THE ROUND TABLE

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The Round Tablewas published in two 12mo volumes in 1817. The title-page runs as follows: ‘The Round Table: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men, and Manners, By William Hazlitt. Edinburgh: Printed for Archibald Constable and Co. And Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, London, 1817.’ Twelve of the fifty-two numbers were by Leigh Hunt, as the Advertisement explains. The essays consisted for the most part, but not entirely, of papers contributed toThe Examinerunder the title of ‘The Round Table’ between January 1, 1815, and January 5, 1817. Hazlitt, however, included several essays taken from other columns ofThe Examinerand fromThe Morning Chronicleand other sources, and did not include the whole of his contributions to the Round Table series. A ‘third’ edition, edited by the author’s son, was published in one 12mo volume in 1841. In this edition many essays were omitted which had appeared, or were intended to appear, in the series of Hazlitt’s works then being published by Templeman; three essays contributed by Hazlitt toThe Liberalin 1822 were added; and Leigh Hunt’s essays were retained. Hazlitt’s essays as published in the two volumes of 1817 were restored, and Leigh Hunt’s essays were for the first time omitted in a later edition (8vo, 1871) edited by the author’s grandson, Mr. W. C. Hazlitt. The present edition is an exact reproduction of Hazlitt’s essays from the edition of 1817, except that a few obvious printer’s errors have been corrected. Of the contributions made by Hazlitt to the Round Table series inThe Examinerand not included in the two volumes of 1817 some were used by him in other publications,Characters of Shakespear’s Plays(1817) andPolitical Essays(1819), some were published in the posthumousWinterslow(1850), and some have not been hitherto republished. The source of each of the following essays is indicated in the Notes. Gifford’s review ofThe Round TableinThe Quarterly Reviewfor April 1817 is dealt with by the author inA Letter to William Gifford, Esq., which is included in this volume.

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE EDITION OF 1817

The following work falls somewhat short of its title and original intention. It was proposed by my friend, Mr. Hunt, to publish a series of papers in the Examiner, in the manner of the early periodical Essayists, the Spectator and Tatler. These papers were to be contributed by various persons on a variety of subjects; and Mr. Hunt, as the Editor, was to take the characteristic or dramatic part of the work upon himself. I undertook to furnish occasional Essays and Criticisms; one or two other friends promised their assistance; but the essence of the work was to be miscellaneous. The next thing was to fix upon a title for it. After much doubtful consultation, that ofThe Round Tablewas agreed upon as most descriptive of its nature and design. But our plan had been no sooner arranged and entered upon, than Buonaparte landed at Frejus,et voila la Table Ronde dissoute. Our little congress was broken up as well as the great one; Politics called off the attention of the Editor from theBelles Lettres; and the task of continuing the work fell chiefly upon the person who was least able to give life and spirit to the original design. A want of variety in the subjects and mode of treating them, is, perhaps, the least disadvantage resulting from this circumstance. All the papers, in the two volumes here offered to the public, were written by myself and Mr. Hunt, except a letter communicated by a friend in the seventeenth number. Out of the fifty-two numbers, twelve are Mr. Hunt’s, with the signatures L. H. or H. T. For all the rest I am answerable.

W. Hazlitt.

January 5, 1817.

CONTENTS

THE ROUND TABLE

It is our intention, in the course of these papers, occasionally to expose certain vulgar errors, which have crept into our reasonings on men and manners. Perhaps one of the most interesting of these, is that which relates to the source of our general attachment to life. We are not going to enter into the question, whether life is, on the whole, to be regarded as a blessing, though we are by no means inclined to adopt the opinion of that sage, who thought ‘that the best thing that could have happened to a man was never to have been born, and the next best to have died the moment after he came into existence.’ The common argument, however, which is made use of to prove the value of life, from the strong desire which almost every one feels for its continuance, appears to be altogether inconclusive. The wise and the foolish, the weak and the strong, the lame and the blind, the prisoner and the free, the prosperous and the wretched, the beggar and the king, the rich and the poor, the young and the old, from the little child who tries to leap over his own shadow, to the old man who stumbles blindfold on his grave, all feel this desire in common. Our notions with respect to the importance of life, and our attachment to it, depend on a principle, which has very little to do with its happiness or its misery.

