everything, levels all things: it makes tricks, bows, and curt'seys, of importance. Mrs. S. never got more fame by anything than by the manner in which she dismisses the guests in the banquet-scene in Macbeth: it is as much remembered as any of her thrilling tones or impressive looks. But does such a trifle as this enter into the imaginations of the reader of that wild and wonderful scene? Does not the mind dismiss the feasters as rapidly as it can? Does it care about the gracefulness of the doing it? But by acting, and judging of acting, all these non-essentials are raised into an importance, injurious to the main interest of the play. I have confined my observations to the tragic parts of Shakspere. It would be no very difficult task to extend the inquiry to his comedies; and to show why Falstaff, Shallow, Sir Hugh Evans, and the rest are equally incompatible with stage representation. The length to which this Essay has run, will make it, I am afraid, sufficiently distasteful to the Amateurs of the Theatre, without going any deeper into the subject at present. INTRODUCTORY NOTE THOMAS DE QUINCEY (1785-1859) was born at Manchester, England, the son of a merchant of literary tastes. He was a precocious student, but, revolting from the tyranny of his schoolmaster, he ran away, and wandered in Wales and in London, at times almost destitute. On his. reconciliation with his family he was sent to Oxford, and during this period began taking opium. The rest of his life was spent mainly in the Lake Country, near Wordsworth and Coleridge, later in London, and finally in Edinburgh and the neighborhood. He succeeded in checking but not abandoning his addiction to the drug, the craving for which was caused by a chronic disease which nothing else would alleviate. Most of De Quincey's writings were published in periodicals, and cover a great range of subjects. He was a man of immense reading, with an intellect of extraordinary subtlety, but with a curious lack of practical ability. Though generous to recklessness in money matters, and an affectionate friend and father, his predominating intellectuality led him even in his writings to analyze the characters of his friends with a detachment that sometimes led to estrangement. His most famous work, "The Confessions of an English Opium Eater" (1821) was based on his own experiences, and it has long held its place as a classic. Here, and still more in his literary and philosophical writings, he shows a remarkable clearness and precision of style, his love of exact thinking at times leading him to hair-splitting in his more abstruse discussions. In what he called the "department of impassioned prose," of which the following piece is one of the most magnificent examples, he has a field in which he is unsurpassed. To the power of thought and expression found throughout his work is here added a gorgeousness of imagination that lifts his finest passages into the region of the sublime. LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW FTENTIMES at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams. I knew her by her Roman symbols. Who is Levana? Reader, that do not pretend to have much leisure for very much scholarship, you will not be angry with me for telling you. Levana was the Roman goddess that performed for the new-born infant the earliest office of ennobling kindness, typical, by its mode, of that grandeur which belongs to man everywhere, and of that benignity in powers invisible which even in pagan worlds sometimes descends to sustain it. At the very moment of birth, just as the infant tasted for the first time the atmosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid on the ground. But immediately, lest so grand a creature should grovel there for more than one instant, either the paternal hand, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or some near kinsman, as proxy for the father, raised it upright, bade it look erect as the king of all this world, and presented its forehead to the stars, saying, perhaps, in his heart, "Behold what is greater than yourselves!" This symbolic act represented the function of Levana. And that mysterious lady, who never revealed her face (except to me in dreams), but always acted by delegation, had her name from the Latin verb (as still it is the Italian verb) levare, to raise aloft. This is the explanation of Levana, and hence it has arisen that some people have understood by Levana the tutelary power that controls the education of the nursery. She, that would not suffer at his birth even a prefigurative or mimic degradation for her awful ward, far less could be supposed to suffer the real degradation attaching to the non-development of his powers. She therefore watches over |