The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Part 45

"We read the Paradise Lost as a task," says Dr. Johnson. Nay, rather as a celestial recreation, of which the dullard mind is not at all hours alike recipient. "n.o.body ever wished it longer;"--nor the moon rounder, he might have added. Why, 'tis the perfectness and completeness of it, which makes us imagine that not a line could be added to it, or diminished from it, with advantage. Would we have a cubit added to the stature of the Medicean Venus? Do we wish her taller?

_Lear._ Who are you?

Mine eyes are not o' the best: I'll tell you straight ... Are you not Kent?

_Kent._ The same; Your servant Kent. Where is your servant Caius?

_Lear._ He's a good fellow, I can tell you that; He'll strike, and quickly too: he's dead and rotten.

_Kent._ No, my good Lord; I am the very man----

_Lear._ I'll see that straight----

_Kent._ That from your first of difference and decay, Have follow'd your sad steps.

_Lear._ You are welcome hither ...

_Albany._ He knows not what he says; and vain it is That we present us to him.

_Edgar._ Look up, my Lord.

_Kent._ Vex not his ghost. O, let him pa.s.s! He hates him much.

That would upon the rack of this rough world Stretch him out longer.

So ends 'King Lear,' the most stupendous of the Shakspearian dramas; and Kent, the n.o.blest feature of the conceptions of his divine mind. This is the magnanimity of authorship, when a writer, having a topic presented to him, fruitful of beauties for common minds, waives his privilege, and trusts to the judicious few for understanding the reason of his abstinence. What a pudder would a common dramatist have raised here of a reconciliation scene, a perfect recognition, between the a.s.sumed Caius and his master!--to the suffusing of many fair eyes, and the moistening of cambric handkerchiefs. The old dying king partially catching at the truth, and immediately lapsing into obliviousness, with the high-minded carelessness of the other to have his services appreciated, as one that

----served not for gain, Or follow'd out of form,

are among the most judicious, not to say heart-touching, strokes in Shakspeare.

Allied to this magnanimity it is, where the pith and point of an argument, the amplification of which might compromise the modesty of the speaker, is delivered briefly, and, as it were, _parenthetically_; as in those few but pregnant words, in which the man in the old 'Nut-brown Maid' rather intimates than reveals his unsuspected high birth to the woman:--

Now understand, to Westmorland, _Which is my heritage_, I will you bring, and with a ring, By way of marriage, I will you take, and Lady make.

Turn we to the version of it, ten times diluted, of dear Mat. Prior--in his own way unequalled, and a poet now-a-days too much neglected--"In me," quoth Henry, addressing the astounded Emma--with a flourish and an att.i.tude, as we may conceive:--

In me behold the potent Edgar's heir, Ill.u.s.trious Earl! him terrible in war, Let Loire confess.

And with a deal of skimble-skamble stuff, as Hotspur would term it, more, presents the Lady with a full and true enumeration of his Papa's rent-roll in the fat soil by Deva.

But of all parentheses, (not to quit the topic too suddenly,) commend me to that most significant one, at the commencement of the old popular ballad of Fair Rosamund:--

When good King Henry ruled this land, The second of that name,

Now mark--

(Besides the Queen) he dearly loved A fair and comely dame.

There is great virtue in this _besides_.

Amidst the complaints of the wide spread of infidelity among us, it is consolatory that a sect is sprung up in the heart of the metropolis, and is daily on the increase, of teachers of that healing doctrine, which Pope upheld, and against which Voltaire directed his envenomed wit. We mean those practical preachers of optimism, or the belief that _Whatever is is best_--the Cads of Omnibuses; who, from their little back pulpits--not once in three or four hours, as those proclaimers of "G.o.d and his prophet" in Mussulman countries; but every minute, at the entry or exit of a brief pa.s.senger, are heard, in an almost prophetic tone, to exclaim--(Wisdom crying out, as it were, in the streets,)--ALL'S RIGHT.

Advice is not so commonly thrown away as is imagined. We seek it in difficulties. But, in common speech, we are apt to confound with it _admonition_; as when a friend reminds one that drink is prejudicial to the health, &c. We do not care to be told of that which we know better than the good man that admonishes. M---- sent to his friend L----, who is no water-drinker, a twopenny tract 'Against the Use of Fermented Liquors.' L---- acknowledged the obligation, as far as to _twopence_.

Penotier's advice was the safest after all:

"I advised him----"

But I must tell you. The dear, good-meaning, no-thinking creature, had been dumb-founding a company of us with a detail of inextricable difficulties, in which the circ.u.mstances of an acquaintance of his were involved. No clue of light offered itself. He grew more and more misty as he proceeded. We pitied his friend, and thought,

G.o.d help the man so wrapt in error's endless maze:

when, suddenly brightening up his placid countenance, like one that had found out a riddle, and looked to have the solution admired, "At last,"

said he, "I advised him----"

Here he paused, and here we were again interminably thrown back. By no possible guess could any of us aim at the drift of the meaning he was about to be delivered of. "I advised him," he repeated, "to have some _advice_ upon the subject." A general approbation followed; and it was unanimously agreed, that, under all the circ.u.mstances of the case, no sounder or more judicious counsel could have been given.

