as meant to appear
little or insignificant? Once, indeed, she accuses him to his face--of
what?--of being "sick of self-love,"--but with a gentleness and
considerateness which could not have been, if she had not thought
that this particular infirmity shaded some virtues. His rebuke to the
knight, and his sottish revellers, is sensible and spirited; and when
we take into consideration the unprotected condition of his mistress,
and the strict regard with which her state of real or dissembled
mourning would draw the eyes of the world upon her house-affairs,
Malvolio might feel the honour of the family in some sort in his
keeping; as it appears not that Olivia had any more brothers, or
kinsmen, to look to it--for Sir Toby had dropped all such nice
respects at the buttery hatch. That Malvolio was meant to be
represented as possessing estimable qualities, the expression of the
Duke in his anxiety to have him reconciled, almost infers. "Pursue
him, and entreat him to a peace." Even in his abused state of chains
and darkness, a sort of greatness seems never to desert him. He
argues highly and well with the supposed Sir Topas, and philosophises
gallantly upon his straw.[1] There must have been some shadow of worth
about the man; he must have been something more than a mere vapour--a
thing of straw, or Jack in office--before Fabian and Maria could have
ventured sending him upon a courting-errand to Olivia. There was some
consonancy (as he would say) in the undertaking, or the jest would
have been too bold even for that house of misrule.

Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part an air of Spanish loftiness.
He looked, spake, and moved like an old Castilian. He was starch,
spruce, opinionated, but his superstructure of pride seemed bottomed
upon a sense of worth. There was something in it beyond the coxcomb.
It was big and swelling, but you could not be sure that it was hollow.
You might wish to see it taken down, but you felt that it was upon an
elevation. He was magnificent from the outset; but when the decent
sobrieties of the character began to give way, and the poison of
self-love, in his conceit of the Countess's affection, gradually to
work, you would have thought that the hero of La Mancha in person
stood before you. How he went smiling to himself! with what ineffable
carelessness would he twirl his gold chain! what a dream it was! you
were infected with the illusion, and did not wish that it should be
removed! you had no