a considerable time 
 on the Continent ; and when I returned, it so chanced 
 that my visits to London were short and far between. 
 I heard of him occasionally, but with no minute par- 
 ticulars as to his career. It was merely known to 
 me that he had been called to the bar, and that the 
 expected succession to a tolerably handsome inheritance, 
 by the death of an uncle some few years earlier 
 than it had been calculated upon, made him at first 
 indifferent to his profession, and shortly estranged him 
 from it altogether in everything but name. In fact, 
 I knew scarcely anything about him, and for some 
 four or five years had hardly heard his name men- 
 tioned.
 
 348 PICTURES, 
 
 Business witli which it is needless to trouble any- 
 one but those immediately concerned, rendered it ne- 
 cessary that I should pass through London, last 
 month, on my way to America. I had only four or 
 five days to remain in town, and these were busily 
 occupied. On the day before my departure, however, 
 it so happened that all I had to do was got over 
 at an early hour, and I lounged somewhat easily 
 through the streets, diverting myself with their vari- 
 ous wonders, when I was saluted by a friendly slap 
 on the shoulder. Turning round, I recognised my 
 old friend Russell. He was not much altered during 
 the twelve years I had not seen him, — much less, 
 in fact, than men usually alter, — and his manner and 
 style of address were as good-humoured and good- 
 natured as ever. 
 
 After the usual wonderments, and mutual applauses 
 of our marvellous good looks, we fell into such con- 
 versation as might be expected between old acquaint- 
 ances meeting after a long period of absence. Jack 
 This was dead, Tom T' other was married ; Will Smith 
 had got on in the world, Joe Brown had been un- 
 lucky. Bright-eyed Miss A. was now sober-eyed 
 Mrs. B. with half a dozen daughters, one to come 
 out this season; brighter-eyed Lady C. the reigning
 
 GRAVE AND GAY. 349 
 
 belle of our early circle, was still unmarried. Then 
 there "was that shocking story of Mrs. D. and the 
 sad fate of poor Sir Richard E. and so on until we 
 got through the alphabet of our old friends chatting 
 in this manner, as we sauntered along, not caring 
 where. The evening began to set in, and Russell 
 asked me if I was engaged to dine. I answered in 
 the negative, and he therefore made it a point that 
 I should dine with him. 
 
 " Must I dress ? " said I ; " For I start for Liver- 
 pool in the morning, my luggage is all packed up ; 
 so if there be the least ceremony, I must decline." 
 
 " Not the least — you may come precisely as you 
 stand, and we are not very far distant from our 
 destination." 
 
 I accompanied him, and a few minutes brought 
 us to his house. It is situated in one of the good 
 streets near Cavendish Square, and among the most 
 spacious of its neighbourhood. We arrived there 
 about six o'clock. He apologised for leaving me for 
 a moment, and I found myself alone in an elegantly- 
 furnished drawing-room. It is hard to say what it 
 is that reveals the presence of a lady in a house, 
 and yet you cannot enter one in which she dwells 
 without being at once convinced of female superin-
 
 350 PICTUEES, 
 
 tendence. It is not merely order and care, for in the 
 well -arranged house of a wealthy bachelor these may 
 be attained with as much scrupulous rigour as in any 
 menage superintended by a lady. Nor is it necessary 
 that the inexplicable array of those matters in which 
 female taste, or what they are pleased to call industry, 
 should be met with on the tiny tables they so much 
 love, for these we do not always meet with; but 
 the ensemUe of a room inhabited by a lady has an 
 air strikingly different from that which is the result 
 of the carelessness of a master or the anxiety of a 
 servant. Such was the air impressed on me by my 
 first glance round Russell's drawing-room. 
 
 Is he married? I thought. Perhaps. — I never 
 heard so. But then we have been so much asunder. 
 • — Would he not have said something about it ? But 
 then he might have taken for granted that I knew 
 of his marriage, but nothing of his lady. 
 
 My doubts were soon resolved. Russell returned 
 with some slight alteration of dress. 
 
 " You are a man of the world," he said, " George, 
 — and, in short, have you any objection to meet to-day 
 at dinner a lady to whom I give my name, but who, — 
 who, in fact — never consulted the church about our
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 351 
 
 union? I could not, of coui'se, introduce lier to Lady 
 Herbert ; but to you — " 
 
 " Never mind me," said I, " it is a matter of no 
 consequence — I have seen too many strange thino-g 
 in my travels to start at so ordinary a trifle. Mrs. 
 Russell shall be accepted by me as you introduce 
 her." 
 
