The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2: Elia and The Last Essays of EliaLamb, Charles
General
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2: Elia and The Last Essays of Elia
Lamb, Charles
English essays
person, capable in law of sustaining an injury--a person towards whom
duties are to be acknowledged--the genuine crim-con antagonist of the
villanous seducer Joseph. To realise him more, his sufferings under
his unfortunate match must have the downright pungency of life--must
(or should) make you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just as the same
predicament would move you in a neighbour or old friend. The delicious
scenes which give the play its name and zest, must affect you in
the same serious manner as if you heard the reputation of a dear
female friend attacked in your real presence. Crabtree, and Sir
Benjamin--those poor snakes that live but in the sunshine of your
mirth--must be rippened by this hot-bed process of realization
into asps or amphisbænas; and Mrs. Candour--O! frightful! become a
hooded serpent. Oh who that remembers Parsons and Dodd--the wasp and
butterfly of the School for Scandal--in those two characters; and
charming natural Miss Pope, the perfect gentlewoman as distinguished
from the fine lady of comedy, in this latter part--would forego
the true scenic delight--the escape from life--the oblivion of
consequences--the holiday barring out of the pedant Reflection--those
Saturnalia of two or three brief hours, well won from the world--to
sit instead at one of our modern plays--to have his coward conscience
(that forsooth must not be left for a moment) stimulated with
perpetual appeals--dulled rather, and blunted, as a faculty without
repose must be--and his moral vanity pampered with images of notional
justice, notional beneficence, lives saved without the spectators'
risk, and fortunes given away that cost the author nothing?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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