henceforth with a permanent existence, to live in the minds of men, while verse shall have power to charm, or Midsummer moons shall brighten. What particular endearments passed between the Fairies and their Poet, passes my pencil to delineate; but if you are 'curious to be informed, I must refer you, gentle reader, to the "Plea of the [Midsummer] Fairies," a most agreeable Poem, lately put forth by my friend, Thomas Hood: of the first half of which the above is nothing but a meagre, and a harsh, prose-abstract. Farewell. ELIA. The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH CHA (1827) 'HARLES LAMB born in the Inner Temple 10 Feb. 1775 educated in Christ's Hospital afterwards a clerk in the Accountants office East India House pensioned off from that service 1825 after 33 years service, is now a Gentleman at large, can remember few specialities in his life worth noting except that he once caught a swallow flying (teste suâ manu); below the middle stature, cast of face slightly Jewish, with no Judaic tinge in his complexional religion; stammers abominably and is therefore more apt to discharge his occasional conversation in a quaint aphorism or a poor quibble than in set and edifying speeches; has consequently been libelled as a person always aiming at wit, which, as he told a dull fellow that charged him with it, is at least as good as aiming at dulness; a small eater but not drinker; confesses a partiality for the production of the juniper berry, was a fierce smoker of Tobacco, but may be resembled to a volcano burnt out, emitting only now and then a casual puff. been guilty of obtruding upon the Public a Tale in Prose, called Rosamund Gray, a Dramatic Sketch named John Has Woodvil, a Farewell Ode to Tobacco, with sundry other Poems and light prose matter, collected in Two slight crown Octavos and pompously christened his Works, tho' in fact they were his Recreations and his true works may be found on the shelves of Leadenhall Street, filling some hundred Folios. He is also the true Elia whose Essays are extant in a little volume published a year or two since; and rather better known from that name without a meaning, than from anything he has done or can hope to do in his own. He also was the first to draw the Public attention to the old English Dramatists in a work called "Specimens of English Dramatic Writers who lived about the time of Shakspeare," published about 15 years since. In short all his merits and demerits to set forth would take to the end of Mr. Upcott's book and then not be told truly. He died1 much lamented. 18 Witness his hand, CHARLES LAMB. 10th Apr 1827. SIR 2 SHAKSPEARE'S IMPROVERS (1828) To the Editor of The Spectator IR,-Partaking in your indignation at the sickly stuff interpolated by Tate in the genuine play of King Lear, I beg to lay before you certain kindred enormities that you may be less aware of, which that co-dilutor of Sternhold and Hopkins, with his compeers, were suffered-nay, encouraged --by an English public of a century and a half ago, to perpetrate upon the dramas of Shakspeare. I speak from imperfect recollection of one of these new versions which I have seen, namely, Coriolanus-by the same hand which touched up King Lear; in which he, the said Nahum, not deeming his author's catastrophe enough striking, makes 1 To any Body-Please to fill up these blanks. 2 New Version of the Singing Psalms, by Nahum Tate, and Nicholas Brady. Aufidius (if my memory fail me not) violate the person of the wife, and mangle the body of the little son, of his Roman rival! Shadwell, another improver, in his version of Timon of Athens, a copy of which (1673) is lying before me, omits the character of Flavius, the kind-hearted Steward-that fine exception to the air of general perfidy in the play, which would else be too oppressive to reader or spectator; and substitutes for it a kind female, who is supposed to be attached to Timon to the last: thus making the moral of the piece to consist in showing-not the hollowness of friendships conciliated by a mere undistinguishing prodigality, but—the superiority of woman's love to the friendships of men. Evandra too has a rival in the affections of the noble Athenian. So impossible did these blockheads imagine it to be, to interest the feelings of an audience without an intrigue, that the misanthrope Timon must whine, and the daughterly Cordelia must whimper, their love affections, before they could hope to touch the gentle hearts in the boxes! Had one of these gentry taken in hand to improve the fine Scriptural story of Joseph and his Brethren, we should have had a love passion introduced, to make the mere fraternal interest