 His eye gleamed with satisfaction, and murmuring, 
 " Poor Jane ! " he diverted the conversation to some 
 common-place topics. In a few minutes dinner was 
 announced ; and on proceeding to the dining-room, I 
 found that the lady was there before us. 
 
 She was tall and dark, with hair as black as the 
 skies at midnight, and eyes as flashing as the brightest 
 meteors that ever flitted across them. Her features 
 were handsome and lofty, but, I thought, marked by 
 a varying expression of melancholy and sternness. 
 This might be no more than mere fancy, occasioned 
 by my knowledge of the unhappiness of her position. 
 She was dressed in black velvet, which admirably set 
 ofi" her majestic and symmetrical figure. Her ges- 
 tures and manner were of the highest order of grace 
 and dignity, and the few words of greeting with which 
 she addressed me were marked by a sweetness of
 
 359 PICTURES, 
 
 tone, and an elegance of style, which acts like a 
 masonic sign to introduce on the instant to each other 
 persons who belong to what Burke calls the Corinthian 
 capital of society. She is indeed a splendid woman. 
 Her age may be about thirty, or, rather, a year or two 
 less. 
 
 During dinner, our conversation was of the ordinary 
 kind ; her share in it was sufficient, however, to prove 
 that she had mingled in good society, had read much, 
 and had thought more. Russell's conduct towards her 
 appeared to me to be studiously tender — nay, gallant. 
 In her behaviour she seemed anxious to please him 
 in every mamier, but without for a moment bending 
 from the stateliness which was evidently her ordinary 
 characteristic. I played my part as if I had no sus- 
 picion that Mr. and Mrs. Russell were not united by 
 the most orthodoxal ceremonies of the rubric. 
 
 We had talked ourselves into high spirits, when 
 almost immediately after dinner, a servant brought 
 a note to Russell. He evidently knew the writing of 
 the address, for, making me a slight apology, he tore 
 open the envelope with a look of the utmost chagrin. 
 Glancing his eye over the contents with the rapidity of 
 a moment, he looked first at Mrs. Russell, and said, 
 " It is what we expected: it must be attended to at
 
 GRAVE AKD GAT. 353 
 
 once." She turned deadly pale, and made no reply. 
 " Herbert," said he, " I really must beg your pardon. 
 Here is a cursed law business — a consultation, ■which I 
 must attend. The chambers of the lawyers are not 
 very far off, and I shall drive there as fast as I can. I 
 hope that I need not be absent an hour. Will you 
 excuse me ? Take care of the claret on the table, and 
 I am sure Mrs. Russell will entertain you in my 
 absence. But I must go for an hour." 
 
 " I am sure," said 1, " you leave me in good hands : 
 JMrs, Russell, without the claret, would be a more than 
 sufficient inducement to stay." 
 
 He laughed. She looked at me, and I returned the 
 look. I do not know how it was, but the equivocal 
 nature of her situation — or, rather, as it was known to 
 me, its unequivocal nature — confused me under her 
 glance : I suppose I looked somewhat puzzled. She 
 coloured. It was clear the secret was known to us 
 both. In a few minutes the wheels of Russell's cab were 
 heard in rapid whirl bearing him off to his destination. 
 
 I began playing with the walnuts before me, thinking 
 of a topic to commence upon ; but I was speedily saved 
 the trouble. 
 
 " Sir George," said the lady, fixing her dark eyes 
 upon me, " you know what I am here." 
 
 A A
 
 354 PICTUEES, 
 
 I paused. 
 
 " You know that I am not the wife of Arthur 
 Russell — say it. Your looks have said so already : it 
 is less sorrow to be stigmatised by the tongue, than 
 pitied or despised by the eye." 
 
 " Stigmatised ! Mrs. Russell," I exclaimed ; " who 
 stigmatises you ? I am sure I do not." 
 
 " You know it, then, from Arthur ? perhaps — but 
 no matter. He had a right to put you on your guard 
 against what you would have heard less kindly from 
 all the world. Yet I know you will not; judge of me 
 hardly." 
 
 " Mrs. Russell " 
 
 " No ! I know yoii will not. There was a kindness 
 and a good-nature in your tone about women to-day at 
 dinner, — alas ! was it affected to console me ? It may 
 be so. How can I help it, if it were ! If that were 
 the only hypocrisy m the world, how little should I 
 have cause to feel so keenly as I do now !" 
 
