n too many for the peace of the world.

I come at length to the Clerk of Oxenford. This character varies from
that of Chaucer, as the contemplative philosopher varies from the
poetical genius. There are always these two classes of learned sages,
the poetical and the philosophical. The Painter has put them side by
side, as if the youthful clerk had put himself under the tuition of
the mature poet. Let the Philosopher always be the servant and scholar
of Inspiration, and all will be happy.

CHARLES LAMB

1775-1834

ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE,

CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR FITNESS FOR STAGE REPRESENTATION
(1811)

Taking a turn the other day in the Abbey, I was struck with the
affected attitude of a figure, which I do not remember to have seen
before, and which upon examination proved to be a whole-length of the
celebrated Mr. Garrick. Though I would not go so far with some good
Catholics abroad as to shut players altogether out of consecrated
ground, yet I own I was not a little scandalized at the introduction
of theatrical airs and gestures into a place set apart to remind us of
the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found inscribed under this
harlequin figure the following lines:

To paint fair Nature, by divine command,
Her magic pencil in his glowing hand,
A Shakespeare rose: then, to expand his fame
Wide o'er this breathing world, a Garrick came.
Though sunk in death the forms the Poet drew,
The Actor's genius bade them breathe anew;
Though, like the bard himself, in night they lay,
Immortal Garrick call'd them back to day:
And till Eternity with power sublime
Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary Time,
Shakespeare and Garrick like twin-stars shall shine,
And earth irradiate with a beam divine.

It would be an insult to my readers' understandings to attempt
anything like a criticism on this farrago of false thoughts and
nonsense. But the reflection it led me into was a kind of wonder, how,
from the days of the actor here celebrated to our own, it should have
been the fashion to compliment every performer in his turn, that has
had the luck to please the town in any of the great characters of
Shakespeare, with the notion of possessing a _mind congenial with the
poet's_: how people should come thus unaccountably to confound the
power of originating poetical images and conceptions with the faculty
of being able to read or recite the same when p