brances of childhood; in an inverted ratio to the usual sentiments of mankind, nothing that I have been engaged in since seems of any value or importance, compared to the colours which imagination gave to everything then. I belong to no body corporate such as I then made a part of.-And here, before I close, taking leave of the general reader, and addressing myself solely to my old school-fellows, that were contemporaries with me from the year 1782 to 1789, let me have leave to remember some of those circumstances of our school, which they will not be unwilling to have brought back to their minds. day in the light of a caterer, a provider for the family, who is to get so much by him in each of his meals. Boys will see and consider these things; and how much must the sacred character of preceptor suffer in their minds by these degrading associations! The very bill which the pupil carries home with him at Christmas, eked out, perhaps, with elaborate though necessary minuteness, instructs him that his teachers have other ends than the mere love to learning, in the lessons which they give him; and though they put into his hands the fine sayings of Seneca or Epictetus, yet they themselves are none of those disinterested pedagogues to teach philosophy gratis. The master, too, is And first, let us remember, as first in sensible that he is seen in this light; and importance in our childish eyes, the young how much this must lessen that affectionate men (as they almost were) who, under the regard to the learners which alone can denomination of Grecians, were waiting the sweeten the bitter labour of instruction, and expiration of the period when they should convert the whole business into unwelcome be sent, at the charges of the Hospital, to and uninteresting task-work, many preceptors that I have conversed with on the subject are ready, with a sad heart, to acknowledge. From this inconvenience the settled salaries of the masters of this school in great measure exempt them; while the happy custom of choosing masters (indeed every officer of the establishment) from those who have received their education there, gives them an interest in advancing the character of the school, and binds them to observe a tenderness and a respect to the children, in which a stranger, feeling that independence which I have spoken of, might well be expected to fail. In affectionate recollections of the place where he was bred up, in hearty recognitions of old schoolfellows met with again after the lapse of years, or in foreign countries, the Christ's Hospital boy yields to none; I might almost say, he goes beyond most other boys. The very compass and magnitude of the school, its thousand bearings, the space it takes up in the imagination beyond the ordinary schools, impresses a remembrance, accompanied with an elevation of mind, that attends him through life. It is too big, too affecting an object, to pass away quickly from his mind. The Christ's Hospital boy's friends at school are commonly his intimates through life. For me, I do not know whether a constitutional imbecility does not incline me too obstinately to cling to the remem one or other of our universities, but more frequently to Cambridge. These youths, from their superior acquirements, their superior age and stature, and the fewness of their numbers, (for seldom above two or three at a time were inaugurated into that high order,) drew the eyes of all, and especially of the younger boys, into a reverent observance and admiration. How tall they used to seem to us! how stately would they pace along the cloisters! while the play of the lesser boys was absolutely suspended, or its boisterousness at least allayed, at their presence! Not that they ever beat or struck the boys-that would have been to have demeaned themselves-the dignity of their persons alone insured them all respect. The task of blows, of corporal chastisement, they left to the common monitors, or heads of wards, who, it must be confessed, in our time had rather too much licence allowed them to oppress and misuse their inferiors; and the interference of the Grecian, who may be considered as the spiritual power, was not unfrequently called for, to mitigate by its mediation the heavy unrelenting arm of this temporal power, or monitor. In fine, the Grecians were the solemn Muftis of the school. Æras were computed from their time ;-it used to be said, such or such a thing was done when Sor TGrecian. was As I ventured to call the Grecians, the the fame of the prowess of the school far and near; and the apprentices in the vicinage, and sometimes the butchers' boys in the neighbouring market, had sad occasion to attest their valour. Muftis of the school, the King's boys,* as their character then was, may well pass for the Janissaries. They were the terror of all the other boys; bred up under that hardy sailor, as well as excellent mathematician, and co-navigator with Captain Cook, William The time would fail me if I were to Wales. All his systems were adapted to fit attempt to enumerate all those circumthem for the rough element which they were stances, some pleasant, some attended with destined to encounter. Frequent and severe some pain, which, seen through the mist of punishments, which were expected to be distance, come sweetly softened to the borne with more than Spartan fortitude, memory. But I