The love of life is, in general, the effect not of our enjoyments, but of our passions. We are not attached to it so much for its own sake, or as it is connected with happiness, as because it is necessary to action. Without life there can be no action—no objects of pursuit—no restless desires—no tormenting passions. Hence it is that we fondly cling to it—that we dread its termination as the close, not of enjoyment, but of hope. The proof that our attachment to life is not absolutely owing to the immediate satisfaction we find in it, is, that those persons are commonly found most loth to part with it who have the least enjoyment of it, and who have the greatest difficulties to struggle with, as losing gamesters are the most desperate. And farther, there are not many persons who, with all their pretended loveof life, would not, if it had been in their power, have melted down the longest life to a few hours. ‘The school-boy,’ says Addison, ‘counts the time till the return of the holidays; the minor longs to be of age; the lover is impatient till he is married.’—‘Hope and fantastic expectations spend much of our lives; and while with passion we look for a coronation, or the death of an enemy, or a day of joy, passing from fancy to possession without any intermediate notices, we throw away a precious year’ (Jeremy Taylor). We would willingly, and without remorse, sacrifice not only the present moment, but all the interval (no matter how long) that separates us from any favourite object. We chiefly look upon life, then, as the means to an end. Its common enjoyments and its daily evils are alike disregarded for any idle purpose we have in view. It should seem as if there were a few green sunny spots in the desert of life, to which we are always hastening forward: we eye them wistfully in the distance, and care not what perils or suffering we endure, so that we arrive at them at last. However weary we may be of the same stale round—however sick of the past—however hopeless of the future—the mind still revolts at the thought of death, because the fancied possibility of good, which always remains with life, gathers strength as it is about to be torn from us for ever, and the dullest scene looks bright compared with the darkness of the grave. Our reluctance to part with existence evidently does not depend on the calm and even current of our lives, but on the force and impulse of the passions. Hence that indifference to death which has been sometimes remarked in people who lead a solitary and peaceful life in remote and barren districts. The pulse of life in them does not beat strong enough to occasion any violent revulsion of the frame when it ceases. He who treads the green mountain turf, or he who sleeps beneath it, enjoys an almost equal quiet. The death of those persons has always been accounted happy, who had attained their utmost wishes, who had nothing left to regret or to desire. Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain—to the violence of our efforts, and the keenness of our disappointments—and to our earnest desire to find in the future, if possible, a rich amends for the past. We may be said to nurse our existence with the greatest tenderness, according to the pain it has cost us; and feel at every step of our varying progress the truth of that line of the poet—

‘An ounce of sweet is worth a pound of sour.’

The love of life is in fact the sum of all our passions and of all our enjoyments; but these are by no means the same thing, for thevehemence of our passions is irritated, not less by disappointment than by the prospect of success. Nothing seems to be a match for this general tenaciousness of existence, but such an extremity either of bodily or mental suffering as destroys at once the power both of habit and imagination. In short, the question, whether life is accompanied with a greater quantity of pleasure or pain, may be fairly set aside as frivolous, and of no practical utility; for our attachment to life depends on our interest in it; and it cannot be denied that we have more interest in this moving, busy scene, agitated with a thousand hopes and fears, and checkered with every diversity of joy and sorrow, than in a dreary blank. To be something is better than to be nothing, because we can feel no interest innothing. Passion, imagination, self-will, the sense of power, the very consciousness of our existence, bind us to life, and hold us fast in its chains, as by a magic spell, in spite of every other consideration. Nothing can be more philosophical than the reasoning which Milton puts into the mouth of the fallen angel:—

‘And that must end us, that must be our cure,To be no more; Sad cure: For who would lose,Though full of pain, this intellectual being,Those thoughts that wander through eternity,To perish rather, swallow’d up and lostIn the wide womb of uncreated night,Devoid of sense and motion?’

‘And that must end us, that must be our cure,

To be no more; Sad cure: For who would lose,

Though full of pain, this intellectual being,

Those thoughts that wander through eternity,

To perish rather, swallow’d up and lost

In the wide womb of uncreated night,

Devoid of sense and motion?’

Nearly the same account may be given in answer to the question which has been asked,Why so few tyrants kill themselves?In the first place, they are never satisfied with the mischief they have done, and cannot quit their hold of power, after all sense of pleasure is fled. Besides, they absurdly argue from the means of happiness placed within their reach to the end itself; and, dazzled by the pomp and pageantry of a throne, cannot relinquish the persuasion that theyoughtto be happier than other men. The prejudice of opinion, which attaches us to life, is in them stronger than in others, and incorrigible to experience. The Great are life’s fools—dupes of the splendid shadows that surround them, and wedded to the very mockeries of opinion.

