dear to half-belief--which
Bannister exhibited--displays before our eyes a downright concretion
of a Wapping sailor--a jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar--and nothing
else--when instead of investing it with a delicious confusedness of
the head, and a veering undirected goodness of purpose--he gives to
it a downright daylight understanding, and a full consciousness of its
actions; thrusting forward the sensibilities of the character with a
pretence as if it stood upon nothing else, and was to be judged by
them alone--we feel the discord of the thing; the scene is disturbed;
a real man has got in among the dramatis personae, and puts them out.
We want the sailor turned out. We feel that his true place is not
behind the curtain, but in the first or second gallery.

(_To be resumed occasionally_.)

ELIA.

[Footnote 1:
How lovelily the Adriatic whore
Dress'd in her flames will shine--devouring flames--
Such as will burn her to her wat'ry bottom,
And hiss in her foundation.

_Pierre, in Venice Preserved._]

[Footnote 2: _Viola_. She took the ring from me; I'll none of it.

_Mal_. Come, Sir, you peevishly threw it to her; and her will is, it
should be so returned. If it be worth stooping for, there it lies in
your eye; if not, be it his that finds it.]

[Footnote 3: Mrs. Inchbald seems to have fallen into the common
mistake of the character in some sensible observations, otherwise,
upon this Comedy. "It might be asked," she says, "whether this
credulous steward was much deceived in imputing a degraded taste, in
the sentiments of love, to his fair lady Olivia, as she actually did
fall in love with a domestic; and one, who from his extreme youth,
was perhaps a greater reproach to her discretion, than had she cast a
tender regard upon her old and faithful servant." But where does she
gather the fact of his age? Neither Maria nor Fabian ever cast that
reproach upon him.]

[Footnote 4: _Clown._ What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning
wild fowl?

_Mal._ That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.

_Clown._ What thinkest thou of his opinion?

_Mal._ I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of his opinion.]

[Footnote 5: Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice
collection of old English literature. I should judge him to have been
a man of wit. I know one instance of an impromptu which no length of
study could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem White, had seen him
one eveni