harder-working mantua-maker) after her I do not know a more heartless sight than

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

a whit less soiled? What better condition could dream of Burton ever becoming could we desire to see them in?

incidents, are for the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness. 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.

What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at Nando's, keeps the paper! I am sick of hearing the water bawling out incessantly, "The 'Chronicle' is in hand, Sir."

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.

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.

There is a class of street readers, whom I can never contemplate without affectionComing 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 carelessness of some former guest-two or three numbers of the old Town and Country Magazine, with its amusing tête-à-tête pictures "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-reclined at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Cythera), reading-Pamela. There was nothing in the

his hard eye, casting envious looks at them all the while, and thinking when they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, expecting every moment when he shall 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 circumstance 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
Open a book upon a stall,
And read, as he'd devour it all;
Which when the stall-man did espy,
Soon to the boy I heard him call,

"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,

Who look'd as if he had not any
Food, for that day at least-enjoy

The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder.

This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder,
Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny,
Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat :

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 moneybags and parchments? By this subtle vent half of the hatefulness of the character-the self-closeness with which in real life it coils itself up from the sympathies of menevaporates. The miser becomes sympathetic ;

The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is, perhaps, cowardice. To see a coward done to the life upon a stage would produce anything but mirth. Yet we most of us remember Jack Bannister's cowards. i. e. is no genuine miser. Here again a Could anything be more agreeable, more pleasant? We loved the rogues. How was 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

diverting likeness is substituted for a very disagreeable reality.

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 before us; that a likeness only is going on, and not the thing itself. They please by being done under the life, or beside it; not to the life. When Gattie acts an old man, is he angry indeed? or only a pleasant counterfeit, just enough of a likeness to recognise, without pressing upon us the uneasy sense of a reality?

In

plainly as he can speak, to pit, box, and gallery. When an impertinent in tragedy, an Osric, for instance, breaks in upon the serious passions of the scene, we approve of the contempt with which he is treated. But when the pleasant impertinent of comedy, in a piece purely meant to give delight, and raise mirth out of whimsical perplexities, worries the studious man with taking up his Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, leisure, or making his house his home, the may be too natural. It was the case with a same sort of contempt expressed (however late actor. Nothing could be more earnest natural) would destroy the balance of delight or true than the manner of Mr. Emery; this in the spectators. To make the intrusion told excellently in his Tyke, and characters comic, the actor who plays the annoyed man of a tragic cast. But when he carried the must a little desert nature; he must, in short, same rigid exclusiveness of attention to the be thinking of the audience, and express only stage business, and wilful blindness and obli- so much dissatisfaction and peevishness as vion 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. necessarily provoke a duel; his real-life dividually considered, his execution was manner will destroy the whimsical and masterly. But comedy is not this unbending thing; for this reason, that the same degree of credibility is not required of it as to serious scenes. The degrees of credibility demanded to the two things, may be illustrated by the different sort of truth which we expect when a man tells us a mournful or a merry story. If we suspect the former of falsehood in any one tittle, we reject it altogether. Our tears refuse to flow at a suspected imposition. But the teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth. "Tis the same with dramatic illusion. 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

We

purely dramatic existence of the other character (which to render it comic demands an antagonist comicality on the part of the character opposed to it), and convert what was meant for mirth, rather than belief, into a downright piece of impertinence indeed, which would raise no diversion in us, but rather stir pain, to see inflicted in earnest upon any unworthy person. A very judicious actor (in most of his parts) seems to have fallen into an error of this sort in his playing with Mr. Wrench in the farce of Free and Easy.

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.

TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON.

Crowns, sceptres; shield, sword, and truncheon; thy own coronation robes (for thou hast brought the whole propertyman's wardrobe with thee, enough to sink a navy); the judge's ermine; the coxcomb's wig; the snuffbox à la Foppington — all must overboard, he positively swears-and that Ancient Mariner brooks no denial; for, since the tiresome monodrame of There, by the neighbouring moon (by the old Thracian Harper, Charon, it is some not improperly supposed thy Regent to be believed, hath shown small taste for Planet upon earth), mayst thou not still be theatricals. acting thy managerial pranks, great disembodied Lessee? but Lessee still, and still