The Monastery | Page 7

in general, and
succeeding generations in particular, feel no common interest or
sympathy. The extravagances of coxcombry in manners and apparel are
indeed the legitimate and often the successful objects of satire, during
the time when they exist. In evidence of this, theatrical critics may
observe how many dramatic _jeux d'esprit_ are well received every
season, because the satirist levels at some well-known or fashionable
absurdity; or, in the dramatic phrase, "shoots folly as it flies." But when
the peculiar kind of folly keeps the wing no longer, it is reckoned but
waste of powder to pour a discharge of ridicule on what has ceased to
exist; and the pieces in which such forgotten absurdities are made the
subject of ridicule, fall quietly into oblivion with the follies which gave
them fashion, or only continue to exist on the scene, because they
contain some other more permanent interest than that which connects
them with manners and follies of a temporary character.
This, perhaps, affords a reason why the comedies of Ben Jonson,
founded upon system, or what the age termed humours,--by which was
meant factitious and affected characters, superinduced on that which
was common to the rest of their race,--in spite of acute satire, deep
scholarship, and strong sense, do not now afford general pleasure, but
are confined to the closet of the antiquary, whose studies have assured
him that the personages of the dramatist were once, though they are
now no longer, portraits of existing nature.
Let us take another example of our hypothesis from Shakspeare himself,
who, of all authors, drew his portraits for all ages. With the whole sum
of the idolatry which affects us at his name, the mass of readers peruse,

without amusement, the characters formed on the extravagances of
temporary fashion; and the Euphuist Don Armado, the pedant
Holofernes, even Nym and Pistol, are read with little pleasure by the
mass of the public, being portraits of which we cannot recognize the
humour, because the originals no longer exist. In like manner, while the
distresses of Romeo and Juliet continue to interest every bosom,
Mercutio, drawn as an accurate representation of the finished fine
gentleman of the period, and as such received by the unanimous
approbation of contemporaries, has so little to interest the present age,
that, stripped of all his puns, and quirks of verbal wit, he only retains
his place in the scene, in virtue of his fine and fanciful speech upon
dreaming, which belongs to no particular age, and because he is a
personage whose presence is indispensable to the plot.
We have already prosecuted perhaps too far an argument, the tendency
of which is to prove, that the introduction of an humorist, acting like
Sir Piercie Shafton, upon some forgotten and obsolete model of folly,
once fashionable, is rather likely to awaken the disgust of the reader, as
unnatural, than find him food for laughter. Whether owing to this
theory, or whether to the more simple and probable cause of the
author's failure in the delineation of the subject he had proposed to
himself, the formidable objection of incredulus odi was applied to the
Euphuist, as well as to the White Lady of Avenel; and the one was
denounced as unnatural, while the other was rejected as impossible.
There was little in the story to atone for these failures in two principal
points. The incidents were inartificially huddled together. There was no
part of the intrigue to which deep interest was found to apply; and the
conclusion was brought about, not by incidents arising out of the story
itself, but in consequence of public transactions, with which the
narrative has little connexion, and which the reader had little
opportunity to become acquainted with.
This, if not a positive fault, was yet a great defect in the Romance. It is
true, that not only the practice of some great authors in this department,
but even the general course of human life itself, may be quoted in
favour of this more obvious and less artificial practice of arranging a
narrative. It is seldom that the same circle of personages who have
surrounded an individual at his first outset in life, continue to have an
interest in his career till his fate comes to a crisis. On the contrary, and

more especially if the events of his life be of a varied character, and
worth communicating to others, or to the world, the hero's later
connexions are usually totally separated from those with whom he
began the voyage, but whom the individual has outsailed, or who have
drifted astray, or foundered on the passage. This hackneyed comparison
holds good in another point. The numerous vessels of so many different
sorts, and destined for such different purposes, which are launched in
the same mighty ocean, although