must crave leave to re- 1 came to be considered less as inflictions of member our transcending superiority in disgrace than as trials of obstinate endurance. those invigorating sports, leap-frog, and To make his boys hardy, and to give them basting the bear; our delightful excursions early sailor-habits, seemed to be his only in the summer holidays to the New River, aim; to this every thing was subordinate. near Newington, where, like otters, we Moral obliquities, indeed, were sure of would live the long day in the water, never receiving their full recompense, for no occa- caring for dressing ourselves, when we had sion of laying on the lash was ever let slip; once stripped; our savoury meals afterwards, but the effects expected to be produced from when we came home almost famished with it were something very different from con- staying out all day without our dinners; our trition or mortification. There was in visits at other times to the Tower, where, William Wales a perpetual fund of humour, by ancient privilege, we had free access to a constant glee about him, which heightened all the curiosities; our solemn processions by an inveterate provincialism of north- through the City at Easter, with the Lord country dialect, absolutely took away the Mayor's largess of buns, wine, and a shilling, sting from his severities. His punishments with the festive questions and civic pleawere a game at patience, in which the santries of the dispensing Aldermen, which master was not always worst contented when were more to us than all the rest of the he found himself at times overcome by his banquet; our stately suppings in public, pupil. What success this discipline had, or where the well-lighted hall, and the confluhow the effects of it operated upon the after-ence of well-dressed company who came to lives of these King's boys, I cannot say but see us, made the whole look more like a I am sure that, for the time, they were abso- concert or assembly, than a scene of a plain lute nuisances to the rest of the school. bread and cheese collation; the annual Hardy, brutal, and often wicked, they were orations upon St. Matthew's day, in which the most graceless lump in the whole mass; the senior scholar, before he had done, older and bigger than the other boys, (for, seldom failed to reckon up, among those by the system of their education they were who had done honour to our school by being kept longer at school by two or three years educated in it, the names of those accomthan any of the rest, except the Grecians,) plished critics and Greek scholars, Joshua they were a constant terror to the younger Barnes and Jeremiah Markland (I marvel part of the school; and some who may read they left out Camden while they were about this, I doubt not, will remember the conster-it). Let me have leave to remember our nation into which the juvenile fry of us were hymns and anthems, and well-toned organ; thrown, when the cry was raised in the the doleful tune of the burial anthem cloisters, that the First Order was coming-chaunted in the solemn cloisters, upon the for so they termed the first form or class of seldom-occurring funeral of some schoolthose boys. Still these sea-boys answered fellow; the festivities at Christmas, when some good purposes, in the school. They the richest of us would club our stock to were the military class among the boys, have a gaudy day, sitting round the fire, foremost in athletic exercises, who extended replenished to the height with logs, and the pennyless, and he that could contribute nothing, partook in all the mirth, and in The mathematical pupils, bred up to the sea, on the foundation of Charles the Second. some of the substantialities of the feasting; the carol sung by night at that time of the year, which, when a young boy, I have so often lain awake to hear from seven (the hour of going to bed) till ten, when it was sung by the older boys and monitors, and have listened to it, in their rude chaunting, till I have been transported in fancy to the fields of Bethlehem, and the song which was sung at that season, by angels' voices to the shepherds. Nor would I willingly forget any of those things which administered to our vanity. The hem-stitched bands and town-made shirts, which some of the most fashionable among us wore; the town-girdles, with buckles of silver, or shining stone; the badges of the sea-boys; the cots, or superior shoe-strings, of the monitors; the medals of the markers; (those who were appointed to hear the Bible read in the wards on Sunday morning and evening,) which bore on their obverse in silver, as certain parts of our garments carried, in meaner metal, the countenance of our Founder, that godly and royal child, King Edward the Sixth, the flower of the Tudor name-the young flower that was untimely cropt, as it began to fill our land with its early odours - the boy-patron of boys-the serious and holy child who walked with Cranmer and Ridley-fit associate, in those tender years, for the bishops, and future martyrs of our Church, to receive, or, (as occasion sometimes proved,) to give instruction. "But, ah! what means the silent tear? Why, e'en 'mid joy, my bosom heave? And bear away the bloom of years! Of doubts and sorrows, pains and fears! "Still will I ponder Fate's unaltered plan, Nor, tracing back the child, forget that I am man.” * • Lines meditated in the cloisters of Christ's Hospital, in the "Poetics" of Mr. George Dyer. ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE. CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR FITNESS FOR STAGE-REPRESENTATION. TAKING a turn the other day in the Abbey, I was struck with the affected attitude of a figure, which I do not remember to have seen before, and which upon examination proved to be a whole-length of the celebrated Mr. Garrick. Though I would not go so far with some good Catholics abroad as to shut players altogether out of consecrated ground, yet I own I was not a little scandalised at the introduction of theatrical airs and gestures into a place set apart to remind us of the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found inscribed under this harlequin figure the following lines: : "To paint fair Nature, by divine command It would be an insult to my readers' understandings to attempt anything like a criticism on this farrago of false thoughts and nonsense. But the reflection it led me into was a kind of wonder, how, from the days of the actor here celebrated to our own, it should have been the fashion to compliment every performer in his turn, that has had the luck to please the Town in any of the great characters of Shakspeare, with the notion of possessing a mind congenial with the poet's: how people should come thus unaccountably to confound the power of originating poetical images and conceptions with the faculty of being able to read or recite the same when put into words;* or what ⚫ It is observable that we fall into this confusion only in dramatic recitations. We never dream that the gentleman who reads Lucretius in public with great applause, is therefore a great poet and philosopher; nor do we find that Tom Davis, the bookseller, who is recorded to have recited the Paradise Lost better than any man in England in his day (though I cannot help thinking there must be some mistake in this tradition) was therefore, by his intimate friends, set upon a level with Milton. connection that absolute mastery over the heart and soul of man, which a great dramatic poet possesses, has with those low tricks upon the eye and ear, which a player by observing a few general effects, which some common passion, as grief, anger, &c., usually has upon the gestures and exterior, can so easily compass. To know the internal workings and movements of a great mind, of an Othello or a Hamlet for instance, the when and the why and the how far they should be moved; to what pitch a passion is becoming; to give the reins and to pull in the curb exactly at the moment when the drawing in or the slackening is most gracetul; seems to demand a reach of intellect of a vastly different extent from that which is employed upon the bare imitation of the signs of these passions in the countenance or gesture, which signs are usually observed to be most lively and emphatic in the weaker sort of minds, and which signs can after all but indicate some passion, as I said before, anger, or grief, generally; but of the motives and grounds of the passion, wherein it differs from the same passion in low and vulgar natures, of these the actor can give no more idea by his face or gesture than the eye (without a metaphor) can speak, or the muscles utter intelligible sounds. But such is the instantaneous nature of the impressions which we take in at the eye and ear at a play-house, compared with the slow apprehension oftentimes of the understanding in reading, that we are apt not only to sink the play-writer in the consideration which we pay to the actor, but even to identify in our minds, in a perverse manner, the actor with the character which he represents. It is difficult for a frequent play-goer to disembarrass the idea of Hamlet from the person and voice of Mr. K. We speak of Lady It may seem a paradox, but I cannot help Macbeth, while we are in reality thinking of being of opinion that the plays of Shakspeare Mrs. S. Nor is this confusion incidental are less calculated for performance on a alone to unlettered persons, who, not possess-stage, than those of almost any other dramatist ing the advantage of reading, are necessarily whatever. Their distinguishing excellence is dependent upon the stage-player for all the a reason that they should be so. There is pleasure which they can receive from the so much in them, which comes not under drama, and to whom the very idea of what the province of acting, with which eye, and an author is cannot be made comprehensible tone, and gesture, have nothing to do. without some pain and perplexity of mind: The glory of the scenic art is to personate the error is one from which persons other-passion, and the turns of passion; and the wise not meanly lettered, find it almost im- more coarse and palpable the passion is, the possible to extricate themselves. more hold upon the eyes and ears of the Never let me be so ungrateful as to forget the very high degree of satisfaction which I received some years back from seeing for the first time a tragedy of Shakspeare performed, in which those two great performers sustained the principal parts. It seemed to embody and realise conceptions which had hitherto assumed no distinct shape. But dearly do we pay all our life after for this juvenile pleasure, this sense of distinctness. When the novelty is past, we find to our cost that