6

I am afraid that, in this clever remark | speaks; not with the beginning, but the end of our German critic has not escaped the risk a long respiration; and in half-suffocated tremto which he refers. It is excellent criticism, ulous accents, he exclaims faintly, Angels and but a bad illustration; and though it shows ministers of grace defend us!' These words an admirable appreciation of the subtlety complete the tremendous effect of the scene, which of Garrick's genius, it also betrays a they render the grandest and most terrible that praiseworthy ignorance of the nature of the was ever witnessed on the stage. gourmand; who assuredly would not employ the sense of touch at all for the satisfaction of his doubts as to the edible condition of a roast capon. But let us now hear what Lichtenberg has to tell us about Garrick in the part of Hamlet.

IV.

"HAMLET appears,' says our informant, "in a suit of mourning, the only one which is to be seen at Court within a few months after the death of the late king. With him are Horatio and Marcellus; the two latter in uniform. They are awaiting the arrival of the ghost. Hamlet is walking up and down the stage, with his arms tightly folded high over his chest, and his hat pulled down low over his eyes, like a man who is struggling with strong inward emotion. The stage is darkened. The hour is midnight, and the night is bitter cold. You feel that the night is cold, and that there is witchery in the air. For there is something chilling and thrilling in the profound silence of the immense audi

ence.

I cannot help thinking that Goethe must have had "in his mind's eye " this portrait by Lichtenberg of Garrick's Hamlet, when he wrote his own admirable description of the same scene in Wilhelm Meister. But what a contrast it presents to us between the temperaments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries! This Georg Christian Lichtenberg was a man of robust sense and wide culture, a satirist, a sceptic, a mathematician. Yet see how naif and childlike is the terror with which he is impressed by the scene he has described to us! Nowadays the most unlettered bagman would be above such weakness; and had the genial critic of the Saturday Review been present, in all probability his only emotion in contemplating such a scene would have been one of curiosity about the mechanical contrivance for bringing the ghost upon the stage; and some anticipatory pleasure in the opporThe several thousand faces around us are tunity, doubtless about to be afforded by strained and fixed as still as faces painted on a the clumsiness of it, for his subsequent wall. All respiration seems suspended; and the ridicule of the stage-manager. The late hush of the whole house is so intense that you Mr. Charles Kean has actually been bemight hear a pin drop in the furthest corner of praised by the whole chorus of English it. Hamlet is now in the far background of critics for what they are pleased, in all the stage, a little to the left. He has his back seriousness, to call his "restoration of turned to the audience. At this moment, HoraShakespeare that is to say, for burytio starts, and points to the right, where the ghost suddenly becomes visible to us all, I knowing the spirit of Shakespeare under a huge not how, but as though it had all this while rubbish-heap of painted pasteboardbeen there, though hitherto unperceived. Look, sad, though gaudy mausoleum of cormy lord, it comes!' Horatio cries. Garrick, at rupted taste and departed good-sense; these words, rapidly turns round; and, instantly which neither the gibbering and squeakconfronted by the ghost, he staggers backward ing of a wretchedly incompetent actor, nor three or four paces. His knees knock together; | the impudent puffing of an importunate his legs seem giving way beneath him. His hat falls to the ground. His two arms are stretched out before him horizontally-the right arm quite straight, and the right hand on a level with his head; the left arm slightly curved, and the hand lower. The fingers of both hands are spread wide. The mouth gapes open. In this entreating, deprecating attitude, he remains for awhile perfectly motionless; like a man suddenly petrified by the terror from which he was endeavouring to escape. His two friends, who are already familiarized with the apparition, support his sinking frame. His countenance expresses such intense horror that, long before he uttered a word, I was seized with a cold shuddering. The silence of the audience was freezing and awful. All present experienced, in that moment, a general sensation of insecurity and fearful curiosity. Then, at length, he

a

press, nor yet the lamentable success of the whole concern as a commercial speculation, have prevented from being discreditable to the age which accepted it as an interpretation of Shakespeare.

