and the ligament, fine as it is, which links them to humanity is never broken. Who would quarrel with Wart or Feeble, or Mouldy or Bull-calf, or even with Pistol, Nym, or Bardolph? None but a hypocrite. The severe censurers of the morals of imaginary characters can generally find a hole for their own vices to creep out at; and yet do not perceive how it is that the imperfect and even deformed characters in Shakespeare's plays, as done to the life, by forming a part of our personal consciousness, claim our personal forgiveness, and suspend or evade our moral judgment, by bribing our self-love to side with them. Not to do so, is not morality, but affectation, stupidity, or ill-nature. I have more sympathy with one of Shakespeare's pick-purses, Gadshill or Peto, than I can possibly have with any member of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and would by no means assist to deliver the one into the hands of the other. Those who cannot be persuaded to draw a veil over the foibles of ideal characters, may be suspected of wearing a mask over their own! Again, in point of understanding and attainments, Shallow sinks low enough; and yet his cousin Silence is a foil to him; he is the shadow of a shade, glimmers on the very verge of downright imbecility, and totters on the brink of nothing. He has been merry twice or once ere now,' and is hardly persuaded to break his silence in a song. Shallow has heard the chimes at midnight,' and roared out glees and catches at taverns and inns of court, when he was young. So, at least, he tells his cousin Silence, and Falstaff encourages the loftiness of his pretensions. Shallow would be thought a great man among his dependants and followers; Silence is nobody-not even in his own opinion: yet he sits in the orchard, and eats his caraways and pippins among the rest. Shakespeare takes up the meanest subjects with the same tenderness that we do an insect's wing, and would not kill a fly. . . .

The fault, then, of Shakespeare's comic Muse is, in my opinion, that it is too good-natured and magnanimous. It mounts above its quarry. It is apprehensive, quick, for

getive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes'; but it does not take the highest pleasure in making human nature look as mean, as ridiculous, and contemptible as possible. It is in this respect chiefly that it differs from the comedy of a later, and (what is called) a more refined period. Genteel comedy is the comedy of fashionable life, and of artificial character and manners. The most pungent ridicule is that which is directed to mortify vanity and expose affectation; but vanity and affectation, in their most exorbitant and studied excesses, are the ruling principles of society only in a highly advanced state of civilisation and manners. Man can hardly be said to be a truly contemptible animal, till, from the facilities of general intercourse and the progress of example and opinion, he becomes the ape of the extravagances of other men. The keenest edge of satire is required to distinguish between the true and false pretensions to taste and elegance; its lash is laid on with the utmost severity, to drive before it the common herd of knaves and fools, not to lacerate and terrify the single stragglers. In a word, it is when folly is epidemic, and vice worn as a mark of distinction, that all the malice of wit and humour is called out and justified to detect the imposture, and prevent the contagion from spreading. The fools in Wycherley and Congreve are of their own, or one another's making, and deserve to be well scourged into common sense and decency: the fools in Shakespeare are of his own or nature's making; and it would be unfair to probe to the quick, or hold up to unqualified derision, the faults which are involuntary and incorrigible, or those which you yourself encourage and exaggerate from the pleasure you take in witnessing them. Our later comic writers represent a state of manners, in which to be a man of wit and pleasure about town was become the fashion, and in which the swarms of egregious pretenders in both kinds openly kept one another in countenance, and were become a public nuisance. Shakespeare, living in a state of greater rudeness and simplicity, chiefly gave certain characters which were a kind of grotesques, or solitary excrescences growing up out of their

native soil without affectation, and which he undertook kindly to pamper for the public entertainment. For instance, Sir Andrew Aguecheek is evidently a creature of the poet's own fancy. . . .

I do not, in short, consider comedy as exactly an affair of the heart or the imagination; and it is for this reason only that I think Shakespeare's comedies deficient. I do not, however, wish to give a preference to any comedies over his; but I do perceive a difference between his comedies and some others that are, notwithstanding, excellent in their way, and I have endeavoured to point out in what this difference consists, as well as I could. Finally, I will not say that he had not as great a natural genius for comedy as any one; but I may venture to say, that he had not the same artificial models and regulated mass of fashionable absurdity or elegance to work upon.

XXIII

ON A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE

HERE is an example of the Informal Essay, which is defined by Dr. Johnson as a 'loose sally of the mind.' The title is a mere label; a peg on which to hang as many detached thoughts-grave or gay-as you please. What will happen a hundred years hence? We cannot tell; but we know, at least, that all those things which please or vex us now, will neither gladden nor trouble us any more. 'It will be all the same a hundred years

hence.'

As we saw in the last section, 'certain imperfections' will in all probability always be considered as 'permanent features of our common humanity'; and we may add that, on the other hand, certain pleasures will continue to be regarded in the same light. As you are to limit your essay to the discussion of a single aspect of any given subject; you must choose one particular kind of 'imperfection,' or one particular kind of pleasure, whose nature you are to explain and to illustrate, in the light of the reflection that it will be all the same a hundred years hence. In the Informal Essay, there need be no definite Central Idea. It is more of the nature of a conversation-a causerie-than a reasoned argument; a kind of composition in which the only

rules to be observed are those regulating the Introduction and the Conclusion. And, as in conversation, anecdote and allusion are freely admissible; for, your object in this case is, not to instruct but, to amuse; to play with the subject, rather than to treat it seriously.

In the Example, the particular 'imperfection' of 'our common humanity,' selected by the author, is the habit of indulging in gossip and scandal. The Introduction consists of a little description of a round game-which very likely suggested to the author's mind the rest of the 'essaykin'-and the reflections he makes upon it give rise to further reflections, and so on, till the paper is filled, and he concludes with the remark that these things will always be,-and what will it matter a hundred years hence? The plan is simple; anyone can follow the plan; 'tis the execution that is difficult, being purely a matter of personal endowment. Either you have the knowledge and the wit to amuse your reader over three or four pages or so; or you have not. Unlike the Formal Essay which you have been studying for so long, the Informal Essay cannot be written by rule.

And it is because this kind of writing is purely a matter of personal endowment, that the style of Thackeray is no model for imitation. His style expressed himself; if you imitate the style, you do but ape the man. Nevertheless, his style presents certain qualities worthy of all imitation; elegance, ease, and urbanity. A study of the Example will shew you that in order to be conversational, it is not necessary to be familiar, vulgar, and incorrect.

Having studied the Example with these things in your mind, select an aspect of some particular trouble or pleasure, reflect upon it in the light of that undeniable maxim, It will be all the same a hundred years hence, and write an Informal Essay thereon.