to take irony for a personal insult, and to mistake delicacy for insipidity. It is It is true, indeed, that one kind of authority has become more imposing than ever. We are greatly exercised in our minds by the claims of the scientific critic; but that only explains why it is so much easier to write about essay-writing than to write an essay oneself.

Some men, indeed, have enough of the humorist or the philosopher to with draw from the crush and indulge in very admirable speculations. Essays may be mentioned which, though less popular than some downright twaddle, have a better chance of endurance. But, apart from the most modern performances, some of the very best of English essays came from the school which in soine sense continued the old traditions. The cockneys" of the first quarter of the century, still talked about the "town," as a distinct entity. Charles Lamb's supper parties were probably the last representatives of the old-fashioned club. Lamb, indeed, was the pet of a little clique of familiars, standing apart from the great world-not like Addison, the favorite of a society, including the chief political and social leaders of the day. The cockneys formed only a small and a rather despised section of society; but they had not been swamped and overwhelmed in the crowd. London was not a shifting caravanserai, a vague aggregate of human beings, from which all traces of organic unity had disappeared. Names like Kensington or Hampstead still suggested real places, with oldest inhabitants and local associations, not confusing paraphrases for arbitrary fragments of S. or N. W. The Temple had its old benchers, men who had lived there under the eyes of neighbors, and whose personal characteristics were known as accurately as in any country village. The theatre of Lamb's day was not one among many places of amusement, with only such claims as may be derived from the star of the moment; but a body with imposing historical associations, which could trace back its continuity through a dynasty of managers, from Sheridan to Garrick, and so to Cibber and Betterton, and the companies which exulted in the name of the king's servants. When sitting in the pit, he seemed to be taking the very

place of Steele, and might still listen to the old the old "artificial comedy," for which we have become too moral or too squeamish. To read Elia's essays is to breathe that atmosphere again; and to see that if Lamb did not write for so definite a circle as the old essayists, he is still representing a class with cherished associations, and a distinctive character. One should be a bit of a cockney fully to enjoy his writing; to be able to reconstruct the picturesque old London with its quaint and grotesque aspects. For Lamb is nowhere more himself than in the humorous pathos with which he dwells upon the rapidly vanishing peculiarities of the old-fashioned world.

Lamb, Leigh Hunt, and Hazlitt may be taken to represent this last phase of the old town life before the town had become a wilderness. They have all written admirable essays, though Hunt's pure taste and graceful style scarcely atone for the want of force or idiosyncrasy. No such criticism could be made against his friends. Lamb was not only the pet of his own clique, but the pet of all subsequent critics. To say anything against him would be to provoke indignant remonstrance. An attack upon him would resemble an insult to a child. Yet I will venture to confess that Lamb has some of the faults from which no favorite of a little circle

is ever quite free. He is always on the verge of affectation, and sometimes trespasses beyond the verge. There is a self-consciousness about him which in some moods is provoking. There is a certain bigotry about most humorists (as of a spoiled child) which has become a little tiresome. People have come to talk as if a sense of humor were one of the cardinal virtues. To have it is to be free of a privileged class, possessed of an esoteric system of critical wisdom. To be without it is to be a wretched matter-of-fact utilitarian pedant. The professed humorist considers the rest of mankind as though they were deprived of a faculty, incapable of a relish for the finest literary flavors. Lamb was one of the first representatives of this theory, and is always tacitly warning off the profane vulgar, typified by the prosaic Scotchman who pointed out that his wish to see Burns instead of Burns' son