 " I spoke, Mrs. Russell, as I thought, without re- 
 ference to anything beyond the subject on which we 
 were talking. Do not agitate yourself to no purpose : 
 I am incapable, I hope, of offering the insolence either 
 of affront or patronage to any lady in the world."
 
 GEAVE AND GAT. 
 
 355 
 
 " I do not know. You seem kind, at all events. Do 
 not despise me utterly." 
 
 *'I do not despise you at all. Why, dear Mrs. 
 Russell, " 
 
 "Give me a glass of wine; the fit is passing. I 
 was almost overpowered just now : but I am calm at 
 present, — calm — calm — quite calm." And she bent 
 her head upon her hand and wept aloud. 
 
 CHAPTEK n. 
 
 " Left her in her tears, and diied not one of them "with his com- 
 fort; swallowed his vows whole * * * in few hestowed on her, 
 her own lamentation, which yet she wears for his sake," 
 " His unjust unkindness, 
 That in all reason should have quench'd her love, 
 Hath, like an impediment in the current, made it 
 More violent and unruly." 
 
 Measure for Measure. Act iii. Sc. 1. 
 
 "You have known Russell long?" she said recover- 
 ing herself. 
 
 " Almost from his boyhood. Circumstances have 
 separated us, but we were most intimate friends in 
 youth." 
 
 A A 3
 
 366 PICTURES, 
 
 *' I have heard him mention your name with great 
 affection ; and in some things which I have heard of 
 you from others, know you acted like a gentleman and 
 a man of honour. Do you care much about Russell?" 
 
 " It is an odd question," I answered. " I have 
 already told you he was a friend of my youth ; and 
 though years have elapsed since I last saw him before 
 to-day, I do not think my original feelings towards 
 him are in the slightest degree altered. He was, when 
 I knew him, and I am sure he is still, an honourable, 
 high-minded, noble, and generous fellow, full of kindly 
 dispositions, and possessed of the accomplishments 
 which ornament the solid merits of life." 
 
 " He is," she said, — " he is all — all — all that you 
 say. If you knew him as I know him, you would say 
 more. He is the most unselfish of men. He has made 
 sacrifices that few men would make — what no man 
 whom I have ever met would make ; and he has made 
 them for me — for me, the degraded woman you see 
 before you !" 
 
 " Nay, Mrs. Russell, do not use such " 
 
 " Mrs. Russell ! — God forgive me ! Am I Mrs. 
 Russell— I, Mrs. Russell ? Oh ! Sir George, Sir 
 George ! you know that the name is in itself an insult. 
 Nay, do not apologise ; I know you meant none. Is
 
 GRAVE AND GAY. 357 
 
 it not another mark of kindness T do not deserve, that 
 even the small respect of that thin-veiled covering of 
 disgrace is granted me by him ? Good Arthur ! 
 honourable Arthur ! kind Arthur ! dear Arthur ! 
 that to those words of unfeigned affection I could add 
 beloved Arthur ! " 
 
 "And why not?" 
 
 " Why not? Oh, sir, ask me not the question ! I 
 know not. There is not a noble quality which I should 
 not as willingly, as truly concede, — though concede is 
 not the word — that I should not blazon forth, as the 
 merit of that man. He is a handsome man, too, and 
 fit to win a lady's love. But how little there is in 
 that ! — he was not handsome." 
 
 " Who ? " 
 
 " No matter for a name," she said with a shudder. 
 " I was talking of Russell. I was saying that all you, 
 hia old friend, could advance in his praise, was nothing 
 to what I know of his goodness ; but — I love him not." 
 
 I felt it was far too delicate a matter for me to in- 
 terfere about, and I therefore held my tongue, looking 
 as mysterious as I could. In the dilemma I took another 
 class of claret, and cracked a filbert. She, too, was 
 silent for a short space ; but she was again the first to 
 speak.
 
 358 PICTUEES, 
 
 " It is odd wliy I should say this — this to a gentle- 
 man -whom I have never seen before, who tells me that 
 to-morrow is his last day in England, and whom, in all 
 probability, I shall never see again. I say to you, who 
 know nothing of me, who see me only in this melan- 
 choly and fallen situation — I say that which must make 
 you despise me for my faithlessness, at least of heart, 
 and my apparent treachery to your old friend who in- 
 troduced you. But I love another." 
 
 Her tears fell fast, and I remained silent and ena. 
 barrassed. 
 