of the piece go down-an episode of the amours of Reuben, or Issachar, with the fair Mizraim of Egypt. Thus Evandra closes the eyes of Shadwell's dying Timon; who, it seems, has poisoned himself. Evan. Oh my dear Lord! why do you stoop and bend Timon. So now my weary pilgrimage on earth Is almost finish'd! Now, my best Evandra, I charge thee by our loves, our mutual loves, A thought of Timon comes into thy mind, Banish it. (What then? why then) And so, after some more drivel of the same stamp, the noble Timon dies. And was not this a dainty dish to set before an audience of the Duke's Theatre in the year 167? Yet Betterton then acted Timon, and his wife Evandra. I now come to the London acting edition of Macbeth of the same date, 1678 (played, if I remember, by the same players, at the same house); from which I made a few rough extracts, when I visited the British Museum for the sake of selecting from the "Garrick Plays." As I can scarcely expect to be believed upon my own word, as to what our ancestors at that time were willing to accept for Shakspeare, I refer the reader to that collection to verify my report. Who the improver was in this instance, we are left to guess, for the title-page leaves us to conjecture. Possibly the players, each one separately, contributed his new reading, which was silently adopted. Flesh and blood could not at this time of day submit to a thorough perusal of the thing; but, from a glance or two of casual inspection, I am enabled to lay before the reader a few flowers. In one of the lyric parts, Hecate is made to say— Hecate, the solemn president of classic enchantments, thence adopted into the romantic-the tri-form Hecate-wearing spectacles to assist old sight !—(No. 4 or No. 5, as the opticians class them, is not said)-one may as well fancy Cerberus in a bran new collar, or the "dreaded name of Demogorgon" in jack-boots. Among the "ingredients of the caldron," is enumerated, not a tiger's, but-what reader?— -a Dutchman's chawdron ! We were about that time engaged in a war with Holland.— Again, Macduff being about to journey across the heath-the "blasted heath". answers his lady, who courteously demands of him, “Are you a-foot?” Knowing the way to be both short and easy, I have adventured From which we may infer, that the Thane of Fife lived as a nobleman ought to do, and-kept a carriage. Again, the same nobleman, on the morning after Duncan's murder, says:-"Rising this morning early, I went to look out of my window. I could scarce see further than my breath." And indeed the original author informs us, that it had been a "rough night;" so that the improver does not wander far from his text. The exquisite familiarity of this prose patch was doubtlessly intended by the improver to break the tire some monotony of Shakspeare's blank verse. In conclusion, Lady Macbeth is brought in repentant, and counselling her husband to give up the crown for conscience sake!—Item, she sees a ghost, which is all the time invisible to him. Such was the Macbeth which Betterton acted, and a contemporary audience took on trust for Shakspeare's. C. L. SATURDAY NIGHT (1829) 'HERE is a Saturday Night-I speak not to the admirers of Burns-erotically or theologically considered; HIS of the "Cotter's" may be a very charming picture, granting it to be but half true. Nor speak I now of the Saturday Night at Sea, which Dibdin hath dressed up with a gusto more poignant to the mere nautical palate of un-Calvanized South Britons. Nor that it is marketing night with the pretty tripping Servant-maids all over London, who, with judicious and economic eye, select the white and well-blown fillet, that the blue-aproned contunder of the calf can safely recommend as "prime veal," and which they are to be sure not to overbrown on the morrow. Nor speak I of the hard-handed Artisan, who on this night receives the pittance which is to furnish the neat Sabbatical dinner-not always reserved with Judaical rigor for that laudable purpose, but broken in upon, perchance, by inviting pot of ale, satisfactory to the present orifice. These are alleviatory, care-consoling. But the Hebdomadal Finale which I contemplate hath neither comfort nor alleviation in it; I pronounce it, from memory, altogether punitive, and to be abhorred. It is-Saturday Night to the School-boy! It Cleanliness, saith some sage man, is next to Godliness. may be; but how it came to sit so very near, is the marvel. Methinks some of the more human virtues might have put in for a place before it. Justice-Humanity-Temperanceare positive qualities; the courtesies and little civil offices of life, had I been Master of the Ceremonies to that Court, |