You would not then be pleased to see Hear Horace, sir, who wrote of plays CRITIC. "Your pardon, sir, but all around me I scarcely know a word you said. It sure has robb'd you of your bile; But Merry-Andrews, seen as such, When he forsakes old Shakespeare's rule, And lets his own foul nonsense out, To please th' ill-judging rabble rout: But when he swears, to furnish laughter, The beadle's whip should follow after." The Tour of Dr. Syntax in search of the Picturesque. 1812, Canto xxiv. ll. 173 sq. Tanto cum strepitu, etc., Horace, Epistles, II. i. 203-7. CHARLES LAMB, 1826. YOUR fair critic in the coach reminds me of a Scotchman who assured me that he did not see much in Shakespeare. I replied, I dare say not. He felt the equivoke, lookd awkward, and reddish, but soon returnd to the attack, by saying that he thought Burns was as good as Shakespeare: I said that I had no doubt he was-to a Scotchman. exchangd no more words that day. We Works of Letter to J. B. Dibdin, June 30, 1826. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 1845 THE human race had now reached a stage of progress so far beyond what the wisest and wittiest men of former ages had ever dreamed of, that it would have been a manifest absurdity to allow the earth to be any longer encumbered with their poor achievements in the literary line. Accordingly, a thorough and searching investigation had swept the booksellers' shops, hawkers' stands, public and private libraries, and even the little bookshelf by the country fireside, and had brought the world's entire mass of printed paper, bound or in sheets, to swell the already mountainbulk of our illustrious bonfire. Thick, heavy folios, containing the labours of lexicographers, commentators, and encyclopedists, were flung in, and, falling among the embers with a leaden thump, smouldered away to ashes, like rotten wood. The small, richly-gilt French tomes of the last age, with the hundred volumes of Voltaire among them, went off in a brilliant shower of sparkles, and little jets of flame; while the current literature of the same nation burnt red and blue, and threw an infernal light over the visages of the spectators, converting them all to the aspect of parti-coloured fiends. A collection of German stories emitted a scent of brimstone. The English standard authors made excellent fuel, generally exhibiting the properties of sound oak logs. Milton's works, in particular, sent up a powerful blaze, gradually reddening into a coal, which promised to endure longer than almost any other material of the pile. From Shakespeare there gushed a flame of such marvellous splendour, that men shaded their eyes as against the sun's meridian glory; nor even when the works of his own elucidators were flung upon him, did he cease to flash forth a dazzling radiance beneath the ponderous heap. It is my belief that he is still blazing as fervidly as ever. "Could a poet but light a lamp at that glorious flame," remarked I, "he might then consume the midnight oil to some good purpose." “That is the very thing which modern poets have been too apt to do, or at least to attempt," answered a critic. "The chief benefit to be expected from this conflagration of past literature undoubtedly is, that writers will henceforth be compelled to light their lamps at the sun or stars." Mosses from an Old Manse: "Earth's Holocaust," ii. 146–7. |