I recollect hearing him address some fulsome compliments to Dr. Beddoes, to which the Doctor appeared to listen with patience. He was, after a peroration of ten minutes' duration, told by the Doctor that he was wrong in his chronology. "Not right in my chronology!" said the surprised bookseller; "what has chronology to do with the matter? "Only this: that so far back as the year 1540, this kind of complimentary insult had become obsolete." The Knight said no more, but decamped at once. Once, when in an abstruse argument with Mrs. Barbauld on the Berkleian controversy, she exclaimed," Mr. Coleridge! Mr. Coleridge!" The Knight was present. No sooner did he hear my name mentioned than he came up to my chair, and after making several obsequious obeisances, expressed his regret that he should have been half-an-hour in the company of so great a man without being aware of his good fortune, adding shortly afterwards, "I would have given nine guineas a sheet for his conversation during the last hour and a half!" This too at a time when I had not been at all publicly known more than a month. He avowed, indeed, afterwards, that he never feared offending by flattery, being convinced that for one man who was offended ninety-nine were pleased with that, which, if presented to others, they would have deemed nauseating and disgusting. Elder Sisters. It is a great advantage both in respect of temper, manners, and the quickening of the faculties, for a boy to have a sister or sisters a year or two older than himself. Feeling and Expression. I devote this brief scroll to Feeling: so no more of disquisition, except it be to declare the entire coincidence of my experience with yours as to the very rare occurrence of strong and deep Feeling in conjunction with free power and vivacity in the expression of it. The most eminent Tragedians, Garrick for instance, are known to have had their emotions as much at command, and almost as much on the surface, as the muscles of their countenances; and the French, who are all Actors, are proverbially heartless. Is it that it is a false and feverous state for the Centre to live in the Circumference? The vital warmth seldom rises to the surface in the form of sensible Heat, without becoming hectic and inimical to the Life within, the only source of real sensibility. Eloquence itself-I speak of it as habitual and at call-too often is, and is always like to engender, a species of histrionism.-June 29, 1822. Antony and Cleopatra. I have been reading Antony and Cleopatra. It is with me a prime favourite. It is one of the most gorgeous and sustained of all Shakspere's dramas. In particular do I dote upon the last half of the fifth act. Men and Women. Men are not more generous than women. Men desire the happiness of women apart from themselves, chiefly, if not only, when and where it would be an imputation upon a woman's affections for her to be happy; and women, on their part, seldom cordially carry their wish for their husband's happiness and enjoyment beyond the threshold. Whether it is that women have a passion for nursing, or from whatever cause, they invariably discourage all attempts to seek for health itself, beyond their own abode. When balloons, or those new roads upon which they say it will be possible to travel fifteen miles an hour for a day together, shall become the common mode of travelling, women will become more locomotive;-the health of all classes will be materially benefited. Women will then spend less time in attiring themselves—will invent some more simple head gear, or dispense with it altogether. Thousands of women, attached to their husbands by the most endearing ties, and who would deplore their death for months, would oppose a separation for a few weeks in search of health, or assent so reluctantly, and with so much dissatisfaction, as to deprive the remedy of all value—rather make it an evil. I speak of affectionate natures and of the various, but always selfish, guises of self-will. Caresses and endearment on this side of sickening fondness, and affectionate interest in all that concerns himself, from a wife freely chosen, are what every man loves, whether he be communicative or reserved, staid or sanguine. But affection, where it exists, will always prompt or discover its own most appropriate manifestation. All men, even the most surly, are influenced by affection, even when little fitted to excite it. Accomplishments in Women. The notion, that affections are of less importance than advantages, or that the latter dare even be weighed in the scales, is less truly described as opposite to my opinion than as alien from my very nature. As to accomplishments, I do not know whether it is right to cherish a positive | opinion of an indifferent thing, that is neither good nor evil. If we leave all moral relations out of view, such as vanity, or the disposition to underrate the solidities of the soul, male or female, &c. &c., the question of accomplishments (as they are absurdly called) seems to me to depend on the individual woman, in the same way that dress does. Of two equally amiable and equally beloved women, one looks better in an evening, the other in a morning dress. It is just as it suits, and so with accomplishments. Erasmus. I think the Praise of Folly is the most pleasant Book of Erasmus. The distich which he returned to Sir Thomas More in the place of the horse he had borrowed, is as good as was any steed in the stable of that most excellent Utopian. I cannot see how a good Catholic could refuse to receive it. He ought to be prepared to renounce his religion who shrinks from the necessary, inevitable, and legitimate consequences to which it must lead. "Quod mihi dixisti Here it is: Crede quod edas et edis, Sic tibi rescribo De tuo Palfrido Crede quod habeas et habes." Garrick and Shakspere. The warmest admirers of histrionic merit would not willingly be supposed to overlook the difference, both in kind and degree, between an excellence that in its very nature is transient, or continuing, only as an echo, in the memory of a single generation, while the name alone remains for posterity, and a power, enduring as the Soul of Man and commensurate with the human language. But, without dreading the imputation of a wish to balance weights so unequal, we may assert that if ever two great men might seem to have been made for each other, we have this correspondency presented to us in the instance of Garrick and Shakspere. It will be sufficient for me to direct attention to one peculiarity, the common and exclusive characteristic of both, the union of the highest Tragic and Comic Excellence in the same individual. This indeed supersedes the necessity of mentioning the particular merits which it implies and comprehends, while it is eminently and in the exactest sense of the word characteristic, inasmuch as this transcendent power sprung from the same source in both, from an insight into human nature at its fountain head, which exists in those creations of Genius alone, in which the substance and essential forms are the gifts of Meditation and self-research, and the individualizing accidents, and the requisite drapery, are supplied by observation and acquaintance with the world. We may then hope for a second Garrick or of an approach to a Shakspere where we find a knowledge of Man united to an equal knowledge of Men, and both co-existing with the power of giving Life and Individuality to the products of Ꮓ both. For such a being possesses the rudiments of every character in himself, and acquires the faculty of becoming, for the moment, whatever character he may choose to represent. He combines in his own person at once the materials and the workman. The precious proofs of this rare excellence in our greatest Dramatic Poet are in the hands of all men. To exhibit the same excellence in our greatest actor, we can conceive no more lively or impressive way than by presenting him in the two extreme poles of his creative and almost Protean genius-in his Richard the Third and his Abel Drugger. Clubs and the Like. In the language of prophecy, the first and prominent symptom of a good or evil will, or influencing tendency, is brought forward as the condition or occasion of all that follows. The first link in the chain of effects is made the representative of the common cause of them all, or the good or evil state of the moral Being of the agents. So, for instance, a turbulent malcontent disposition in large classes of a country, with the assertion of Rights, unqualified by, and without any reference to, duties, a vague Lust for Power, mistaken for, and counterfeiting the love of, Liberty, "Licence they mean when they cry Liberty, For who loves that, must first be wise and good,” show themselves first in clubs, societies, political unions, &c. &c. And this, as the first prominent symptom, foretells and becomes itself a powerful efficient cause of the disruption, disorganization, and anarchy that follow. Most truly, therefore, indeed what great truth and principle of State Wisdom can be mentioned which is not to be found in the oracle of the Hebrew Prophets ?-most truly doth Isaiah proclaim-ch. viii. v. 9,-" Associate yourselves, O ye people! and ye shall be broken in pieces. Give ear, all ye of far countries! Gird yourselves (i.e. form yourselves into Clubs as with Girdles), and ye shall be broken in pieces." |