 " I love another, sir," she continued ; " as unlike 
 your friend, as darkness to day, as baseness to honour, 
 as falsehood to truth. Bear with me for a moment. 
 I thought nothing more of Russell, some fifteen years 
 ago, than that he was a pretty boy, when I was, as 
 they told me, a pretty girl. We are about the same 
 age — ^he is but two or three years older ; and as our 
 fathers dwelt in the same neighbourhood, we had played 
 together in childhood ; but the intercourse between our 
 families was slight. When I first knew him, we had 
 no notion that there were any such things as hearts to 
 lose; and, God knows, I little dreamt of the horrid 
 fate for which I was destined ! There was, however, 
 one — a gentleman he was, and he is in the eyes of the
 
 GRAVE AKD GAY. 359 
 
 world, — lie was a cousin of my own . I must take 
 
 another glass of wine. Mr. Russell is away, sir, and 
 you are not doing as you would have done if he were 
 here : take some more wine," 
 
 " It is no use in dwelling on the story. He per- 
 suaded me to leave my father's house : I left it. I am 
 of good family — nay, I may say, I am of high family, 
 Sir George, and I left my father's house with him. It 
 is a shameful thing to tell : I was wrong — oh ! how 
 wrong ! and how was I repaid ! Smooth and elegant 
 of manner, cruelty and selfishness alone swayed him : 
 he sought but his own gratification, and for a passing 
 whim would sacrifice all the stock of happiness of 
 another. I do not think he ever seriously cared about 
 me — I once thought he did. But, for some reason — 
 may be he was tired of me, though scarce that, for I 
 was not much more than seventeen, and it was but three 
 months since he had taken me away from my father's 
 house ; — maybe he had other ladies in view, and that 
 I do think, his present marriage is most unhappy, and, 
 God forgive me ! I am not Christian enough at heart 
 to be sorry for it ; — for some reason, no matter to me 
 what, he left me one morning in furnished lodgings in 
 London, telling me he would return to dinner. Fifteen 
 years have passed, and, save in one or two casual
 
 360 PICTURES, 
 
 glimpses, I have not seen him since. He left me 
 ruined of name, exiled from my family, with scarcely 
 a farthing in my pocket, a stranger, a beggar, and a 
 word of scorn ! " 
 
 " He was a scoundrel ! " said I. 
 
 " So said my brother — my only brother, and he is 
 no more !" 
 
 A still bitterer flood of tears followed these words. 
 I shall not attempt to repeat the broken and scarcely 
 intelligible conversation which immediately succeeded. 
 I learned enough to know that her brother had chal- 
 lenged her seducer, and had been shot dead on the spot 
 in the duel which followed ; her father had inexorably 
 resolved on not seeing her ; the man who was the cause 
 of all this sorrow shortly after married a somewhat 
 elderly lady of large fortune ; and my new confidante 
 was, at the age of less than eighteen, flung upon her 
 own resources in the most pitiable condition of helpless- 
 ness.
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 
 361 
 
 " One eye yet looks on thee ; 
 But with my heart the other eye doth see. 
 Ah ! poor om* sex ! this fault in us I find, 
 The error of our eye dii'ects our mind : 
 What error leads must err." 
 
 Troilus and Cressida. Act v. Sc. 2. 
 
 After a while, she continued, in a more composed 
 strain — 
 
 " I knew not what to do. My brother's death, oc- 
 casioned by me — and so occasioned, almost drove me 
 mad. I do not know why I should say almost — I think 
 I was quite mad. The people of the house in which I 
 was abandoned, were civil — nay, kind ; but I felt that 
 I could not remain much longer. Where to go I knew 
 not. The Serpentine was rising every moment in my 
 thoughts ; one plunge, and then adieu to my misfor- 
 tunes for ever. A still more dreadful suggestion arose ; 
 for one of the servants, who was not deceived as to my 
 situation, hinted plainly euougli that I might live by 
 infamy. Oh, sir ! not even in that time of horror and 
 despair, shameful as you may think — as indeed you 
 must feel my present mode of life to be, not even in 
 thought came I to that ! 
 
