inely
as those about him love, and whose thieving tricks the very gods seem
to crown with thrift in reward of his wit. His self-raillery and droll
soliloquizing give us the feeling that his sins are committed not so
much for lucre as for fun.--The Poet was perhaps a little too fond of
placing his characters in situations where they have to be false in
order to be the truer; which no doubt sometimes happens; yet, surely,
in so delicate a point of morality, some care is needful, lest the
exceptions become too much for the rule. And something too much of
this there may be in the honest, upright, yet deceiving old lord,
Camillo. I speak this under correction; for I know it is not safe to
fault Shakespeare's morals; and that they who affect a better morality
than his are very apt to turn out either hypocrites or moral coxcombs.
As for the rest, this Camillo, though little more than a staff in the
drama, is nevertheless a pillar of State; his integrity and wisdom
making him a light to the counsels and a guide to the footsteps of the
greatest around him. Fit to be the stay of princes, he is one of those
venerable relics of the past which show us how beautiful age can be,
and which, linking together different generations, format once the
salt of society and the strength of government.

I have never seen this play on the stage; but I can well understand
how the scene with the painted statue, if fairly delivered, might be
surpassingly effective. The illusion is all on the understandings of
the spectators; and they seem to feel the _power_ without the _fact_
of animation, or to have a _sense_ of mobility in a _vision_
of fixedness. And such is the magic of the scene, that we almost fancy
them turning into marble, as they fancy the marble turning into flesh.

END OF VOL. I.

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