was impracticable, inasmuch as the poet himself was dead. The pretension is, of course, put forward by Lamb in the most amiable way, but it remains a pretension. Most people are docile enough to accept at his own valuation, or at that of his admirers, any man who claims a special privilege, and think it wise to hold their tongues if they do not perceive it to be fully justified by the facts. But I admit that, after a certain quantity of Lamb, I begin to feel a sympathy for the unimaginative Scotchman. I think that he has something to say for himself. Lamb, for example, was a most exquisite critic of the authors in whom he delighted. Nobody has said such admirable things about the old English dramatists, and a little exaggeration may be forgiven to so genuine a worshipper. But he helped to start the nuisance of "appreciative criticism,' which proceeds on the assumptive fancy that it necessarily shows equal insight and geniality to pick up pebbles or real jewels from the rubbish-heaps of time. Lamb certainly is not to be blamed for the extravagance of his followers. But this exaltation of the tastes or fancies of a little coterie has always its dangers, and that is what limits one's affection for Lamb. Nobody can delight too much in the essay upon roast pig-the apologue in which contains as much sound philosophy as fine humor-or in Mrs. Battle's opinions upon whist, or the description ot Christ's Hospital, or the old benchers of the Temple, or Oxford in the Long Vacation. Only I cannot get rid of the feeling which besets me when I am ordered to worship the idol of any small sect. Accept their Accept their shibboleths, and everything will go pleasantly. The underlying conceit and dogmatism will only turn its pleasanter side toward you, and show itself in tinging the admirable sentiments with a slight affectation. Yet, one wants a little more fresh air, and one does not like to admire upon compulsion. Lamb's manner is inimitably graceful; but it reminds one just a little too much of an ancient beau, retailing his exquisite compliments, and putting his hearers on their best behavior. Perhaps it shows the corruption of human nature, but I should be glad if now and then he could drop his falsetto and come out of his lit

tle entrenchment of elaborate reserve. I should feel certain that I see the natural man. "I am all over sophisticated," says Lamb, accounting for his imperfect sympathy with Quakers," with humors, fancies craving hourly sympathy. I must have books, pictures, theatres, chitchat, scandal, jokes, antiquities, and a thousand whimwhams which their simpler taste could do without.' There are times when the simpler taste is a pleasant relief to the most skilful dandling of whimwhams; and it is at those times that one revolts not exactly against Lamb, but against the intolerance of true Lamb worshippers.

The reader who is tired of Lamb's delicate confections, and wants a bit of genuine nature, a straightforward uncompromising utterance of antipathy and indignation, need not go far. Hazlitt will serve his turn; and for that reason I can very often read Hazlitt with admiration when Lamb rather palls upon me.

If Hazlitt has the weaknesses of a cockney, they take a very different form. He could hardly have been the ideal of any sect which did not enjoy frequent slaps in the face from the object of its worship. He has acquired, to an irritating degree, the temper characteristic of a narrow provincial sect. He has cherished and brooded over the antipathies with which he started, and, from time to time, has added new dislikes and taken up grudges against his old friends. He has not sufficient culture to understand fully the bearings of his own theories; and quarrels with those who should be his allies. He has another characteristic which, to my mind, is less pardonable. He is not only egotistical, which one may forgive, but there is something rather ungentlemanlike about his egotism. There is a rather offensive tone of self-assertion, thickly masked as self-depreciation. I should be slow to say that he was envious, for that is one of the accusations most easily made and least capable of being proved, against any one who takes an independent view of contemporary celebrities; but he has the tone of a man with a grievance; and the grievances are the shocks which his vanity has received from a want of general appreciation. There is something petty in the spirit which takes the world into its confidence upon such matters;

and his want of reticence takes at times a more offensive form. He is one of the earliest interviewers," and revenges himself upon men who have been more popular than himself by cutting portraits of them as they appeared to him. Altogether he is a man whom it is impossible to regard without a certain distrust; and that, as I fancy, is the true reason for his want of popularity. No literary skill will make average readers take kindly to a man who does not attract by some amiable quality.

In fact, some explanation is needed, for otherwise we could hardly account for the comparative neglect of some of the ablest essays in the language. We may be very fine fellows now, but we cannot write like Hazlitt, says a critic who is more likely than any one to falsify his own assertions. And when I take up one of Hazlitt's volumes of essays, I am very much inclined at times to agree with the assertion. They are apt, it is true, to leave a rather unpleasant flavor upon the palate. There is a certain acidity; a rather petulant putting forward of little crotchets or personal dislikes; the arrogance belonging to all cliquishness is not softened into tacit assumption, but rather dashed in your face. But putting this aside, the nervous vigor of the writing, the tone of strong conviction and passion which vibrates through his phrases, the genuine enthusiasm with which he celebrates the books and pictures which he really loves; the intense enjoyment of the beauties which he really comprehends, has in it something inspiring and contagious. There is at any rate nothing finicking or affected; if he is crotchety, he really believes in his crotchets; if he deals in paradoxes, it is not that he wishes to exhibit his skill, or to insinuate a claim to originality, but that he is a vehement and passionate believer in certain prejudices which have sunk into his mind or become ingrained in his nature. If every essayist is bound to be a dealer in commonplace or in the inverse commonplace which we call a paradox, Hazlitt succeeds in giving them an interest, by a new method. It is not that he is a man of ripened meditative wisdom who has thought over them and tested them for himself; nor a man of delicate sensibility from whose lips they come

