his conception of what they might have been, and ought
to have been.

The mind often does not think, when it thinks that it is thinking. If we
were to give our whole soul to anything, as the bee does to the flower,
I conceive there would be little difficulty in any intellectual
employment. Hence there is no excuse for obscurity in writing.

'Macbeth,' is the best conducted of Shakspeare's plays. The fault of
'Julius Caesar,' 'Hamlet,' and 'Lear,' is, that the interest is not, and
by the nature of the case could not be, sustained to their conclusion.
The death of Julius Caesar is too _overwhelming_ an incident for _any_
stage of the drama but the _last_. It is an incident to which the mind
clings, and from which it will not be torn away to share in other
sorrows. The same may be said of the madness of Lear. Again, the opening
of 'Hamlet' is full of exhausting interest. There is more mind in
'Hamlet' than in any other play, more knowledge of human nature. The
first act is incomparable.... There is too much of an every-day sick
room in the death-bed scene of Catherine, in 'Henry the Eighth'--too
much of leeches and apothecaries' vials.... 'Zanga' is a bad imitation
of 'Othello.' Garrick never ventured on Othello: he could not submit to
a blacked face. He rehearsed the part once. During the rehearsal Quin
entered, and, having listened for some time with attention, exclaimed,
'Well done, David! but where's the teakettle?' alluding to the print of
Hogarth, where a black boy follows his mistress with a teakettle in his
hand.... In stature Garrick was short.... A fact which conveys a high
notion of his powers is, that he was able to _act out_ the absurd
stage-costume of those days. He represented Coriolanus in the attire of
Cheapside. I remember hearing from Sir G. Beaumont, that while he was
venting, as Lear, the violent paroxysms of his rage in the awful tempest
scene, his wig happened to fall off. The accident did not produce the
slightest effect on the gravity of the house, so strongly had he
impregnated every breast with his own emotions.

Some of my friends (H.C. for instance) doubt whether poetry on
contemporary persons and events can be good. But I instance Spenser's
'Marriage,' and Milton's 'Lycidas.' True, the 'Persae' is one of the
worst of Aeschylus's plays; at least, in my opinion.

Milton is falsely represented by some as a democrat. He was an
aristocrat in the truest sense of the word. See the quotation from h