"One day, at the exhibition of the Royal Academy, I was sitting on a form, looking at the catalogue, and answering some young people about me who had none, or spared themselves the trouble of consulting it. There was a large picture of Prospero and Miranda; and I had just said, 'It is by Shee;' when a voice near me said, 'Would it not be more grammatical to say by her?' I looked, it was Mr. Lamb.
"He went with a party down to my brother Charles's ship, in which the officers gave a ball to their friends. My brother hired a vessel to take us down to it, and some one of the company asked its name. On hearing it was the Antelope, Mr. Lamb cried out, 'Don't name it; I have such a respect for my aunt, I cannot bear to think of her doing such a foolish action!'
"A widow-friend of Lamb having opened a preparatory school for children at Camden Town, said to him, 'I live so far from town I must have a sign, I think you call it, to show that I teach children.' 'Well,' he replied, 'you can have nothing better than 'The Murder of the Innocents!'
"A constable in Salisbury Cathedral was telling him that eight people dined at the top of the spire of that edifice; upon which he remarked, that they must be very 'sharp set!'
"An old woman, on a cold, bleak day, begged of him for charity: 'Ah! Sir,' said she, 'I have seen better days.' 'So have I,' said Lamb; meaning literally one not so rainy and overcast as the one on which she begged.
"Mrs. H—— was sitting on a sofa one day, between Mr. Montague and Mr. Lamb. The latter spoke to her, but all her attention was given to the other party. At last they ceased talking, and turning round to Mr. Lamb, she asked what it was he had been saying? He replied, 'Ask Mr. Montague, for it went in at one ear and out at another.'
"Coleridge one day said to him: 'Charles, did you ever hear me preach?' 'I never heard you do any thing else,' said Lamb."
We shall discuss anew these teeming volumes, when the American edition (which it is to be hoped will possess the portraits of the English) shall have appeared.
Bristol Academy, Taunton, (Mass.)—A catalogue of the officers, teachers, and pupils of this institution, now before us, affords very favorable evidence of the prosperity which it enjoys, under the supervision of its able preceptor, J. N. Bellows, Esq. It already numbers nearly an hundred pupils, in the male and female departments, embracing residents in various quarters of the country. The plan of instruction, set forth in the appendix, is an excellent one; 'uniting, as far as practicable, pleasure with study, yet not to the neglect of strictness of discipline, and thoroughness in the business of instruction,' in which the art of teaching, as a profession, is included, in a separate department.
[THE DRAMA.]
Park Theatre—Mr. Forrest.—Two succeeding engagements of Mr. Forrest, have given us an opportunity of witnessing his efforts in all of his old, and in some (to him) new characters. Othello, Damon, Richard III., Metamora, Spartacus, Lear, Carwin, in the 'Orphan of Geneva,' and even Hamlet, have in turn been presented, through the impersonations of Mr. Forrest. Among these, there are some characters which long ago he made his own, and which have not since found any other representative. Such are Metamora, Spartacus, and perhaps Damon; Othello and Lear, too, had been previously attempted by Mr. Forrest, and found among his many friends enthusiastic admirers. This last engagement, however, has presented this gentleman in two new characters, Richard and Hamlet. Of the first of these, it shall be our province to speak in this paper.
Mr. Forrest has challenged criticism upon his conception of the character of the Duke of Gloster, by his remarks contained in a published letter to a friend, written during his English visit. In this letter he boldly affirms, that the ideas which Edmund Kean always held of the personage which he represented as the Duke of Gloster, were erroneous, in one great particular, and that therefore he should portray the crook-backed tyrant in a light quite different from that in which Kean presented him. This error of Kean consisted, it seems, in supposing the royal cut-throat to have been a too serious villain; in presenting the early part of his career in a shade too sombre. According to Mr. Forrest, the wily duke was rather inclined to be jocose in his butcheries; and he should therefore, in his personation of the character, make the jester a sort of basso-relievo to the hard, black surface of his marble heart.
Now we admire originality, whether it be displayed on the stage, at the bar, in the pulpit, on the canvass, or in books. Whether the original be a cobbler, or an architect, we hail his advent with joy and gratulation. That clever artist, who first conceived the interesting metamorphosis whereby a sliver of wood could be converted into a pumpkin-seed, deserves, indeed, more praise for his singular ingenuity, than for any lasting blessing thereby conferred upon mankind. Nor can we affirm, that the kindred hand which first transposed the same material into those cherished condiments of eastern Ind, y'clept nutmegs, has claim to any higher reward; yet were both these worthies original thinkers, and thereby entitled to the respect due to genius. To endeavor to trace back some great original thought to the impulse which first opened the way to its creation; to search for the early germ, no bigger perhaps than a grain of mustard-seed, out of which the towering tree sprang up in all its original greatness, is a subject which must always engage the attention, and employ the research, of the admirers of genius. We have therefore endeavored, by the most patient and diligent study, both of Shakspeare and his commentators, to discover the ground upon which Mr. Forrest formed his original reading of the Duke of Gloster, or the hint, if possible, from which he snatched his conception of the murdering duke's jocular disposition. The only peg which we can possibly discover, whereon we suppose Mr. Forrest might hang his wonderful originality, is comprised in that line wherein the crafty Gloster, gloating over that devilish hypocrisy with which he is enabled to cloak his monstrous villanies, exclaims:
'For I can smile, and murder while I smile.'