The _Notes_ themselves pretend to no method, and fulfil their pretence very strictly. Lamb is distinctly inferior to both his great friends and rivals in _grasp_. His appreciation is tangential—though in a different sense from that in which Hazlitt applies the word to Coleridge. Lamb is not so much desultory or divagatory as apt to touch his subject only at one (sometimes one very small) point. The impact results in a spark of the most ardent heat and glowing light, but neither heat nor light _spreads_ much. Sometimes, as is inevitable in this style of criticism, he can be only disappointing: one is inclined to be pettish with him for seeing nothing to notice in the vast and shadowy sweep of _Tamburlaine_ save an interesting evidence that Pistol was not merely jesting. Nor is perhaps Barabbas “a mere monster brought in with a large painted nose to please the rabble.” But you must get out of this mood if you are to enjoy Lamb. How he makes it all up, and more than up, on _Faustus_, and (when he comes to Dekker) on _Old Fortunatus_! “Beware! beware!” is the cry here also, lest we steal too much of his honeydew. Fortunately it has been so widely used, even for the vulgar purpose of sweetening school-editions, that it has become generally accessible. The famous passage on the Witches, which Hazlitt loved to quote, is perhaps as characteristic as any: the Webster and Chapman notices are perhaps critically the best. Next in order of time come the articles contributed to the _Reflector_, especially the magnificent paper on “The Tragedies of Shakespeare” and their actableness. I may be prejudiced in favour of this, by caring myself infinitely to read the drama, and not caring at all to see it acted; but this objection could not be made to Lamb, who was notoriously a playgoer, and an eager though unfortunate aspirant to the honours of the boards. The piece, of course, shows some traces of the _capriccio_,— especially in the confession of being utterly unable to appreciate “To be or not to be,” because of its being “spouted.” Shakespeare himself might have taught Lamb better, in a certain passage about age and custom. To learn, to hear, nay, direst curse of all! to _teach_ “To be or not to be” leaves it perfect Cleopatra. But Lamb must be Lamb and keep his Lambish mind: and he keeps it here to great purpose. The _Lear_ passage, the best known and the most generally admitted as forcible, is not more so than those on the _Tempest_ and on _Macbeth_. They all come to that position of the true critic (as I believe it to be), which has been indicated elsewhere, that drama _may_ be literature but is not bound to be—that they are different things, and that the points which drama need not have, and perhaps to which it cannot do full justice, are in literature of the greatest importance. [Sidenote: _The Garrick Play Notes._]