 " But as I wandered, one day — destitute of all ;
 
 369 PICTUEES, 
 
 poverty and desperation suggesting the evil thoughts 
 of self-inflicted death, or torturing me with dreaded 
 anticipations of self-inflicted shame — towards the river, 
 mere chance threw your friend Arthur Russell in my 
 way. He knew all my melancholy — all my wicked 
 story, and his heart melted. He brought me back to 
 my apartments, he put an end at once to my pecuniary 
 diflficulties. I accepted these favours from him, as from 
 the lad who had been the playfellow of my childhood, 
 without scruple. He interested himself with my angry 
 father, but in vain. He endeavoured to arouse the feel- 
 ings and sympathies of my false lover, but in vain. He 
 tried everything that the most zealous and the most 
 honourable friend could do to lift me from my sunken 
 position, but in vain. Just then his uncle died. He of- 
 fered me an asylum in his house. God forgive me ! I 
 accepted it. How it is that we are thus living, I hardly 
 know — nor does he. We liked one another's society, 
 and our connexion became daily more and more intimate 
 almost without our observing its progress. I have been a 
 sad impediment to him in his onward course in life ; but 
 he loves me. Often and often has he pressed me to marry 
 him. Oh ! Arthur, Arthur ! I cannot, I cannot ! " 
 
 " Why not? " I asked : " if he wishes it, it may be 
 easily managed. As for society "
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 363 
 
 " Society ! " she said, flashing her dark and fierce 
 eyes upon me, — " Society ! do you think I care for 
 that phantom of folly ? Let me be in or out of it, it is 
 nothing to me. — But, sir — Sir George, pardon a woman's 
 ■v^"eakness ! your friend Arthur Russell is all that I can 
 praise, — what he has done for me, what he has offered 
 to do for me, shall never be erased from my soul ; he — 
 he, my seducer, has deceived me, cheated me, dis- 
 honoured me, robbed me, insulted me ! by him my 
 father's grey hau's have been, indirectly, brought to the 
 tomb earlier than nature would have demanded ; di- 
 rectly by his hand fell my only brother, — but then he 
 exposed himself in that, life against life ; he has done 
 to me all that can hurt or grieve the heart, all that can 
 humble or crush the feeling of woman ; and still I love 
 him ; I love him. Sir George, as I loved him the first 
 day I confessed it under the winning lustre of his false, 
 false eyes." 
 
 She wept. I could not restrain my tears, though I 
 made a strong effort. 
 
 " And yet," she continued, " I tried to check all re- 
 collections of my love ; and in part I succeeded. I was 
 beginning to be reconciled to my lot, such as it is, and 
 to forget — oh, no ! but not to think of what had been. 
 But now the wound is opened afresh, and my heart is
 
 364 PICTUEES, 
 
 torn again from its nest of quietude. I told you he was 
 my cousin : it so happened that, in the days of my delu- 
 sion, I gave him an interest in some estates of which I 
 was to be mistress when I came of age. How I had the 
 right to do so, or how he had the power of converting 
 that right, whatever it might have been, into money, I 
 do not know — I do not care. If it had been my heart's 
 blood, I should then have given it him. Why do I say 
 then ? I feel I should do it now : ay ! after all — after 
 all, I should do it again ! — But my father died, leaving 
 his property in such a manner as to come into the 
 hands of the lawyers, and it is absolutely necessary that 
 I should appear. Oh ! that the estate was sunk at the 
 bottom of the sea ! I care nothing about it, I loathe its 
 very name ! I have not thought of it for many a long 
 year. And now, I must meet him — ay ! and alone." 
 
 " You distress yourself" I said, " without much rea- 
 son, dear Mrs. Russell. If you meet this gentleman, it 
 is on business. There will be attorneys, and barristers, 
 and all the regular people of the law." 
 
 " No, no ! it is quite necessary, on account of one 
 thing in my father's will that no person should be pre- 
 sent at first, but ourselves. It is a matter that none 
 out of the pale of the family must know." 
 
 " Even so, still it is business. You will talk of
 
 GRAVE AND GAT. 865 
 
 family affairs, deeds, wills, bonds, stamps, obligations, 
 and so forth, -with all the technicalities of law ! There 
 need not be any reference to other events." 
 
 " 0, sir, sir, sir ! that I could think it ! I alone 
 with him — I under the glance, within the influence of 
 the magic of that voice, and talk of nothing else but 
 the technical matters of the law ! that I could !" 
 
 " Why, Mrs. Russell, you should muster a lady's 
 pride. Without wishing to speak more harshly of him 
 than you have spoken, I think the gentleman's con- 
 duct to you has been such as to call up any other feel- 
 ings than those of regard or respect, far less love. If 
 a man had ]:)ehaved to me with so much insolence, put- 
 ting all other matters out of the question, I should be 
 far more inclined to kick him down stairs than to 
 receive him with even ordinary civility." 
 