with the freshness of perfect simplicity; nor a man of strong sense, who tears away the conventional illusions by which we work ourselves into complacency; not a gentle humorist, who is playing with absurdities and appeals to us to share his enjoyable consciousness of his own nonsense; it is simply that he is a man of marked idiosyncrasy whose feelings are so strong, though confined within narrow channels, that his utterances have always the emphatic ring of true passion. When he talks about one of his favorites, whether Rousseau or Mrs. Inchbald, he has not perhaps much to add to the established criticisms, but he speaks as one who knows the book by heart, who has pored over it like a lover, come to it again and again, relished the little touches which escape the hasty reader, and in writing about it is reviving the old passionate gush of admiration. He cannot make such fine remarks as Lamb; and his judgments are still more personal and dependent upon the accidents of his early studies. But they stimulate still more strongly the illusion that one has only to turn to the original in order to enjoy a similar rapture. Lamb speaks as the epicure; and lets one know that one must be a man of taste to share his fine discrimination. But Hazlitt speaks of his old enjoyments as a traveller might speak of the gush of fresh water which saved him from dying of thirst in the wilderness. The delight seems so spontaneous and natural that we fancy-very erroneously for the most part-that the spring must be as refreshing to our lips as it was to his. We are ashamed after it when we are bored by the "Nouvelle Héloïse.'

We

There is the same kind of charm in the non-critical essays. We share for the moment Hazlitt's enthusiasm for the Indian jugglers, or for Cavanagh, the fives-player, whom he celebrates with an enthusiasm astonishing in pre-athletic days, and which could hardly be rivalled by a boyish idolator of Dr. Grace. forget all our acquired prejudices to throw ourselves into the sport of the famous prize-fight between the gasman and Bill Neate; and see no incongruity between the pleasure of seeing one side of Mr. Hickman's face dashed into “a red ruin" by a single blow, and of taking a volume of Rousseau's sentimentalism

in your pocket to solace the necessary hours of waiting.

It is the same, again, when Hazlitt comes to deal with the well-worn topics of commonplace essayists. He preaches upon threadbare texts, but they always have for him a strong personal interest. A commonplace maxim occurs to him, not to be calmly considered or to be ornamented with fresh illustrations, but as if it were incarnated in a flesh and blood representative, to be grappled, wrestled with, overthrown and trampled under foot. He talks about the conduct of life to his son, and begins with the proper aphorisms about industry, civility, and so forth, but as he warms to his work, he grows passionate and pours out his own prejudices with the energy of personal conviction. He talks about "effeminacy," about the "fear of death, about the main chance, about "envy," about" egotism," about success in life," about "depth and superficiality," and a dozen other equally unpromising subjects. We know too well what dreary and edifying meditations they would suggest to some popular essayists, and how prettily others might play with them. But nothing turns to platitude with Hazlitt; he is always idiosyncratic, racy, vigorous, and intensely eager, not so much to convince you, perhaps, as to get the better of you as presumably an antagonist. He does not address himself to the gentle reader of more popular writers, but to an imaginary opponent always ready to take up the gauntlet and to get the worst of it. Most people rather object to assuming that position, and to be pounded as if it were a matter of course that they were priggish adherents of some objectionable theory. But if you can take him for the nonce on his own terms and enjoy conversation which courts contradiction, you may be sure of a good bout in the intellectual ring. And even his paradoxes are more than mere wanton desire to dazzle. Read, for example, the characteristic essay upon "The Pleasure of Hating," with its perverse vindication of infidelity to our old friends, and