A laxity pervades the popular use of words. Parson W---- is not quite so continent as Diana, yet prettily dissembleth his frailty. Is Parson W---- therefore a _hypocrite_? I think _not_. Where the concealment of a vice is less pernicious than the bare-faced publication of it would be, no additional delinquency is incurred in the secrecy. Parson W---- is simply an immoral clergyman. But if Parson W---- were to be for ever haranguing on the opposite virtue,--choosing for his perpetual text, in preference to all other pulpit topics, the remarkable resistance recorded in the 39th of Exodus--dwelling, moreover, and dilating upon it--then Parson W---- might be reasonably suspected of hypocrisy. But Parson W---- rarely diverteth into such line of argument, or toucheth it briefly. His ordinary topics are fetched from "obedience to the powers that are"--"submission to the civil magistrate in all commands that are not absolutely unlawful;" on which he can delight to expatiate with equal fervour and sincerity. Again, to _despise_ a person is properly to _look down_ upon him with none, or the least possible emotion. But when Clementina, who has lately lost her lover, with bosom heaving, eyes flashing, and her whole frame in agitation, p.r.o.nounces, with a peculiar emphasis, that she "_despises_ the fellow," depend upon it that he is not quite so despicable in her eyes as she would have us imagine.--One more instance:--If we must naturalize that portentous phrase, _a truism_, it were well that we limited the use of it. Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism. For example: A good name helps a man on in the world. This is nothing but a simple truth, however hackneyed. It has a distinct subject and predicate. But when the thing predicated is involved in the term of the subject, and so necessarily involved that by no possible conception they can be separated, then it becomes a truism, as to say, A good name is a proof of a man's estimation in the world. We seem to be saying something when we say nothing. I was describing to F---- some knavish tricks of a mutual friend of ours. "If he did so and so," was the reply, "he cannot be an honest man." Here was a genuine truism--truth upon truth--inference and proposition identical; or rather a dictionary definition usurping the place of an inference.

The vices of some men are magnificent. Compare the amours of Henry the Eighth and Charles the Second. The Stuart had mistresses--the Tudor _kept_ wives.

We are ashamed at sight of a monkey--somehow as we are shy of poor relations.

C---- imagined a Caledonian compartment in Hades, where there should be fire without sulphur.

Absurd images are sometimes irresistible. I will mention two. An elephant in a coach-office gravely coming to have his trunk booked;--a mermaid over a fish-kettle cooking her own tail.

It is the praise of Shakspeare, with reference to the play-writers, his contemporaries, that he has so few revolting characters. Yet he has one that is singularly mean and disagreeable--the King in Hamlet. Neither has he characters of insignificance, unless the phantom that stalks over the stage as Julius Caesar, in the play of that name, may be accounted one. Neither has he envious characters, excepting the short part of Don John, in Much Ado about Nothing. Neither has he unentertaining characters, if we except Parolles, and the little that there is of the Clown, in All's Well that Ends Well.

It would settle the dispute, as to whether Shakspeare intended Oth.e.l.lo for a jealous character, to consider how differently we are affected towards him, and for Leontes in the Winter's Tale. Leontes _is_ that character. Oth.e.l.lo's fault was simply credulity.

Is it possible that Shakspeare should never have read Homer, in Chapman's version at least? If he had read it, could he mean to _travesty_ it in the parts of those big b.o.o.bies, Ajax and Achilles?

Ulysses, Nestor, and Agamemnon, are true to their parts in the Iliad: they are gentlemen at least. Thersites, though unamusing, is fairly deducible from it. Troilus and Cressida are a fine graft upon it. But those two big bulks----

It is a desideratum in works that treat _de re culinaria_, that we have no rationale of sauces, or theory of mixed flavours; as to show why cabbage is reprehensible with roast beef, laudable with bacon; why the haunch of mutton seeks the alliance of currant jelly, the shoulder civilly declineth it; why loin of veal (a pretty problem), being itself unctuous, seeketh the advent.i.tious lubricity of melted b.u.t.ter; and why the same part in pork, not more oleaginous, abhorreth from it; why the French bean sympathizes with the flesh of deer; why salt fish points to parsnip, brawn makes a dead set at mustard; why cats prefer valerian to hearts-ease, old ladies _vice versa_--though this is rather travelling out of the road of the dietetics, and may be thought a question more curious than relevant;--why salmon (a strong sapor _per se_,) fortifieth its condition with the mighty lobster sauce, whose embraces are fatal to the delicater relish of the turbot; why oysters in death rise up against the contamination of brown sugar, while they are posthumously amorous of vinegar; why the sour mango and the sweet jam [? yam] by turns court, and are accepted by, the compliable mutton hash--she not yet decidedly declaring for either. We are as yet but in the empirical stage of cookery. We feed ignorantly, and want to be able to give a reason of the relish that is in us; so that if Nature should furnish us with a new meat, or be prodigally pleased to restore the phnix, upon a _given_ flavour, we might be able to p.r.o.nounce instantly, on philosophical principles, what the sauce to it should be--what the curious adjuncts.

THE DEATH OF COLERIDGE

IN THE ALb.u.m OF MR. KEYMER

(1834)