Whatever is our situation or pursuit in life, the result will be much the same. The strength of the passion seldom corresponds to the pleasure we find in its indulgence. The miser ‘robs himself to increase his store’; the ambitious man toils up a slippery precipice only to be tumbled headlong from its height: the lover is infatuated with the charms of his mistress, exactly in proportion to the mortificationshe has received from her. Even those who succeed in nothing, who, as it has been emphatically expressed—

‘Are made desperate by too quick a senseOf constant infelicity; cut offFrom peace like exiles, on some barren rock,Their life’s sad prison, with no more of ease,Than sentinels between two armies set’;

‘Are made desperate by too quick a sense

Of constant infelicity; cut off

From peace like exiles, on some barren rock,

Their life’s sad prison, with no more of ease,

Than sentinels between two armies set’;

are yet as unwilling as others to give over the unprofitable strife: their harassed feverish existence refuses rest, and frets the languor of exhausted hope into the torture of unavailing regret. The exile, who has been unexpectedly restored to his country and to liberty, often finds his courage fail with the accomplishment of all his wishes, and the struggle of life and hope ceases at the same instant.

We once more repeat, that we do not, in the foregoing remarks, mean to enter into a comparative estimate of the value of human life, but merely to shew that the strength of our attachment to it is a very fallacious test of its happiness.

W. H.

The study of the Classics is less to be regarded as an exercise of the intellect, than as ‘a discipline of humanity.’ The peculiar advantage of this mode of education consists not so much in strengthening the understanding, as in softening and refining the taste. It gives men liberal views; it accustoms the mind to take an interest in things foreign to itself; to love virtue for its own sake; to prefer fame to life, and glory to riches; and to fix our thoughts on the remote and permanent, instead of narrow and fleeting objects. It teaches us to believe that there is something really great and excellent in the world, surviving all the shocks of accident and fluctuations of opinion, and raises us above that low and servile fear, which bows only to present power and upstart authority. Rome and Athens filled a place in the history of mankind, which can never be occupied again. They were two cities set on a hill, which could not be hid; all eyes have seen them, and their light shines like a mighty sea-mark into the abyss of time.

‘Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,Above the reach of sacrilegious hands;Secure from flames, from envy’s fiercer rage,Destructive war, and all-involving age.Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days,Immortal heirs of universal praise!Whose honours with increase of ages grow,As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow!’

‘Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,Above the reach of sacrilegious hands;Secure from flames, from envy’s fiercer rage,Destructive war, and all-involving age.

‘Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,

Above the reach of sacrilegious hands;

Secure from flames, from envy’s fiercer rage,

Destructive war, and all-involving age.

Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days,Immortal heirs of universal praise!Whose honours with increase of ages grow,As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow!’

Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days,

Immortal heirs of universal praise!

Whose honours with increase of ages grow,

As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow!’

It is this feeling, more than anything else, which produces a marked difference between the study of the ancient and modern languages, and which, from the weight and importance of the consequences attached to the former, stamps every word with a monumental firmness. By conversing with themighty dead, we imbibe sentiment with knowledge; we become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages.

It is hard to find in minds otherwise formed, either a real love of excellence, or a belief that any excellence exists superior to their own. Everything is brought down to the vulgar level of their own ideas and pursuits. Persons without education certainly do not want either acuteness or strength of mind in what concerns themselves, or in things immediately within their observation; but they have no power of abstraction, no general standard of taste, or scale of opinion. They see their objects always near, and never in the horizon. Hence arises that egotism which has been remarked as the characteristic of self-taught men, and which degenerates into obstinate prejudice or petulant fickleness of opinion, according to the natural sluggishness or activity of their minds. For they either become blindly bigoted to the first opinions they have struck out for themselves, and inaccessible to conviction; or else (the dupes of their own vanity and shrewdness) are everlasting converts to every crude suggestion that presents itself, and the last opinion is always the true one. Each successive discovery flashes upon them with equal light and evidence, and every new fact overturns their whole system. It is among this class of persons, whose ideas never extend beyond the feeling of the moment, that we find partizans, who are very honest men, with a total want of principle, and who unite the most hardened effrontery, and intolerance of opinion, to endless inconsistency and self-contradiction.

A celebrated political writer of the present day, who is a great enemy to classical education, is a remarkable instance both of what can and what cannot be done without it.

