part of
Don John, in 'Much Ado about Nothing.' Neither has he unentertaining
characters, if we except Parolles, and the little that there is of the
Clown, in 'All's Well that Ends Well.'"

* * * * *

"It would settle the dispute as to whether Shakspeare intended Othello
for a jealous character, to consider how differently we are affected
towards him, and for Leontes in the 'Winter's Tale.' Leontes _is_ that
character. Othello's fault was simply credulity."

* * * * *

"Is it possible that Shakspeare should never have read Homer, in
Chapman's version at least? If he had read it, could he mean to
_travesty_ it in the parts of those big boobies, Ajax and Achilles?
Ulysses, Nestor, and Agamemnon are true to their parts in the 'Iliad
'; they are gentlemen at least. Thersites, though unamusing, is fairly
deducible from it. Troilus and Cressida are a fine graft upon it. But
those two big bulks"--

* * * * *

Disraeli wrote a book on the Quarrels of Authors. Somebody should write
one on the Friendships of Literary Men. If such a work is ever written,
Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge will be honorably mentioned
therein. For among all the friendships celebrated in tale or history
there is none more admirable than that which existed between these two
eminent men. The "golden thread that tied their hearts together" was
never broken. Their friendship was never "chipt or diminished"; but the
longer they lived, the stronger it grew. Death could not destroy it.

Lamb, after Coleridge's death, as if weary of "this green earth," as if
not caring if "sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer
holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats
and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and
fireside conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony
itself," went out with life, willingly sought "Lavinian shores."

"Lamb," as Mr. John Foster says, in his beautiful tribute to his memory,
"never fairly recovered the death of Coleridge. He thought of little
else (his sister was but another portion of himself) until his own great
spirit joined his friend. He had a habit of venting his melancholy in a
sort of mirth. He would, with nothing graver than a pun, 'cleanse his
bosom of the perilous stuff that weighed' upon it. In a jest, or a few
light phrases, he would lay ope