Table-Talk, Essays on Men and Manners [186]
against our will, than which nothing can be more fatal to a true passion for the stage, and which is a privilege that should be kept sacred for impertinent curiosity. Oh! while I live, let me not be admitted (under special favour) to an actor's dressing-room. Let me not see how Cato painted, or how Caesar combed! Let me not meet the prompt-boys in the passage, nor see the half-lighted candles stuck against the bare walls, nor hear the creaking of machines, or the fiddlers laughing; nor see a Columbine practising a pirouette in sober sadness, nor Mr. Grimaldi's face drop from mirth to sudden melancholy as he passes the side-scene, as if a shadow crossed it, nor witness the long-chinned generation of the pantomime sit twirling their thumbs, nor overlook the fellow who holds the candle for the moon in the scene between Lorenzo and Jessica! Spare me this insight into secrets I am not bound to know. The stage is not a mistress that we are sworn to undress. Why should we look behind the glass of fashion? Why should we prick the bubble that reflects the world, and turn it to a little soap and water? Trust a little to first appearances--leave something to fancy. I observe that the great puppets of the real stage, who themselves play a grand part, like to get into the boxes over the stage; where they see nothing from the proper point of view, but peep and pry into what is going on like a magpie looking into a marrow-bone. This is just like them. So they look down upon human life, of which they are ignorant. They see the exits and entrances of the players, something that they suspect is meant to be kept from them (for they think they are always liable to be imposed upon): the petty pageant of an hour ends with each scene long before the catastrophe, and the tragedy of life is turned to farce under their eyes. These people laugh loud at a pantomime, and are delighted with clowns and pantaloons. They pay no attention to anything else. The stage-boxes exist in contempt of the stage and common sense. The private boxes, on the contrary, should be reserved as the receptacle for the officers of state and great diplomatic characters, who wish to avoid, rather than court popular notice!
NOTES to ESSAY XII
[1] Mr. Munden and Mr. Claremont went one Sunday to Windsor to see the king. They passed with other spectators once or twice: at last, his late majesty distinguished Munden in the crowd and called him to him. After treating him with much cordial familiarity, the king said, 'And, pray, who is that with you?' Munden, with many congees, and contortions of face, replied, 'An please your majesty, it's Mr. Claremont of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.' 'Oh! yes,' said the king, 'I know him well--a bad actor, a bad actor, a bad actor!' Why kings should repeat what they say three times is odd: their saying it once is quite enough. I have always liked Mr. Claremont's face since I heard this anecdote, and perhaps the telling it may have the same effect on other people.
[2] The trunk-maker, I grant, in the _Spectator's_ time, sat in the two-shilling gallery. But that was in the _Spectator's_ time, and not in the days of Mr. Smirke and Mr. Wyatt.
ESSAY XIII
ON THE DISADVANTAGES OF INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY
The chief disadvantage of knowing more and seeing farther than others, is not to be generally understood. A man is, in consequence of this, liable to start paradoxes, which immediately transport him beyond the reach of the common-place reader. A person speaking once in a slighting manner of a very original-minded man, received for answer, 'He strides on so far before you that he dwindles in the distance!"
Petrarch complains that 'Nature had made him different from other people'--_singular' d' altri genti._ The great happiness of life is, to be neither better nor worse than the general run of those you meet with. If you are beneath them, you are trampled upon; if you are above them, you soon find a mortifying level in their difference to what you particularly pique yourself upon. What is the
NOTES to ESSAY XII
[1] Mr. Munden and Mr. Claremont went one Sunday to Windsor to see the king. They passed with other spectators once or twice: at last, his late majesty distinguished Munden in the crowd and called him to him. After treating him with much cordial familiarity, the king said, 'And, pray, who is that with you?' Munden, with many congees, and contortions of face, replied, 'An please your majesty, it's Mr. Claremont of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.' 'Oh! yes,' said the king, 'I know him well--a bad actor, a bad actor, a bad actor!' Why kings should repeat what they say three times is odd: their saying it once is quite enough. I have always liked Mr. Claremont's face since I heard this anecdote, and perhaps the telling it may have the same effect on other people.
[2] The trunk-maker, I grant, in the _Spectator's_ time, sat in the two-shilling gallery. But that was in the _Spectator's_ time, and not in the days of Mr. Smirke and Mr. Wyatt.
ESSAY XIII
ON THE DISADVANTAGES OF INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY
The chief disadvantage of knowing more and seeing farther than others, is not to be generally understood. A man is, in consequence of this, liable to start paradoxes, which immediately transport him beyond the reach of the common-place reader. A person speaking once in a slighting manner of a very original-minded man, received for answer, 'He strides on so far before you that he dwindles in the distance!"
Petrarch complains that 'Nature had made him different from other people'--_singular' d' altri genti._ The great happiness of life is, to be neither better nor worse than the general run of those you meet with. If you are beneath them, you are trampled upon; if you are above them, you soon find a mortifying level in their difference to what you particularly pique yourself upon. What is the