But to return to Garrick :

Lichtenberg continues," The ghost beckons Hamlet to follow him. Could you but have seen Garrick in the movement, when he endeavours to rid himself of the two friends who are holding him back! It is only mechanically, and unconsciously, that he goes on speaking and struggling with Horatio and Marcellus. All this while his eyes are intensely fixed upon the ghost, and his whole being is in the look of those eyes. At last, however, he loses patience with this friendly hindrance which, till then, he has scarcely realized. He turns upon his two

"But," he shrewdly adds," here comes the difficulty. Acting like Garrick's, and writing like Shakespeare's, are the effects of causes profoundly hidden. It is easy to imitate them; or rather, not them, but the more or less plausible simulacrum of them, which the copyist produces with a fidelity in proportion to his own powers. This simulacrum of genius is often attained by talent; but between it and the true original there is always an impassible distance. What the house-painter produces may be as carefully finished, in its own way, as a picture by Raphael. But between it and Raphael's painting there can never be any comparison. Every actor who commands the plaudits of a large audience is not, for that reason, a Garrick. Nor is every author a Shakespeare, who blabs to the public some pretended secret of human nature, in a superannuated prose, chock-full of ostentatious violations of good taste. Smith is one of those clever imitative actors who have no intuitive, or personally acquired, knowledge of human nature, and only know the world at second hand. Before he had attained to his present well-merited reputation, he once played the scene we have been talking of. He resolved

friends, shakes them off with impetuosity, and draws his sword upon them with a movement as flashingly rapid as his sudden perception of the impediment which they are placing in the way of his uncontrollable impulse. The effect of this movement upon the audience is striking, as he exclaims, By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me!' That is enough for Horatio and Marcellus; for there is no withstanding the tone in which those words are uttered. They loose their hold upon the prince, who, with drawn sword pointed in the direction of the ghost, then mutters, Go on, I'll follow thee.' The ghost now recedes, and slowly disappears. Hamlet, however, remains, as it were, transfixed upon the spot whence he has last addressed the receding phantom; his sword still stretched before him, as though to put a certain distance between himself and the spectre in whose track he feels irresistibly urged forwards. Then, just as the spectator loses sight of the ghost altogether, the immovable figure of the prince begins to follow it; slowly, hesitatingly, like a man who is jerked onward from within, and is fearfully feeling his way over dangerous ground. From time to time he halts; then again advances, creepingly, with labouring to model his action upon that of Garrick, but he breath; his gaze still fixed upon the spot where the ghost was last seen; his hair dishevelled; until, at last, him also we slowly lose sight of behind the scenes.

I know not whether the readers of this paper have been more fortunate than myself; I hope they have; but I have never seen the scene above described, either on the English or the German stage, but what the struggle between Hamlet and his two companions appeared to me like a scuffle between three railway porters. It is a scene which is fatally provocative of attempts at originality upon the part of commonplace performers. I have seen and heard a German actor much applauded in it, for grasping his sword by the blade and brandishing the cross on the hilt of it in the face of the ghost, by way of superstitious safeguard in the acceptance of a supernatural invitation. This was by many critics declared to be a stroke of genius.

Lichtenberg tells us, what we are glad to hear, that the impression made by Garrick in the scene which our German critic has so well described, was made upon the most intellectually sensitive audience in Europe. Times are changed; but we may at least be proud of the past. Our German thinks that the sight of Garrick's acting in this scene, was enough to kindle in every spectator whatever latent spark of histrionic talent nature might have given him, and that, in that moment, every man present wished to be an actor.

was also anxious to display his own originality by adding something new. So, when the ghost appeared, he took off his hat to him in order to show becoming respect to the shade of his departed parent. In remembrance of that feat Mr. Smith got the nickname of Mr. Hamlet.' But 'tis a nickname which the town has already forgotten."

