Nor has Mr. Ashby-Sterry proved himself at all less enthusiastic. Brighton in November, he says, 'is what one should remember':
'If spirits you would lighten, Consult good Doctor Brighton, And swallow his prescriptions and abide by his decree; If nerves be weak or shaken, Just try a week with Bacon; His physic soon is taken at our London-by-the-Sea.'
Something might be said of the delights of foreign sojourn in the Recess; but space fails me. Reference may, however, be made to Mr. Locker's graceful 'Invitation to Rome' and 'The Reply' to it, from which I take this typical tribute to the Italian capital:
'Some girls, who love to ride and race, And live for dancing, like the Bruens, Confess that Rome's a charming place-- In spite of all the stupid ruins!'
What Jaques is in Shakespeare's pages most people know. In the very first reference made to him he is described as 'melancholy,' and as 'weeping and commenting' upon a stricken deer. He has 'sullen fits,' we read. He himself tells us he 'can suck melancholy out of a song.' He protests that the banished Duke is 'too disputable' for him--that he (Jaques) thinks of as many matters, but makes no boast of them. The Duke, on his side, speaks of Jaques as 'compact of jars' (made up of discords), and when Jaques offers to 'cleanse the foul body of the infected world,' retorts on him that it would be a case of 'most mischievous foul sin chiding sin,' Jaques having been himself a notorious evil liver. To Orlando Jaques suggests that they should rail at the world and their misery, while to Rosalind he confesses that he loves melancholy better than laughing. ''Tis good to be sad and say nothing.' He has, he says, a melancholy of his own, the result of his experience and reflection, which wraps him in a most humorous sadness. Jaques, in fact, is a rake turned cynical philosopher. He regards man and nature as only so much material for observation and for moralizing.
Such is the Jaques of 'As You Like It'--a purely original creation, embodying a familiar type of humanity, but nevertheless not good enough for certain of Shakespeare's successors in the dramatic art. Jaques has more than once been revised and edited, in common with other characters in the sylvan comedy. He did not quite satisfy the fastidious taste of Mr. Charles Johnson, the ingenious author of 'The Country Lasses' and other pieces, who, as was said with more point than truth, was 'famous for writing a play every year and being at Button's coffee-house every day.' Still less did Shakespeare's Jaques commend himself to the 'J. C.' who was so kind as not merely to adapt 'As You Like It,' but to elaborate and paraphrase it. Nor did the 'melancholy' one prove acceptable even to the judgment of Georges Sand, when that intellectual lady set to work to 'arrange' the play for the French stage. Shakespeare, it appeared to all these writers, had perpetrated an unaccountable mistake. He had failed to make Jaques pair off with Celia. That charming maiden is handed over to the converted Oliver, while Jaques goes off to study the humours of the repentant Duke. Happy thought! Transform Jaques and Celia into a species of minor Benedick and Beatrice, and marry them in the end!