It has been attempted of late to set up a distinction between the educationof words, and the educationof things, and to give the preference in all cases to the latter. But, in the first place, the knowledge of things, or of the realities of life, is not easily to be taughtexcept by things themselves, and, even if it were, is not so absolutely indispensable as it has been supposed. ‘The world is too much with us, early and late’; and the fine dream of our youth is best prolonged among the visionary objects of antiquity. We owe many of our most amiable delusions, and some of our superiority, to the grossness of mere physical existence, to the strength of our associations with words. Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects. There can be no true elegance without taste in style. In the next place, we mean absolutely to deny the application of the principle of utility to the present question. By an obvious transposition of ideas, some persons have confounded a knowledge of useful things with useful knowledge. Knowledge is only useful in itself, as it exercises or gives pleasure to the mind: the only knowledge that is of use in a practical sense, is professional knowledge. But knowledge, considered as a branch of general education, can be of use only to the mind of the person acquiring it. If the knowledge of language produces pedants, the other kind of knowledge (which is proposed to be substituted for it) can only produce quacks. There is no question, but that the knowledge of astronomy, of chemistry, and of agriculture, is highly useful to the world, and absolutely necessary to be acquired by persons carrying on certain professions: but the practical utility of a knowledge of these subjects ends there. For example, it is of the utmost importance to the navigator to know exactly in what degree of longitude and latitude such a rock lies: but to us, sitting here about our Round Table, it is not of the smallest consequence whatever, whether the map-maker has placed it an inch to the right or to the left; we are in no danger of running against it. So the art of making shoes is a highly useful art, and very proper to be known and practised by some body: that is, by the shoemaker. But to pretend that every one else should be thoroughly acquainted with the whole process of this ingenious handicraft, as one branch of useful knowledge, would be preposterous. It is sometimes asked, What is the use of poetry? and we have heard the argument carried on almost like a parody onFalstaff’sreasoning about Honour. ‘Can it set a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Poetry hath no skill in surgery then? No.’ It is likely that the most enthusiastic lover of poetry would so far agree to the truth of this statement, that if he had just broken a leg, he would send for a surgeon, instead of a volume of poems from a library. But, ‘they that are whole need not a physician.’ The reasoning would be well founded, if we lived in an hospital, and not in the world.

W. H.

No. 3.] ON THE TATLER [March 5, 1815.

Of all the periodical Essayists, (our ingenious predecessors), theTatlerhas always appeared to us the most accomplished and agreeable. Montaigne, who was the father of this kind of personal authorship among the moderns, in which the reader is admitted behind the curtain, and sits down with the writer in his gown and slippers, was a most magnanimous and undisguised egotist; but Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. was the more disinterested gossip of the two. The French author is contented to describe the peculiarities of his own mind and person, which he does with a most copious and unsparing hand. The English journalist, good-naturedly, lets you into the secret both of his own affairs and those of his neighbours. A young lady, on the other side of Temple Bar, cannot be seen at her glass for half a day together, but Mr. Bickerstaff takes due notice of it; and he has the first intelligence of the symptoms of thebellepassion appearing in any young gentleman at the west end of the town. The departures and arrivals of widows with handsome jointures, either to bury their grief in the country, or to procure a second husband in town, are regularly recorded in his pages. He is well acquainted with the celebrated beauties of the last age at the Court of CharlesII.and the old gentleman often grows romantic in recounting the disastrous strokes which his youth suffered from the glances of their bright eyes and their unaccountable caprices. In particular, he dwells with a secret satisfaction on one of his mistresses who left him for a rival, and whose constant reproach to her husband, on occasion of any quarrel between them, was,—‘I, that might have married the famous Mr. Bickerstaff, to be treated in this manner!’ The club at theTrumpetconsists of a set of persons as entertaining as himself. The cavalcade of the justice of the peace, the knight of the shire, the country squire, and the young gentleman, his nephew, who waited on him at his chambers, in such form and ceremony, seem not to have settled the order of their precedence to this hour; and we should hope the Upholsterer and his companions in the Green Park stand as fair a chance for immortality as some modern politicians. Mr. Bickerstaff himself is a gentleman and a scholar, a humourist and a man of the world; with a great deal of nice easynaïvetéabout him. If he walks out and is caught in a shower of rain, he makes us amends for this unlucky accident, by a criticism on the shower in Virgil, and concludes with a burlesque copy of verses on a city-shower. He entertains us, when he dates from his own apartment, with a quotation from Plutarch or a moral reflection; from the Greciancoffeehouse with politics; and from Will’s or the Temple with the poets and players, the beaux and men of wit and pleasure about town. In reading the pages of theTatler, we seem as if suddenly transported to the age of Queen Anne, of toupees and full-bottomed periwigs. The whole appearance of our dress and manners undergoes a delightful metamorphosis. We are surprised with the rustling of hoops and the glittering of paste buckles. The beaux and the belles are of a quite different species; we distinguish the dappers, the smarts, and the pretty fellows, as they pass; we are introduced to Betterton and Mrs. Oldfield behind the scenes; are made familiar with the persons of Mr. Penkethman and Mr. Bullock; we listen to a dispute at a tavern on the merits of the Duke of Marlborough or Marshal Turenne; or are present at the first rehearsal of a play by Vanbrugh, or the reading of a new poem by Mr. Pope.—The privilege of thus virtually transporting ourselves to past times, is even greater than that of visiting distant places. London, a hundred years ago, would be better worth seeing than Paris at the present moment.