"Garrick's wondrous grace of manner and though he had received it gratis from the hand movement, says Lichtenberg, "seems

of nature. But I am certain that it has cost
him long self-training and careful study of the
best types of high breeding in the best society
of London; just as the style which we all so
much admire in the oligographs of antiquity is
assuredly not so much the wild fruit of a rich
climate as the carefully developed flower of a
splendid culture and the choice residuum of fas-
tidious selection the little saved out of much
discarded. Add to this the presence of mind
derived from a perfect consciousness of his own
whole public look up to him; the very few
superiority. He has nothing to fear. The
whose personal value is above his own belong to
that class which knows how to notice and be
silent. In all he does and says you will not find
the slightest trace of that nervous anxiety to
please, which is so often displeasing in even
good actors. When he acts the courtier or fine
gentleman he is what he represents
-a thor-

ough man of the world and perfect grand seigneur, at home tonight in his own pasteboard court at Drury Lane, a guest to-morrow at the brilliant court of St. James's.

"In that admirable monologue, O that this too, too, solid flesh would melt,' &c., he works out, if I may use a mathematical term, a whole series of small equations, which serve to bring

the action of average human nature up to the

has plucked out the heart of Hamlet's mystery; and that the famous chapters in Wilhelm Meister have exhausted all that is to be said upon the subject. This opinion, so far as I know, is either tacitly or expressly adopted by every modern critic who has undertaken to prove, by analytical demonstration, the exquisite art of the highest degree of individualized intensity. tragedy. I must confess, however, that Tears of righteous affliction for the loss of so my immense reverence for Goethe as an beloved and admirable a father (whose unweep- unrivalled critic, has never quite coning widow is a wife again before her weeds are vinced me that his hypothesis is thorougha year old); tears the most difficult of all to ly exhaustive of all the facts which Shakessuppress, because, in such a struggle between peare sets before us in this tragedy; or, conflicting duties, they are the only solace of an perhaps, I should rather say that it seems honest heart; tears restrained, yet ever starting to me to leave unclosed between those from the bitter sources of a boundless resent- facts, sundry gaps in which there is still ment; overwhelm the utterance of Garrick when room for doubts and guesses. Accepting he exclaims, So excellent a king!' The last Goethe's explanation, we must attribute word of the sentence is submerged in a choking to Hamlet an affection for his dead father, sob, inaudible, and yet visible in the inarticulate quiver of the lips, which immediately but also so pure and free from selfish adnot only so intense and overwhelming, afterwards close convulsively, as though to break off too literal a translation of the secret grief, which thus vented might degenerate into unmanliness. "So excellent a k...!' This revelation of unwept tears discovers to us simultaneously the heavy weight of a deep inward woe and the strength of the soul which is enduring it. At the close of the monologue a just impatience mingles its tones with those of Hamlet's lamentation; but just as his uplifted arm falls, like the stroke of a hatchet, to accentuate the climax of his scorn and indignation, the expected word which should accompany the action is, to the astonishment of the audience, not forthcoming. It fails altogether for an instant, re-emerging the instant after from the deepest depths of a profound emotion, all heavy and weak with the inward tears in which it has been plunged. At that moment my neighbour and I, who till that moment had not uttered a word to each other, suddenly grasped hands, and simultaneously ejaculated some inarticulate cry I know not what. The effect was irresistible and utterly indescribable."

mixture, as to leave dramatically inexplicable, even after every allowance made for the postulated weakness of his character, Hamlet's continuous trifling with the urgent duty laid upon him by the ghost; if it were not that the effect of this emotion is continually checked, and held in suspense, by a conflicting sentiment of lingering tenderness and filial compassion for his mother; whose fate is terribly involved in the vengeance which her son is secretly sworn to execute upon her present husband. In the conflict of these two forces, whose opposed activities result in prolonged inaction, we have the elements of a highly dramatic, and intensely tragic situation. But what evidence has Shakespeare given us of the strength and quality which we hereby attribute to these antagonistic emotions? We have no indication whatever of any excessive tenderness for his mother, on the part of Hamlet. On the Our estimate of Garrick's genius should, contrary; with all her faults, the Queen I think, be heightened by the foregoing appears to cherish for her son a sort of description; for it indicates the incommen- feminine fondness which is, on the whole, surable elevation of effect which may be stronger than any affection which she given to the written word of even the either merits or receives from him in regreatest author, when it is uttered by a turn. Of Hamlet's previous relations with great actor. There is some danger, per- his father we know very little; and the haps, lest the once careless depreciation little that we do know does not imply any of Shakespeare's marvellous art, be now extraordinary intimacy between them. succeeded by an equally careless and The late king was, we are told, a model much too uninquisitive and slavish assump- monarch, and we have every reason to betion of its absolute perfection. What is lieve that he was also a conscientious and the raison d'être of Hamlet's conduct? affectionate parent. As a general rule, all Goethe has described it as the oppression good fathers are loved by all good sons. suffered by the mind of Hamlet under the But filial affection, especially of a son for weight of a deed which he feels himself a father, is not, as a general rule, so intense unable to carry out. Gervinus has de-a sentiment as to become the exclusive clared that, with this explanation, Goethe motive power of a man's whole life.

