is
rendered supremely happy at the time; while he manifestly has not
force enough to remember it with any twinges of shame or
self-reproach. And we feel that, while clawing his fatuous crotchets
and playing out his absurdities, Sir Toby is really doing Sir Andrew
no wrong, since the latter is then most himself, is in his happiest
mood, and in the most natural freedom of his indigenous gifts and
graces. All which quite precludes any division of our sympathies, and
just makes our comic enjoyment of their intercourse simply perfect.

* * * * *

Malvolio, the self-love-sick Steward, has hardly had justice done him,
his bad qualities being indeed of just the kind to defeat the
recognition of his good ones. He represents a perpetual class of
people, whose leading characteristic is moral demonstrativeness, and
who are never satisfied with a law that leaves them free to do right,
unless it also give them the power to keep others from doing wrong. To
quote again from Mr. Verplanck, Malvolio embodies "a conception as
true as it is original and droll; and its truth may still be
frequently attested by comparison with real Malvolios, to be found
everywhere from humble domestic life up to the high places of
learning, of the State, and even of the Church." From the central idea
of the character it follows in course that the man has too much
conscience to mind his own business, and is too pure to tolerate mirth
in others, because too much swollen and stiffened with self-love to be
merry himself. His highest exhilaration is when he contemplates the
image of his self-imputed virtues: he lives so entranced with the
beauty of his own inward parts, that he would fain hold himself the
wrong side out, to the end that all the world may duly appreciate and
admire him. Naturally, too, the more he hangs over his own moral
beauty, the more pharisaical and sanctimonious he becomes in his
opinion and treatment of others. For the glass which magnifies to his
view whatever of good there may be in himself, also serves him as an
inverted telescope to _minify_ the good of those about him; and, which
is more, the self-same spirit that prompts him to invert the
instrument upon other men's virtues, naturally moves him to turn the
big end upon their faults and the small end upon his own. Of course,
therefore, he is never without food for censure and reproof save when
he is alone with himself, where, to be sure, his intense c