actually restored! and, if I remember right, | pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which another pudding was discreetly substituted in the place of that which had occasioned the offence. He died at the Mint (anno 1781), where he had long held, what he accounted, a comfortable independence; and with five were found in his escritoire after his decease, left the world, blessing God that he had enough to bury him, and that he had never been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was-a Poor Relation. DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own. AN ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck with this bright sally of his Lordship, that he has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality. At the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away my life in others' speculations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me. I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read anything which I call a book. There are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such. Lord Foppington, in the Relapse. come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To expect a Steele or a Farquhar, and find-Adam Smith. To view a wellarranged assortment of block-headed Encyclopædias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set out in an array of russia, or morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios-would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to look like himself again in the world. I never see these impostors, but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils. To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum of a volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when it can be afforded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of books In this catalogue of books which are no indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of books—biblia a-biblia-I reckon Court Calen-Magazines, for instance, in full suit. The dars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught dishabille, or half-binding (with russia backs Boards, bound and lettered on the back, ever) is our costume. A Shakspeare or a Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Milton (unless the first editions), it were Large: the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robert- mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. son, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and generally, The possession of them confers no distinction. all those volumes which "no gentleman's The exterior of them (the things themselves library should be without:" the Histories of being so common), strange to say, raises no Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these ex-in the owner. Thomson's Seasons, again, ceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding. looks best (I maintain it) a little torn and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves and I confess that it moves my spleen to see worn-out appearance, nay, the very odour these things in books' clothing perched upon (beyond russia), if we would not forget kind shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true feelings in fastidiousness, of an old "Circushrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrust- | lating Library" Tom Jones, or Vicar of ing out the legitimate occupants. To reach Wakefield! How they speak of the thoudown a well-bound semblance of a volume, sand thumbs that have turned over their . and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, pages with delight!—of the lone sempstress, then, opening what "seem its leaves," to whom they may have cheered (milliner, or harder-working mantua-maker) after her I do not know a more heartless sight than long day's needle-toil, running far into midnight, when she has snatched an hour, illspared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out their enchanting contents! Who would have them a whit less soiled? What better condition could we desire to see them in? In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and all that class of perpetually self-reproductive volumes - Great Nature's Stereotypes we see them individually perish with less regret, because we know the copies of them to be "eterne." But where a book is at once both good and rare where the individual is almost the species, and when that perishes, We know not where is that Promethean torch such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of Newcastle by his Duchess-no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel. Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem hopeless ever to be reprinted, but old editions of writers, such as Sir Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton in his prose works, Fuller-of whom we have reprints, yet the books themselves, though they go about, and are talked of here and there, we know have not endenizened themselves (nor possibly ever will) in the national heart, so as to become stock books-it is good to possess these in durable and costly covers. I do not eare for a First Folio of Shakspeare. I rather prefer the common editions of Rowe and Tonson, without notes, and with plates, which, being so execrably bad, serve as maps or modest remembrancers, to the text; and without pretending to any supposable emulation with it, are so much better than the Shakspeare gallery engravings, which did. I have a community of feeling with my countrymen about his Plays, and I like those editions of him best which have been oftenest tumbled about and handled. - On the contrary, I cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but in Folio. The Octavo editions are painful to look at. I have no sympathy with them. If they were as much read as the current editions of the other poet, I should prefer them in that shape to the older one. the reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy. What need was there of unearthing the bones of that fantastic old great man, to expose them in a winding-sheet of the newest fashion to modern censure? what hapless stationer could dream of Burton ever becoming popular? The wretched Malone could not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Stratford church to let him whitewash the painted effigy of old Shakspeare, which stood there, in rude but lively fashion depicted, to the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, hair, the very dress he used to wear - the only authentic testimony we had, however imperfect, of these curious parts and parcels of him. They covered him over with a coat of white paint. By, if I had been a justice of peace for Warwickshire, I would have clapt both commentator and sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair of meddling sacrilegious varlets. I think I see them at their work - these sapient trouble-tombs. Shall I be thought fantastical, if I confess, that the names of some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish to the earto mine, at least than that of Milton or of Shakspeare? It may be that the latter are more staled and rung upon in common discourse. The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the mention, are, Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley, Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Fairy Queen for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes' Sermons? Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, and purged ears. Winter evenings- the world shut outwith less of ceremony the gentle Shakspeare enters. At such a season the Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud-to yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person listening. More than oneand it degenerates into an audience. Books of quick interest that hurry on for - any other book. We read on very sociably for a few pages; and, not finding the author much to her taste, she got up, and went away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture, whether the blush (for there was one between us) was the property of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. From me you shall never get the secret. incidents, are for the eye to glide over only. | book to make a man seriously ashamed at It will not do to read them out. I could the exposure; but as she seated herself down never listen to even the better kind of by me, and seemed determined to read in modern novels without extreme irksomeness. company, I could have wished it had been A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In some of the Bank offices it is the custom (to save so much individual time) for one of the clerks who is the best scholar to commence upon the "Times," or the "Chronicle," and recite its entire contents aloud pro bono publico. With every advantage of lungs and elocution, the effect is singularly vapid. In barbers' shops and public-houses a fellow will get up and spell out a paragraph, which he communicates as some discovery. Another follows with his selection. So the entire journal transpires at length by piece-meal. Seldom-readers are slow readers, and, without this expedient, no one in the company would probably ever travel through the contents of a whole paper. Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment. I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I cannot settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minister, who was generally to be seen upon Snow-hill (as yet Skinner'sstreet was not), between the hours of ten and eleven in the morning, studying a volume of Lardner. I own this to have been a strain of abstraction beyond my reach. I used to admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of secular contacts. An illiterate encounter with a porter's knot, or a bread-basket, would have quickly put to flight all the theology I am master of, and have left me worse than indifferent to the five points. What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at Nando's, keeps the paper! I am sick of hearing the waiter bawling out inces- There is a class of street readers, whom I santly, "The Chronicle' is in hand, Sir." can never contemplate without affection Coming into an inn at night-having the poor gentry, who, not having whereordered your supper- what can be more de- withal to buy or hire a book, filch a little lightful than to find lying in the window-learning at the open stalls the owner, with seat, left there time out of mind by the care- his hard eye, casting envious looks at them lessness of some former guest-two or three all the while, and thinking when they will numbers of the old Town and Country have done. Venturing tenderly, page after Magazine, with its amusing tête-à-tête pictures page, expecting every moment when he shall -"the Royal Lover and Lady G-;" "The Melting Platonic and the old Beau,"and such-like antiquated scandal? Would you exchange it—at that time, and in that place for a better book? Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it so much for the weightier kinds of reading the Paradise Lost, or Comus, he could have read to him- but he missed the pleasure of skimming over with his own eye a magazine, or a light pamphlet. I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues of some cathedral alone, and reading Candide. I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than having been once detected - by a familiar damsel-reclining at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Cythera), reading-Pamela. There was nothing in the interpose his interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the gratification, they "snatch a fearful joy." Martin B- in this way, by daily fragments, got through two volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition, by asking him (it was in his younger days) whether he meant to purchase the work. M. declares, that under no circumstances in his life did he ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction which he took in those uneasy snatches. A quaint poetess of our day has moralised upon this subject in two very touching but homely stanzas. I saw a boy with eager eye "You Sir, you never buy a book, Therefore in one you shall not look." The boy pass 'd slowly on, and with a sigh He wish'd he never had been taught to read, Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need. Of sufferings the poor have many, Which never can the rich annoy: I soon perceived another boy, The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder. This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder, No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learn'd to eat. STAGE ILLUSION. A PLAY is said to be well or ill acted, in | coward as we took him for? We saw all proportion to the scenical illusion produced. the common symptoms of the malady upon Whether such illusion can in any case be him; the quivering lip, the cowering knees, perfect, is not the question. The nearest the teeth chattering; and could have sworn approach to it, we are told, is, when the actor" that man was frightened." But we forgot appears wholly unconscious of the presence all the while- or kept it almost a secret to of spectators. In tragedy—in all which is ourselves that he never once lost his selfto affect the feelings this undivided atten- possession; that he let out, by a thousand tion to his stage business seems indispens- droll looks and gestures—meant at us, and able. Yet it is, in fact, dispensed with every not at all supposed to be visible to his fellows day by our cleverest tragedians; and