To

render dramatically natural the assumed natures to justify the manifestation of exceptional intensity of such a sentiment, such disgust. A. son may tenderly love it must be associated by the dramatist his widowed mother. But he loves her with our knowledge of something excep- with a protecting tenderness, which is tional in the circumstances out of which it probably connected with the flattering springs. What were those circumstances consciousness of her exclusive dependence in the case of Hamlet? upon his affection. He must naturally reIt is obvious that during his father's life- gard her as a part of his domestic property, time the prince's social position must have perhaps the most precious part of it; but been an extremely pleasant one. He was still a property, the ownership of which he heir-apparent to a throne which had been is, in his heart of hearts, indisposed to surrendered popular and illustrious by the render to the claim of a stranger. And virtues of its occupant. In the fruits of this sentiment is quite independent of the that popularity his position, as the only affection whereby it is often, though not son of "so excellent a king," constituted always, accompanied. A man may possess him, by inheritance, co-partner. He doubt- even a chimney ornament which he does less revered and loved the parent to whose not greatly care about, yet the cool approthrone he would succeed in the course of priation of which by some intrusive neighnature. Meanwhile, he stood conspicuous bour he would doubtless resent, and which at the right hand of that throne; and, he would certainly object to see displayed, next to the king his father, the foremost without his permission, on another man's figure in the Court of Denmark. The mantelpiece. Now, if we fairly examine sudden death of the king, and his mother's the situation of Hamlet at the opening of subsequent marriage, grievously reverse this position. Claudius, who had hitherto been a mere accessory to the court of the elder Hamlet, an insignificant family appendage, now mounts the throne to which Hamlet had considered himself the rightful heir. And the prince, who was everything yesterday, is nobody to-day. It is not merely a parent, it is all that is pleasant in life which Hamlet thus loses. No excessive filial affection is needed to account for excessive resentment on the part of a man thus wrongfully deprived of his rightful position in the world; which then, indeed, becomes out of joint to him. And, in many of his utterances throughout the play, Hamlet fully betrays the natural but intense soreness, with which he is habitually brooding over the loss of his personal importance and legitimate position. But this, though a natural, is a more or less selfish sentiment. And if we add to it the suspicion of foul play, then the vehemence of Hamlet's hatred for his uncle would doubtless intensify the utterance of that professed affection for his father, whereby this hatred must be justified in his own eyes. Again, as regards Hamlet's sentiment towards his mother. Eldest sons in princely circumstances almost invariably feel themselves aggrieved by a mother's second nuptials. When those nuptials oust them from their legitimate inheritance, the disgust thereby inspired is much more attributable to injured interests and of fended pride, than to wounded affection; although the latter sentiment affords a pretext so obvious and so convenient that it is perhaps unconsciously adopted by delicate

this play, I think we must admit not only that the state of mind which I have indicated, and in which there is a certain basis of selfish, though not unjustifiable, resentment, is appropriate to such a situation, but also that even the most high-minded and unselfish character, if suddenly placed in that situation, could hardly fail to be more or less affected by the sentiments which are involved in such a state of mind. But on the part of the character which Shakespeare has assigned to Hamlet, action must be paralyzed by even a suspicion (which, if once entertained, would continually recur to torment its entertainer) of some lurking defect in the fundamental motives of a deed so terrible in itself, and so temptingly advantageous to the doer, that before the tribunal of a fastidiously sensitive conscience nothing but perfect purity of motive could redeem the execution of it from a retrospective charge of criminality. Such an explanation of Hamlet's inaction is so consistent with our general knowledge of human nature, that it is irresistibly suggested by an unemotional review of Hamlet's position. But it places the whole play before us from a point of view which is utterly destructive of stage effect. And from this dilemma we can only be extricated by the aid of a great actor; who, recasting the author's conception in the fire of his own genius, can infuse into the part he plays whatever is wanting to make us see and understand it from some more theatrically effective point of view. In that overwhelming filial affection of which the spectator must needs be convinced before he can thoroughly in

us.

