an one as Nicolaus Klimius might have seen at the fantastic courts of his World under the Ground. It is an abstract idea of court qualities—an apotheosis of apathy. Ben Jonson's abstractions of courtiers in his Cynthia's Revels and Every Man out of his Humour, what a treat it would be to see them on the stage done in the same manner!—What I most despair of is, seeing again a succession of such actresses as Mrs. Mattocks, Miss Pope, and Mrs. Jordan. This coquetting between the performer and the public is carried to a shocking excess by some of the Ladies who play the first characters in what is called genteel comedy. Instead of playing their pretty airs upon their lover on the stage, as Mrs. Abingdon or Mrs. Cibber were [was] content to do, or Mrs. Oldfield before them, their whole artillery of charms is now directed to ensnare—whom?—why, the whole audience—a thousand gentlemen, perhaps—for this many-headed beast they furl and unfurl their fan, and teach their lips to curl in smiles, and their bosoms exhibit such pretty instructive heavings. These personal applications, which used to be a sort of sauce-piquant for the pert epilogue, now give the standing relish to the whole play. I am afraid an actress who should omit them would not find her account in it. I am sure that the very absence of this fault in Miss Kelly, and her judicious attention to her part, with little or no reference to the spectators, is one cause why her varied excellencies, though they are beginning to be perceived, have yet found their way more slowly to the approbation of the public, than they have deserved. Two or three more such instances would reform the stage, and drive off the Glovers, the Johnstons, and the St. Legers. O! when shall we see a female part acted in the quiet, unappealing manner of Miss Pope's Miss Candour? When shall we get rid of the Dalilahs of the stage?
III.—[BOOKS WITH ONE IDEA IN THEM]
(1813)
Dull poetry is to me far more oppressive than the same quantity of dullness in prose. The act of attending to the metre is perfectly painful where there is nothing to repay one in the thought. Of heavy prose I can swallow a good dose. I do not know that I was ever deterred from reading through a book which I had begun, supposing the subject to be to my mind, except Patrick's Pilgrim. The freezing, appalling, petrifying dullness of that book is quite astounding. Yet is there one lively image in the preface, which an author in the present day might comfort himself by applying to his reviewers: "If the writer of these pages shall chance to meet with any that shall only study to cavil and pick a quarrel with him, he is prepared beforehand to take no notice of it, nor to be more troubled at their incivility, than a devout hermit is at the ugly faces which the creatures who something resemble men make at him as he is walking through the deserts." An amusing catalogue might be made of books which contain but one good passage. They would be a sort of single-speech Hamiltons; if Balaam's palfry might not be thought a more apt counterpart to them. Killigrew's play of the Parson's Wedding, which in length of massy dullness exceeds many books, is remarkable for one little spark of liveliness. The languishing fine lady of the piece exclaims most characteristically, upon coming in tired with walking: "I am glad I am come home, for I am e'en as weary with this walking. For God's sake, whereabouts does the pleasure of walking lie? I swear I have often sought it till I was weary, and yet I could ne'er find it."—Charron on Wisdom, a cumbrous piece of formality, which Pope's eulogium lately betrayed me into the perusal of, has one splendid passage; page 138, (I think) English translation. It contrasts the open honours with which we invest the sword, as the means of putting man out of the world, with the concealing and retiring circumstances that accompany his introduction into it. It is a piece of gorgeous and happy eloquence.—What could Pope mean by that line,—"sage Montaigne, or more sage Charron?" Montaigne is an immense treasure-house of observation, anticipating all the discoveries of succeeding essayists. You cannot dip in him without being struck with the aphorism, that there is nothing new under the sun. All the writers on common life since him have done nothing but echo him. You cannot open him without detecting a Spectator, or starting a Rambler; besides that his own character pervades the whole, and binds it sweetly together. Charron is a mere piece of formality, scholastic dry bones, without sinew or living flesh.
IV.—[A SYLVAN SURPRISE]
(1813)
Time and place give every thing its propriety. Strolling one day in the Twickenham meadows, I was struck with the appearance of something dusky upon the grass, which my eye could not immediately reduce into a shape. Going nearer, I discovered the cause of the phenomenon. In the midst of the most rural scene in the world, the day glorious over head, the wave of Father Thames rippling deliciously by him, lay outstretched at his ease upon Nature's verdant carpet—a chimney-sweeper—
——a spot like which
Astronomer in the sun's lucent orb
Through his glaz'd optic tube yet never saw.
There is no reason in nature why a chimney-sweeper should not indulge a taste for rural objects, but somehow the ideas were discordant. It struck upon me like an inartificial discord in music. It was a combination of urbs in rure, which my experience had not prepared me to anticipate.
V.—[STREET CONVERSATION]
(1813)
It should seem almost impossible for a person to have arrived at the age of manhood, and never once to have heard or suspected that there have been people born before our times. Yet this fact I am obliged to conclude from the fragment of a conversation which I overheard between two of the lower order of Irish, who passed me in Holborn the other day. One of them, it seems, had appealed in defence of his argument to the opinions or practice of their forefathers, for I heard the other exclaim "the ancients! who were they?"—"What!" retorted his companion, with an air of insolent superiority, "did you never hear of the ancients? did you never read of them?" They had got too far from me to hear the conclusion of their extraordinary discourse; but I have often thought that it would be amusing to register the sentences, and scraps of sentences, which one catches up in a day's walk about the town; I mean in the way of fair and honest listening, without way-laying one's neighbour for more than he would be willing to communicate. From these flying words, with the help of a little imagination, one might often piece out a long conversation foregone.
VI.—[A TOWN RESIDENCE]
(1813)
Where would a man of taste chuse his town residence, setting convenience out of the question? Palace-yard—for its contiguity to the Abbey, the Courts of Justice, the Sittings of Parliament, Whitehall, the Parks, &c.—I hold of all places in these two great cities of London and Westminster to be the most classical and eligible. Next in classicality, I should name the four Inns of Court: they breathe a learned and collegiate air; and of them chiefly,
——those bricky towers
The which on Thames' broad aged back doth ride,
Where now the studious Lawyers have their bowers;
There whilom wont the Templar Knights to bide,
