orld--this is the acme and supreme
point of your mystery--these the true PLEASURES of SULKINESS. We
profess no more of this grand secret than what ourself experimented
on one rainy afternoon in the last week, sulking in our study. We had
proceeded to the penultimate point, at which the true adept seldom
stops, where the consideration of benefit forgot is about to merge
in the meditation of general injustice--when a knock at the door was
followed by the entrance of the very friend, whose not seeing of us in
the morning, (for we will now confess the case our own), an accidental
oversight, had given rise to so much agreeable generalization!
To mortify us still more, and take down the whole flattering
superstructure which pride had piled upon neglect, he had brought in
his hand the identical S----, in whose favour we had suspected him of
the contumacy. Asseverations were needless, where the frank manner of
them both was convictive of the injurious nature of the suspicion. We
fancied that they perceived our embarrassment; but were too proud, or
something else, to confess to the secret of it. We had been but too
lately in the condition of the noble patient in Argos:

Qui se credebat miros audire tragoedos.
In vacuo laetus sessor plausorque theatro--

and could have exclaimed with equal reason against the friendly hands
that cured us--

Pol me occidistis, amici,
Non servastis, ait; cui sic extorta voluptas,
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error.

APPENDIX

LAMB'S ESSAYS ON "THE OLD ACTORS" AS ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN THE _LONDON
MAGAZINE_. (SEE NOTE ON PAGE 444.)

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS

(_London Magazine_, Feb., 1822)

Of all the actors who flourished in my time--a melancholy phrase
if taken aright, reader--Bensley had most of the swell of soul,
was greatest in the delivery of heroic conceptions, the emotions
consequent upon the presentment of a great idea to the fancy. He had
the true poetical enthusiasm--the rarest faculty among players. None
that I remember possessed even a portion of that fine madness which
he threw out in Hotspur's famous rant about glory, or the transports
of the Venetian incendiary at the vision of the fired city.[1] His
voice had the dissonance, and at times the inspiriting effect of
the trumpet. His gait was uncouth and stiff, but no way embarrassed
by affectation; and the thorough-bred gentleman was uppermost in
every movement. He seized the moment of passio