terest himself in the stage representation | have hereby undertaken to reintroduce to of Hamlet's character, whatever may ap- the countrymen of Garrick and Shakespear insufficiently explained by Shakespeare. The author of it has preserved for peare's written words was doubtless imme- us, in a very elaborate picture, the image diately explained, or better still, revealed of the greatest English actor as he appeared beyond all need of explanation, by Garrick's in one of his greatest parts to an English uttered sobs in the monologue, which audience a hundred years ago. It is a fullLichtenburg has so minutely described to length portrait, and larger than our present canvas. This rough tracing of it must therefore remain unfinished for a while. But, with the editor's permission, I shall hope to continue and complete it in a subsequent number; by translating Lichtenberg's description of Garrick in the succeeding scenes of Hamlet, and his thoughtful criticisms of Garrick's delivery, by-play, and costume. Meanwhile we must lock up our lumber-room.

These letters about Garrick are, indeed, so full of interesting observations that one is constantly tempted to interrupt the course of those observations in order to follow out the reflections they suggest. The indulgence of that temptation has brought the present essay to its utmost limits. Many pages, however, still claim to be transcribed from the work which we

THE special correspondent of the Times gives | the following account of the effects of the bombardment on the Jardin des Plantes:- No fewer than eighty-three shells had fallen within this comparatively limited area. On the night of January 8 and 9 four shells fell into the glass houses and shattered the greater part of them to atoms. A heap of glass fragments lying hard by testified to the destruction, but the effect of the shells was actually to pulverize the glass, so that it fell almost like dust over the gardens. The consequence was that nearly the whole of this most rare and valuable collection was exposed to one of the coldest nights of the year, and whole families of plants were killed by the frost. Some of the plants suffered the most singular effects from the concussion; the fibres were stripped bare, and the bark peeled off in many instances. All the Orchids, all the Clusiaceae, the Cyclantheæ, the Pandaneæ were completely destroyed either by the shells themselves or by the effects of the cold. The large palm-house was destroyed, and the tender tropical contents were exposed to that bitterly cold night; yet, singularly enough, although they have suffered severely, not one has yet died. All through the whole of the fortnight during which these gardens were subjected to this rain of shells, MM. Decaisne, Chevreuil, and Milne-Edwards, remained at their posts, unable to rest, and have since, at their own expense, repaired the damage done, trusting that whatever form of government France may choose, it will not repudiate its debts of honour. M. Decaisne is making out a list of his losses, a large proportion of which might possibly be supplied from Kew, while owners of private

collections might also be glad to testify their sympathy and interest in the cause of science by contributing whatever they may be able to spare as soon as the amount and nature of the loss is ascertained. The animals fared better than the plants not only have none of them been eaten by the population of Paris, as the latter fondly suppose, but although several shells burst among them, they have escaped uninjured. Of course, when food was so scarce for human beings, the monkeys and their companions were put upon short allowance. This fact, coupled with the extreme rigour of the season, increased the rate of mortality among them, and one elephant died, but was not eaten, The two elephants and the camel that were eaten belonged to the Jardin d'Acclimation, and had been removed in the early stage of the siege from their ordinary home in the Bois de Boulogne, for safety, to the Jardin des Plantes, where, however, it would appear, it was not to be found. The birds screamed and the animals cowered, as the shells came rushing overhead and bursting near them, as they do when some terrific storm frightens them; latterly they seemed to become used to it.

THE Siam papers report the fortunate news of the capture of an albino or white elephant He had been brought to the capital in state, and will in due time succeed to the highest dignities of state, the chief white elephant ranking next the Queen, and the heir apparent coming next only to this elephant.

Nature.