I have confined my observations to the tragic parts of Shakspeare. It would be no very difficult task to extend the enquiry to his comedies; and to shew 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.
SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER, THE CHURCH HISTORIAN
The writings of Fuller are usually designated by the title of quaint, and with sufficient reason; for such was his natural bias to conceits, that I doubt not upon most occasions it would have been going out of his way to have expressed himself out of them. But his wit is not always a _lumen siccum_, a dry faculty of surprising; on the contrary, his conceits are oftentimes deeply steeped in human feeling and passion. Above all, his way of telling a story, for its eager liveliness, and the perpetual running commentary of the narrator happily blended with the narration, is perhaps unequalled.
As his works are now scarcely perused but by antiquaries, I thought it might not be unacceptable to my readers to present them with some specimens of his manner, in single thoughts and phrases; and in some few passages of greater length, chiefly of a narrative description. I shall arrange them as I casually find them in my book of extracts, without being solicitous to specify the particular work from which they are taken.
_Pyramids._--"The Pyramids themselves, doting with age, have forgotten the names of their founders."
_Virtue in a short person._--"His soul had but a short diocese to visit, and therefore might the better attend the effectual informing thereof."
_Intellect in a very tall one._--"Oft times such who are built four stories high, are observed to have little in their cock-loft."
_Naturals._--"Their heads sometimes so little, that there is no room for wit; sometimes so long, that there is no wit for so much room."
_Negroes._--"The image of God cut in ebony."
_School-divinity._--"At the first it will be as welcome to thee as a prison, and their very solutions will seem knots unto thee."
_Mr. Perkins, the Divine._--"He had a capacious head, with angles winding and roomy enough to lodge all controversial intricacies."