instead of realising an idea, we have only materialised and brought down a fine vision to the standard of flesh and blood. We have let go a dream, in quest of an unattainable substance. How cruelly this operates upon the mind, to have its free conceptions thus cramped and pressed down to the measure of a straitlacing actuality, may be judged from that delightful sensation of freshness, with which we turn to those plays of Shakspeare which have escaped being performed, and to those passages in the acting plays of the same writer which have happily been left out in the performance. How far the very custom of hearing anything spouted, withers and blows upon a fine passage, may be seen in those speeches from Henry the Fifth, &c. which are current in the mouths of schoolboys, from their being to be found in Enfield's Speaker, and such kind of books! I confess myself utterly unable to appreciate that celebrated soliloquy in Hamlet, beginning "To be or not to be," or to tell whether it be good, bad or indifferent, it has been so handled and pawed about by declamatory boys and men, and torn so inhumanly from its living place and principle of continuity in the play, till it is become to me a perfect dead member. spectators the performer obviously possesses. The character of Hamlet is perhaps that For this reason, scolding scenes, scenes where by which, since the days of Betterton, a two persons talk themselves into a fit of fury, succession of popular performers have had and then in a surprising manner talk them- the greatest ambition to distinguish themselves out of it again, have always been the selves. The length of the part may be one most popular upon our stage. And the of their reasons. But for the character itself, reason is plain, because the spectators are we find it in a play, and therefore we judge here most palpably appealed to, they are the it a fit subject of dramatic representation. proper judges in this war of words, they are The play itself abounds in maxims and the legitimate ring that should be formed reflections beyond any other, and therefore round such "intellectual prize-fighters." we consider it as a proper vehicle for conTalking is the direct object of the imitation veying moral instruction. But Hamlet himhere. But in all the best dramas, and in self-what does he suffer meanwhile by being Shakspeare above all, how obvious it is, that dragged forth as the public schoolmaster, to the form of speaking, whether it be in give lectures to the crowd! Why, nine parts soliloquy or dialogue, is only a medium, and in ten of what Hamlet does, are transactions often a highly artificial one, for putting the between himself and his moral sense; they reader or spectator into possession of that are the effusions of his solitary musings, knowledge of the inner structure and work- which he retires to holes and corners and the ings of mind in a character, which he could most sequestered parts of the palace to pour otherwise never have arrived at in that form forth; or rather, they are the silent meditaof composition by any gift short of intuition. tions with which his bosom is bursting, We do here as we do with novels written in reduced to words for the sake of the reader, the epistolary form. How many improprieties, who must else remain ignorant of what is perfect solecisms in letter-writing, do we put passing there. These profound sorrows, these up with in Clarissa and other books, for the light-and-noise-abhorring ruminations, which sake of the delight which that form upon the the tongue scarce dares utter to deaf walls whole gives us ! and chambers, how can they be represented But the practice of stage representation by a gesticulating actor, who comes and reduces everything to a controversy of mouths them out before an audience, making elocution. Every character, from the boisterous blasphemings of Bajazet to the shrinking timidity of womanhood, must play the orator. The love dialogues of Romeo and Juliet, those silver-sweet sounds of lovers' tongues by night! the more intimate and sacred sweetness of nuptial colloquy between an Othello or a Posthumus with their married wives, all those delicacies which are so delightful in the reading, as when we read of those youthful dalliances in Paradise "As beseem'd Fair couple link'd in happy nuptial league, by the inherent fault of stage representation, four hundred people his confidants at once! I say not that it is the fault of the actor so to do; he must pronounce them ore rotundo; he must accompany them with his eye; he must insinuate them into his auditory by some trick of eye, tone or gesture, or he fails. He must be thinking all the while of his appearance, because he knows that all the while the spectators are judging of it. And this is the way to represent the shy, negligent, retiring Hamlet! It is true that there is no other mode of conveying a vast quantity of thought and feeling to a great portion of the audience, who otherwise would never earn it for themselves by reading, and the intellectual acquisition gained this way may, for aught I know, be inestimable; but I am not arguing that Hamlet should not be acted, but how much Hamlet is made another thing by being acted. I have heard much of the wonders which Garrick performed in this part; but as I never saw him, I must have leave to doubt whether the representation of such a |