It may be said that all this is to be found, in the same or a greater degree, in theSpectator. We do not think so; or, at least, there is in the last work a much greater proportion of common-place matter. We have always preferred theTatlerto theSpectator. Whether it is owing to our having been earlier or better acquainted with the one than the other, our pleasure in reading the two works is not at all in proportion to their comparative reputation. TheTatlercontains only half the number of volumes, and we will venture to say, at least an equal quantity of sterling wit and sense. ‘The first sprightly runnings’ are there: it has more of the original spirit, more of the freshness and stamp of nature. The indications of character and strokes of humour are more true and frequent, the reflections that suggest themselves arise more from the occasion, and are less spun out into regular dissertations. They are more like the remarks which occur in sensible conversation, and less like a lecture. Something is left to the understanding of the reader. Steele seems to have gone into his closet only to set down what he observed out-of-doors; Addison seems to have spun out and wire-drawn the hints, which he borrowed from Steele, or took from nature, to the utmost. We do not mean to depreciate Addison’s talents, but we wish to do justice to Steele, who was, upon the whole, a less artificial and more original writer. The descriptions of Steele resemble loose sketches or fragments of a comedy; those of Addison are ingenious paraphrases on the genuine text. The characters of the club, not only in theTatler, but in theSpectator, were drawn by Steele. That of Sir Roger de Coverley is among them. Addison has gained himself eternal honour by hismanner of filling up this last character. Those of Will Wimble and Will Honeycomb are not a whit behind it in delicacy and felicity. Many of the most exquisite pieces in theTatlerare also Addison’s, as the Court of Honour, and the Personification of Musical Instruments. We do not know whether the picture of the family of an old acquaintance, in which the children run to let Mr. Bickerstaff in at the door, and the one that loses the race that way turns back to tell the father that he is come,—with the nice gradation of incredulity in the little boy, who is got intoGuy of WarwickandThe Seven Champions, and who shakes his head at the veracity ofÆsop’s Fables,—is Steele’s or Addison’s.[30]The account of the two sisters, one of whom held her head up higher than ordinary, from having on a pair of flowered garters, and of the married lady who complained to theTatlerof the neglect of her husband, are unquestionably Steele’s. If theTatleris not inferior to theSpectatorin manners and character, it is very superior to it in the interest of many of the stories. Several of the incidents related by Steele have never been surpassed in the heart-rending pathos of private distress. We might refer to those of the lover and his mistress when the theatre caught fire, of the bridegroom who, by accident, kills his bride on the day of their marriage, the story of Mr. Eustace and his wife, and the fine dream about his own mistress when a youth. What has given its superior popularity to theSpectator, is the greater gravity of its pretensions, its moral dissertations and critical reasonings, by which we confess we are less edified than by other things. Systems and opinions change, but nature is always true. It is the extremely moral and didactic tone of theSpectatorwhich makes us apt to think of Addison (according to Mandeville’s sarcasm) as ‘a parson in a tie-wig.’ Some of the moral essays are, however, exquisitely beautiful and happy. Such are the reflections in Westminster Abbey, on the Royal Exchange, and some very affecting ones on the death of a young lady. These, it must be allowed, are the perfection of elegant sermonising. His critical essays we do not think quite so good. We prefer Steele’s occasional selection of beautiful poetical passages, without any affectation of analysing their beauties, to Addison’s fine-spun theories. The best criticism in theSpectator, that on theCartoonsof Raphael, is by Steele. We owedthis acknowledgment to a writer who has so often put us in good humour with ourselves and every thing about us, when few things else could.[31]