 " You never loved, Sir George, — you never loved as 
 a woman. I have mustered that lady-pride of which 
 you speak ; I have thought of all the wrongs I have 
 suffered, — I have thought of the slight with which he 
 insulted me, the shame he has wi'ought me, — I have 
 thought of his meanness even in this matter of the 
 money, — I have thought on my dead brother and on 
 my broken family ; — I have thought on the unutterable 
 kindness, goodness, gentleness, generosity, the unwearied
 
 366 PICTUEES, 
 
 love, the self-sacrificing devotion, of this dear, dear 
 gentleman with whom I live. I have contrasted it 
 with the cold and calculating selfish heartlessness of the 
 other ; — I have summoned pride, anger, contempt, dis- 
 dain, revenge, remorse, to my assistance ; — and, God 
 pity me ! I feel assured that all will be defeated by one 
 perjury-breathmg accent, one softened look of practised 
 falsehood. Well shall I know that they are perjury 
 and falsehood; but can I resist them, when I know 
 that they are assumed for me ?" 
 
 " He is unworthy," said I, " of such afiection ; 
 he is " 
 
 " Hush !" she said ; " that is Russell's knock. I 
 must clear my eyes. Do not say anything to him of 
 my strange discourse. It was on that business he went 
 — to have the papers ready for the lawyers : he is him- 
 self, you know, at the bar. It should have been done on 
 the first day of term, — it is now the fifteenth, — but I 
 put it ofi" day by day. Oh ! that the morning appomted 
 for my meeting him — it must come soon, perhaps to- 
 morrow, — Oh! that that morning found me dead!" 
 
 She left the room. Russell returned in good humour. 
 " It was a troublesome job," said he, " about which I 
 went ; but I think I have smoothed it. The matter is 
 not worth talking about, nor would you know anything
 
 GRAVE AKD GAY, 867 
 
 of the parties if I told you. However, I think you will 
 be glad in general to hear that a great scoundrel, and 
 a most heartless scoundrel to boot, will get a trouncing, 
 if some people's scruples can be got over. And I am 
 pretty sure, too, that even without exposing those feel- 
 ings to pain, it can be done. He is a ruined man 
 to-morrow, as sure as fate ! " 
 
 "Who?" I asked. 
 
 " A person," said Russell, darkening, " of whom you 
 know nothing ; but a scoundrel. A month cannot pass 
 over, without his being driven to the pistol, as an escape 
 from the hangman. But where is Jane ? " 
 
 " She left the room only as you came in." 
 
 '■^ Pardon me — I must see her." 
 
 In a few minutes she returned, paler than Carrara 
 marble, in company with Russell. She cast her eyes on 
 me as if to say, " Forget our conversation," and, at 
 Russell's request, sate down to the piano, to sing, with 
 sweet and unfaltering voice, the romantic ballads and 
 melodies of which he is fond, as if there were nothing 
 in the world to agitate or distress but the poetic sorrows 
 sung in the melting notes that thrilled from her melo- 
 dious toncrue. 
 
 O 
 
 Waylac.
 
 368 PICTURES, GRAVE AND GAT. 
 
 MY SOLDIER-BOY. 
 
 VERSES FOR MUSIC BY DR. MAGINN. 
 
 / give my soldier-hoy a blade, 
 
 In fair Damascus fashioned well ; 
 Who first the glittering falchion swayed, 
 
 Who first beneath its fury fell, 
 I know not, but I hope to know, 
 
 That for no mean or hireling trade, 
 To guard' no feeling base or low, 
 
 I give my soldier-hoy a hlade, 
 
 Cool, calm, and clear, the lucid flood, 
 
 In which its tempering work was done. 
 As calm, as clear, as cool of mood, 
 
 Be thou whene'er it sees the sun. 
 For country's claim, at honour's call, 
 
 For outraged friend, insulted maid. 
 At mercy's voice to bid it fall, 
 
 I give my soldier-hoy a hlad.e, 
 
 The eye which marked its peerless edge, 
 
 The hand that weighed its balanced poise, 
 Anvil and pincers, forge and wedge, 
 
 Are gone, with all their flame and noise — 
 And still the gleaming sword remains. 
 
 So when in dust I low am laid. 
 Remember by these heart-felt strains 
 
 I gave my soldier-hoy a blade. 
 
 FINIS.
 
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