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That nature's fragile vessel doth sustain

In life's uncertain voyage, I will some kindness do them: I'll teach them to prevent wild Alcibiades' wrath.

Mr. Kemble would here have had to maintain a second warfare with the gallery, on the subject of aches and akes. That the galleries should have combated his correct pronunciation, was naturally to be expected: but marvellous to relate, persons who from their education and rank in life would be offended at a hint of ignorance or want of critical judgment, have sided with the mob against metre and known usage. They seem to suppose that the English language, perhaps the most fluctuating of all, has been always stationary, and its immediate modes immemorial! Will they have the goodness to try if they can read the third line of the last quotation any way but one, and retain the verse upon the tongue?

Having incidentally mentioned the name of Mr. Kemble, I cannot help expressing my regret, that Timon was never added to the list of Shakspeare's characters, of which he was for so many years the best commentator and illustrator. One such`living exposition is worth all the notes that were ever written. Various and opposite opinions have been entertained, respecting the comparative merits of Kemble and Garrick. Those who are not old enough to remember the latter, and the number who do remember him will soon be very small, cannot arbitrate between the combatants. have heard much of Garrick's eye and brow; of his expressive lip, and fine tones. The testimony is as strong as to any historical fact, and we have as much reason to believe it, that he had a power

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of expressing the passions incident to the character he represented, and consequently a dominion over the feelings of his audience, never exceeded by predecessor or contemporary, and probably not surpassed by any successor. But there is one ground, which Mr. Kemble occupied alone: that of the philosophical and moral actor. His scholarship, and a Roman cast of person, peculiarly fitted him for Coriolanus and Cato; and would have enabled him to re-embody and re-animate the Grecian misanthrope. Besides these, there was a cast of character which Garrick seemed to think beneath him; for the theatrical records show that it was then consigned to performers of the second class. But who has seen Mr. Kemble represent the melancholy and philosophical Jaques, or attended on the moral lessons of the disguised Duke in Measure for Measure, without rational pleasure and real improvement? In this respect, however, I know of no dramatic experiment so hazardous, and of no success so decisive and triumphant, as that of the modern play called Deaf and Dumb. In this, a highly gifted member of Mr. Kemble's family* not only made dumbness eloquent, but recommended a most important institution of charity, by showing its mode of relief without occasioning the disgust usually attendant on the exhibition of any natural defect; and at the same time proved the triumph of a fine and cultivated mind over the most hopeless of infirmities: while he himself made an old grey-headed clergyman preach such a sermon, as drew crowded congregations night after

*Mrs. C. Kemble, at that time Miss De Camp.

night, and rendered the benches of the theatre auxiliary to the pews of the church.

Those who remember Mr. Kemble with a pleasing regret, may imagine how he would have wound up the character in the delivery of the closing speech:

Come not to me again: but say to Athens,
Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
Upon the beached verge of the salt flood;
Whom once a day with his embossed froth
The turbulent surge shall cover; thither come,
And let my grave-stone be your oracle.—
Lips, let sour words go by, and language end:
What is amiss, plague and infection mend!
Graves only be men's works; and death, their gain!
Sun, hide thy beams! Timon hath done his reign.

After this, Timon appears no more, and here the play had better end.

This play was altered by Shadwell, and restored to the stage in 1678. Travellers have mentioned that there were the ruins of a building near Athens, which was designated as Timon's Tower.

Dr. Johnson's criticism on this play seems cold, and parsimonious of praise. "The play of Timon is a domestick tragedy, and therefore strongly fastens on the attention of the reader." I cannot think that its domestic nature constitutes its charm. It is in subjects of deep pathos, that domestic tragedy seizes on the feelings of the spectator. I should rather attribute its interest to the peculiarities of mind it exhibits, and the studies of human nature it furnishes. "In the plan there is not much art, but the incidents are natural, and the characters various and exact." The moral it

enforces is justly stated by the critic, and cannot be mistaken by the spectator or the reader. "The catastrophe affords a very powerful warning against that ostentatious liberality, which scatters bounty, but confers no benefits, and buys flattery, but not friendship."

Callimachus continues Timon's misanthropy even after death, in the following epigram:

Τίμων (οὐ γὰρ ἔτ ̓ ἐσσὶ τί τοι φάος, ἤ σκότος ἐχθρόν ;
Τὸ σκότος· ὑμέων γὰρ πλείονες εἶν ̓Αΐδη.

CHARACTER OF APEMANTUS.

LITTLE has descended to us from antiquity respecting this person. He is most known by the mention made of him in the passage from Plutarch at the head of the last article. He is there stated to have been the only man admitted to intimacy with Timon after the latter had contracted his misanthropical habits. Yet sympathy of feeling and manners did not prevent Timon from being at times crusty, as it is called, with his friend: witness the compliment which passed at the feast of sacrifices for the dead. Apemantus could not simply remark that the dinner was good, without being taken up, and told that his presence spoiled it. The inducement for mentioning a personage with whom we have such slender acquaintance, is to show the skill of Shakspeare in discriminating it from a character of so much general similarity as that of Timon. Plutarch tells us that they associated from sympathy of feeling and of manners : had that sympathy been entire, Shakspeare would not have introduced a polygraphic copy of his own picture. But one was the misanthrope of experience and bitter disappointment: the other was the misanthrope of Cynic philosophy. One was the hatred of feeling; the other of pride and af

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