Shakspeare delighted to mark the transition of a virtue to a vice; that elusive moment, as of a point of passage from one species to another, discovered and put into a flash from the light of humor. Malvolio's grave and self-respecting temperament is an excellence. No decent man thinks meanly of himself, and the indecent ones cannot afford the disparagement. The pretence of it is a warning to us to expect mischief, a notice put up, "This is a private way; dangerous passing." Whatever gift a man has becomes a divine permission for self-consideration. Modesty is the humanity of a great mind, a vapor which the sun instinctively gathers to make itself tolerable. For instance, the profits of the Globe and Curtain Theatres helped Shakspeare to his orchards and house in Stratford, but his poverty in the matter of conceit furnished and made the New Place habitable. The neighbor gossips did not have his "greatness thrust upon them." Precisely because he was virtuous there were cakes and ale, and his jests, no doubt, were spicy in the mouth too. This man who travailed in secret with his glorious brood had nothing in his manner to record "Those daily, nightly drippings in the dark Of the heart's blood." Macbeth, Hamlet, and Lear were not known to be in town. These mighty shapes, silently content to wait till a world's worship matched them, forbore to bully the villagers. In time whole nations were mustered in, so that his manifold greatness could be met on an equal footing. But their gentle peer left posterity to beat the drum for this service. But all men pardon that occasional frankness of egotism which is like lifting a window for clear light to pass through, so that we recognize that a commander is in the street. Now, Malvolio's sobriety, his contempt for guzzling and roaring of catches, his measured deportment, his nice and cleanly ways are commendable results of his self-opinion, and cannot yield any advantage to low fellows for roughing him until the decent pace of his austerity becomes a strut. One of the characters in a late novel says, "When I see people strut enough to be cut up into bantam-cocks, I stand dormant with wonder, and says no more." This tendency of Nature to a peacock is discovered in the very act, at the moment of production, by this lens of a smile with which we arm our eye. Malvolio is like the fanatical England of the Commonwealth, which was flouted and dishonored by the Aguecheeks and Belches of King Charles II., those inevitable conspirers against immoderate and arrogant sobriety. They are sure to come. "Nay, I'll come," says Fabian, "if I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be boiled to death with melancholy." Yes, the niggard fellow shall "come by some notable shame." Says Sir Toby, "To anger him, we'll have the bear again;" which England did to her heart's content; but the discredit must be shared by the epoch which strove to strut in the sad conceit that gladness was the sin against the Holy Ghost.