while in the scene, that his confidence in his own these references to an audience, in the shape resources had never once deserted him. Was of rant or sentiment, are not too frequent or this a genuine picture of a coward; or not palpable, a sufficient quantity of illusion for rather a likeness, which the clever artist the purposes of dramatic interest may be said contrived to palm upon us instead of an to be produced in spite of them. But, tragedy original; while we secretly connived at the apart, it may be inquired whether, in certain delusion for the purpose of greater pleasure, characters in comedy, especially those which than a more genuine counterfeiting of the are a little extravagant, or which involve imbecility, helplessness, and utter self-desome notion repugnant to the moral sense, sertion, which we know to be concomitants it is not a proof of the highest skill in the of cowardice in real life, could have given us? comedian when, without absolutely appealing to an audience, he keeps up a tacit understanding with them: and makes them, unconsciously to themselves, a party in the scene. The utmost nicety is required in the mode of doing this; but we speak only of the great artists in the profession. Why are misers so hateful in the world, and so endurable on the stage, but because the skilful actor, by a sort of sub-reference, rather than direct appeal to us, disarms the character of a great deal of its odiousness, by seeming to engage our compassion for the insecure tenure by which he holds his moneyThe most mortifying infirmity in human bags and parchments? By this subtle vent nature, to feel in ourselves, or to contemplate half of the hatefulness of the character-the in another, is, perhaps, cowardice. To see a self-closeness with which in real life it coils coward done to the life upon a stage would itself up from the sympathies of menproduce anything but mirth. Yet we most evaporates. The miser becomes sympathetic; of us remember Jack Bannister's cowards. i. e. is no genuine miser. Here again a Could anything be more agreeable, more diverting likeness is substituted for a very pleasant? We loved the rogues. How was disagreeable reality. this effected but by the exquisite art of the actor in a perpetual sub-insinuation to us, the spectators, even in the extremity of the shaking fit, that he was not half such a Spleen, irritability-the pitiable infirmities of old men, which produce only pain to behold in the realities, counterfeited upon a stage, divert not altogether for the comic appendages to them, but in part from an conscious words and looks express it, as inner conviction that they are being acted plainly as he can speak, to pit, box, and galbefore us; that a likeness only is going on, lery. When an impertinent in tragedy, an and not the thing itself. They please by Osric, for instance, breaks in upon the being done under the life, or beside it; not serious passions of the scene, we approve of to the life. When Gattie acts an old man, is the contempt with which he is treated. But he angry indeed? or only a pleasant counter- when the pleasant impertinent of comedy, feit, just enough of a likeness to recognise, in a piece purely meant to give delight, and without pressing upon us the uneasy sense of raise mirth out of whimsical perplexities, a reality? worries the studious man with taking up his leisure, or making his house his home, the same sort of contempt expressed (however natural) would destroy the balance of delight in the spectators. To make the intrusion comic, the actor who plays the annoyed man must a little desert nature; he must, in short, be thinking of the audience, and express only so much dissatisfaction and peevishness as was Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, may be too natural. It was the case with a late actor. Nothing could be more earnest or true than the manner of Mr. Emery; this told excellently in his Tyke, and characters of a tragic cast. But when he carried the same rigid exclusiveness of attention to the stage business, and wilful blindness and oblivion of everything before the curtain into is consistent with the pleasure of comedy. his comedy, it produced a harsh and dissonant In other words, his perplexity must seem effect. He was out of keeping with the rest half put on. If he repel the intruder with of the Persona Dramatis. There was as little the sober set face of a man in earnest, and link between him and them, as betwixt him- more especially if he deliver his expostulaself and the audience. He was a third estate, tions in a tone which in the world must dry, repulsive, and unsocial to all. In- necessarily provoke a duel; his real-life dividually considered, his execution manner will destroy the whimsical and masterly. But comedy is not this unbending purely dramatic existence of the other chathing; for this reason, that the same degree racter (which to render it comic demands of credibility is not required of it as to an antagonist comicality on the part of the serious scenes. The degrees of credibility character opposed to it), and convert what demanded to the two things, may be illus- was meant for mirth, rather than belief, into trated by the different sort of truth which we a downright piece of impertinence indeed, expect when a man tells us a mournful or a which would raise no diversion in us, but merry story. If we suspect the former of rather stir pain, to see inflicted in earnest falsehood in any one tittle, we reject it alto- upon any unworthy person. A very judicious gether. Our tears refuse to flow at a actor (in most of his parts) seems to have suspected imposition. But the teller of a fallen into an error of this sort in his playing mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We with Mr. Wrench in the farce of Free and are content with less than absolute truth. Easy. 'Tis the same with dramatic illusion. We confess we love in comedy to see an audience naturalised behind the scenes, taken into the interest of the drama, welcomed as bystanders however. There is something ungracious in a comic actor holding himself aloof from all participation or concern with those who are come to be diverted by him. Macbeth must see the dagger, and no ear but his own be told of it; but an old fool in farce may think he sees something, and by Many instances would be tedious; these may suffice to show that comic acting at least does not always demand from the performer that strict abstraction from all reference to an audience which is exacted of it; but that in some cases a sort of compromise may take place, and all the purposes of dramatic delight be attained by a judicious understanding, not too openly announced, between the ladies and gentlemen-on both sides of the curtain. |