W. H.

The question which has often been asked,Why there are so few good modern Comedies?appears in a great measure to answer itself. It is because so many excellent Comedies have been written, that there are none written at present. Comedy naturally wears itself out—destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at. It holds the mirror up to nature; and men, seeing their most striking peculiarities and defects pass in gay review before them, learn either to avoid or conceal them. It is not the criticism which the public taste exercises upon the stage, but the criticism which the stage exercises upon public manners, that is fatal to comedy, by rendering the subject-matter of it tame, correct, and spiritless. We are drilled into a sort of stupid decorum, and forced to wear the same dull uniform of outward appearance; and yet it is asked, why the Comic Muse does not point, as she was wont, at the peculiarities of our gait and gesture, and exhibit the picturesque contrast of our dress and costume, in all that graceful variety in which she delights. The genuine source of comic writing,

‘Where it must live, or have no life at all,’

is undoubtedly to be found in the distinguishing peculiarities of men and manners. Now, this distinction can subsist, so as to be strong, pointed, and general, only while the manners of different classes are formed immediately by their particular circumstances, and the characters of individuals by their natural temperament and situation, without being everlastingly modified and neutralised by intercourse with the world—by knowledge and education. In a certain stage of society, men may be said to vegetate like trees, and to become rooted to the soil in which they grow. They have no idea of anything beyond themselves and their immediate sphere of action; they are, asit were, circumscribed, and defined by their particular circumstances; they are what their situation makes them, and nothing more. Each is absorbed in his own profession or pursuit, and each in his turn contracts that habitual peculiarity of manners and opinions, which makes him the subject of ridicule to others, and the sport of the Comic Muse. Thus the physician is nothing but a physician, the lawyer is a mere lawyer, the scholar degenerates into a pedant, the country squire is a different species of being from the fine gentleman, the citizen and the courtier inhabit a different world, and even the affectation of certain characters, in aping the follies or vices of their betters, only serves to show the immeasurable distance which custom or fortune has placed between them. Hence the early comic writers, taking advantage of this mixed and solid mass of ignorance, folly, pride, and prejudice, made those deep and lasting incisions into it,—have given those sharp and nice touches, that bold relief to their characters,—have opposed them in every variety of contrast and collision, of conscious self-satisfaction and mutual antipathy, with a power which can only find full scope in the same rich and inexhaustible materials. But in proportion as comic genius succeeds in taking off the mask from ignorance and conceit, as it teaches us to

‘See ourselves as others see us,’—

in proportion as we are brought out on the stage together, and our prejudices clash one against the other, our sharp angular points wear off; we are no longer rigid in absurdity, passionate in folly, and we prevent the ridicule directed at our habitual foibles, by laughing at them ourselves.

If it be said, that there is the same fund of absurdity and prejudice in the world as ever—that there are the same unaccountable perversities lurking at the bottom of every breast,—I should answer, be it so: but at least we keep our follies to ourselves as much as possible—we palliate, shuffle, and equivocate with them—they sneak into by-corners, and do not, likeChaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims, march along the highroad, and form a procession—they do not entrench themselves strongly behind custom and precedent—they are not embodied in professions and ranks in life—they are not organised into a system—they do not openly resort to a standard, but are a sort of straggling nondescripts, that, likeWart, ‘present no mark to the foeman.’ As to the gross and palpable absurdities of modern manners, they are too shallow and barefaced, and those who affect, are too littleseriousin them, to make them worth the detection of the Comic Muse. They proceed from an idle, impudent affectation of folly in general, in the dashingbravurastyle, not from an infatuation with any of its characteristicmodes. In short, the proper object of ridicule isegotism; and a man cannot be a very great egotist who every day sees himself represented on the stage. We are deficient in Comedy, because we are without characters in real life—as we have no historical pictures, because we have no faces proper for them.

