Instead of letters posterity will have confessions,
diaries,notebooks, like M.
So do I, but I cannot put much life into my hoping
whenyou withhold the facts.
She was a born critic, and a critic whose judgments
wereinborn, unhesitating.
She loves your parrot; shecommiserates your cat.
Nevertheless, the play hasserved its purpose.
I bequeath freeleave of correction to the
microscopic intellects of my continuators. She has a robustappetite; nothing shocks
her; she gets nourishment from whatever is setbefore her.
There is thecorrespondence with Cole to prove
it.
Friendship flourished, nor was there any lack of
gift. Hence thecomedy was out of proportion to the rest. It was adeath that struck
at Coles heart, too, but produced no such echo inthat robust organ.
QuartermainesMalvolio stand beside our
Malvolio.
And Miss jeans as Viola wassatisfactory; and Mr.
Indeed, there are pouchesunder them I could swear.
Then, perhaps, the actors weretoo highly charged
with individuality or too incongruously cast.
I love antiquities, but I scarce ever knew an
antiquary who knewhow to write upon them.
FeltonHervey, his two daughters and a favourite
footman and add, I hope itis not true.
The play gainsimmensely in robustness, in
solidity.
Their verses, their stories rise to herlips along
with her own thoughts. Nevertheless, Cole was by no means without distresses of his
own. Letus, then, concentrate for a moment upon the two main figures, in outline.
Consider howsoon we shall both be nothing! As for the human beings they passthrough
the same disenchantment. There is no record of anypainstaking or
effort.
What, then, was lacking in the play as a whole?
Satisfied with hislife in the flesh, he could be still more satisfied with his life
in thespirit.
There is thecorrespondence with Cole to prove
it.
A page in a great author humbles me to the dust, he
wrote.
Against Colesmonolithic passion his own appears
frivolous and flimsy.
To elicit them and relate them is out of the
question. Nobody is very good, but thennobody is very bad.
QuartermainesMalvolio stand beside our Malvolio.
For Horace Walpole was by temperament an amateur. And after deriding his
contemporaries added, Dont think me scornful. Hence thecomedy was out of proportion
to the rest.
She laughs at hisfoibles; knows his failings.
Onlyone weekly newspaper, the CAMBRIDGE CHRONICLE, brought him news of thepresent
moment.