old books, and you feel that Hazlitt, though arguing himself for the moment into a conviction which he cannot seriously hold, has really given utterance to a genuine sentiment which is more impressive than many a volume of average reflection. A more frequent contrast of general sentiment might, indeed, be agreeable. And yet, in spite of the undertone of rather sullen melancholy, we must be hard to please if we are not charmed with the occasional occurrence of such passages as these: "I remember once strolling along the margin of a stream, skirted with willows and flashing ridges, in one of those sequestered valleys on Salisbury plain, where the monks of former ages had planted chapels and built hermits' cells. There was a little parish church near, but tall elms and quivering alders hid it from my sight; when, all of a sudden, I was startled by the sound of a full organ pealing on the ear, accompanied by the rustic voices and the rolling choir of village maids and children. It rose, indeed, like an inhalation of rich distilled perfumes. The dew from a thousand pastures was gathered in its softness, the silence of a thousand years spoke in it. It came upon the heart like the calm beauty of death; fancy caught the sound and faith mounted on it to the skies. It filled the valley like a mist, and still poured out its endless chant, and still it swells upon the ear and wraps me in a golden trance, drowning the noisy tumult of the world."

If the spirit of clique were invariably productive of good essay-writing, we should never be in danger of any deficiency in our supplies. But our modern cliques are so anxious to be cosmopolitan, and on a level with the last new utterance of the accepted prophet, that somehow their disquisitions seem to be wanting in individual flavor. Perhaps we have unknown prophets among us whose works will be valued by our grandchildren. But I will not now venture upon the dangerous ground of contemporary criticism.-Cornhill Magazine.

WHEN Hamlet told the tragedians of the city that they should suit the action to the word, the word to the action, he seemed to be affording them advice that was at once both sound and simple; yet to effectively combine speech with movement or gesture so that they may go hand in hand, not one before another," constitutes one of the greatest difficulties of histrionic art. What kind of action is suited to particular words? How much or how little action is permissible? What words are to be accompanied or illustrated by action, and what words may be left to run alone, as it were, and take care of themselves? These are the questions the performer is required to answer for himself. Hamlet can but proffer counsel of a general sort. The modesty of nature is not to be overstepped; the actors are not to mouth their speeches, nor to saw the air too much with their hands; in the very torrent, tempest, and even whirlwind of their passion, they are to acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Yet they are not to be too tame; their own discretion is to be their tutor; the purpose and end of playing being to hold the mirror up to nature, etc. There is danger alike in overdoing and in coming tardy off; in either case the unskilful may be made to laugh, but the judicious will be made to grieve, the "censure of which one" is in the allowance of the players to overweigh a whole theatre of others." It is probable that the judicious have been more often made to grieve by overdoing and redundancy of action than by tameness and tardiness of histrionic method. In one of his letters Macready has narrated how his own early manner was marred by excess and exaggeration, and how he became sensible of his errors of this kind. His observation of actual life suggested misgivings; he noted how sparingly and therefore how effectively Mrs. Siddons had recourse to gesticulation; a line in Dante taught him the value and dignity of repose; and a theory took form in his mind, presently to obtain practical demonstration of its

correctness when he saw Talma act, "whose every movement was a change of subject for the sculptor's or the painter's study" Macready had been taught to imitate in gesture the action he might be relating, or "to figure out some idea of the images of his speech." A chapter in A chapter in "Peregrine Pickle" descriptive of Quin's acting as Zanga in The Revenge convinced him of the absurdity of accompanying narration by elaborate gesticulation; he applied the criticism to himself in various situations which might have tempted him to like extravagance. Peregrine is supposed to complain of Quin's Zanga as out-Heroding Herod, especially in the scene of the Moor's relating to Isabella how Alonzo's jealousy had been inflamed by the discovery of a letter designedly placed in his path. It seemed to Peregrine that Mr. Quin's action intimately resembled the ridiculous grimacing of a monkey when he delivered Zanga's speech regarding the letter.

He took it up;

But scarce was it unfolded to his sight
When he, as if an arrow pierced his eye,
Started, and trembling dropped it on the
ground.

In pronouncing the first two words the actor was said to stoop down and seem to take up something from the stage; he then mimicked the manner of unfolding a letter, and arriving at the simile of an arrow piercing the eye he darted his forefinger toward that organ. At the word " started" he recoiled with great violence, and when he came to trembling dropped it on the ground," he threw all his limbs into a tremulous emotion and shook the imaginary paper from his hand. The same system of minute gesticulation accompanied further portions of the speech. At the words:

Pale and aghast awhile my victim stood, Disguised a sigh or two and puffed them from Then rubbed his brow and took it up again,

him ;

the player's countenance assumed a wild stare, he sighed thrice most piteously as though he were on the point of suffoca