It is, indeed, the evident tendency of all literature to generalise anddissipatecharacter, by giving men the same artificial education, and the same common stock of ideas; so that we see all objects from the same point of view, and through the same reflected medium;—we learn to exist, not in ourselves, but in books;—all men become alike mere readers—spectators, not actors in the scene, and lose all proper personal identity. The templar, the wit, the man of pleasure, and the man of fashion, the courtier and the citizen, the knight and the squire, the lover and the miser—Lovelace,Lothario,Will Honeycomb, andSir Roger de Coverley,SparkishandLord Foppington,WesternandTom Jones,My Father, andMy Uncle Toby,MillamantandSir Sampson Legend,Don QuixoteandSancho,Gil BlasandGuzman d’Alfarache,Count FathomandJoseph Surface,—have all met, and exchanged common-places on the barren plains of thehaute littérature—toil slowly on to the Temple of Science, seen a long way off upon a level, and end in one dull compound of politics, criticism, chemistry, and metaphysics!

We cannot expect to reconcile opposite things. If, for example, any of us were to put ourselves into the stage-coach from Salisbury to London, it is more than probable we should not meet with the same number of odd accidents, or ludicrous distresses on the road, that befellParson Adams; but why, if we get into a common vehicle, and submit to the conveniences of modern travelling, should we complain of the want of adventures? Modern manners may be compared to a modern stage-coach: our limbs may be a little cramped with the confinement, and we may grow drowsy; but we arrive safe, without any very amusing or very sad accident, at our journey’s end.

Again, the alterations which have taken place in conversation and dress in the same period, have been by no means favourable to Comedy. The present prevailing style of conversation is notpersonal, but critical and analytical. It consists almost entirely in the discussion of general topics, in dissertations on philosophy or taste: and Congreve would be able to derive no better hints from the conversations of our toilettes or drawing-rooms, for the exquisite raillery or poignant repartee of his dialogues, than from a deliberation of the Royal Society. In the same manner, the extreme simplicity and graceful uniformity of modern dress, however favourable to the arts, has certainly stript Comedy of one of its richest ornaments and most expressive symbols.The sweeping pall and buskin, and nodding plume, were never more serviceable to Tragedy, than the enormous hoops and stiff stays worn by the belles of former days were to the intrigues of Comedy. They assisted wonderfully in heightening the mysteries of the passion, and adding to the intricacy of the plot. Wycherley and Vanbrugh could not have spared the dresses of Vandyke. These strange fancy-dresses, perverse disguises, and counterfeit shapes, gave an agreeable scope to the imagination. ‘That sevenfold fence’ was a sort of foil to the lusciousness of the dialogue, and a barrier against the sly encroachments ofdouble entendre. The greedy eye and bold hand of indiscretion were repressed, which gave a greater licence to the tongue. The senses were not to be gratified in an instant. Love was entangled in the folds of the swelling handkerchief, and the desires might wander for ever round the circumference of a quilted petticoat, or find a rich lodging in the flowers of a damask stomacher. There was room for years of patient contrivance, for a thousand thoughts, schemes, conjectures, hopes, fears, and wishes. There seemed no end of difficulties and delays; to overcome so many obstacles was the work of ages. A mistress was an angel concealed behind whalebone, flounces, and brocade. What an undertaking to penetrate through the disguise! What an impulse must it give to the blood, what a keenness to the invention, what a volubility to the tongue! ‘Mr. Smirk, you are a brisk man,’ was then the most significant commendation. But now-a-days—a woman can bebut undressed!

The same account might be extended to Tragedy. Aristotle has long since said, that Tragedy purifies the mind by terror and pity; that is, substitutes an artificial and intellectual interest for real passion. Tragedy, like Comedy, must therefore defeat itself; for its patterns must be drawn from the living models within the breast, from feeling or from observation; and the materials of Tragedy cannot be found among a people, who are the habitual spectators of Tragedy, whose interests and passions are not their own, but ideal, remote, sentimental, and abstracted. It is for this reason chiefly, we conceive, that the highest efforts of the Tragic Muse are in general the earliest; where the strong impulses of nature are not lost in the refinements and glosses of art; where the writers themselves, and those whom they saw about them, had ‘warm hearts of flesh and blood beating in their bosoms, and were not embowelled of their natural entrails, and stuffed with paltry blurred sheets of paper.’ Shakspeare, with all his genius, could not have written as he did, if he had lived in the present times. Nature would not have presented itself to him in the same freshness and vigour; he must have seen it through allthe refractions of successive dullness, and his powers would have languished in the dense atmosphere of logic and criticism. ‘Men’s minds,’ he somewhere says, ‘are parcel of their fortunes’; and his age was necessary to him. It was this which enabled him to grapple at once with Nature, and which stamped his characters with her image and superscription.

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