Thomas Medwin

“ She swooned with horror: when she recovered, the ghost told her that in future his visits should be announced by a passing-bell, and these words, distinctly whispered, ‘Mina, I am here!’ Their interviews now became frequent, till the woman fancied herself as much in love with the ghost as she had been with the man. But it was soon to prove otherwise. One fatal night she went to a ball:—what business had she there? She danced too; and, what was worse, her partner was a young Florentine, so much the counterpart of her lover, that she became estranged from his ghost. ”

“ Nothing provokes me so much as the squeamishness that excludes the exhibition of many such subjects from the stage;—a squeamishness, the produce, as I firmly believe, of a lower tone of the moral sense, and foreign to the majestic and confident virtue of the golden age of our country. All is now cant—methodistical cant. Shame flies from the heart, and takes refuge in the lips; or, our senses and nerves are much more refined than those of our neighbours. ”

“ I met Bowles once at Rogers’s, and thought him a pleasant, gentlemanly man—a good fellow, for a parson. When men meet together after dinner, the conversation takes a certain turn. I remember he entertained us with some good stories. ”

“ Shelley, when I was in Switzerland, used to dose me with Wordsworth physic even to nausea: and I do remember then reading some things of his with pleasure. He had once a feeling of Nature, which he carried almost to a deification of it:—that’s why Shelley liked his poetry.
“It is satisfactory to reflect, that where a man becomes a hireling and loses his mental independence, he loses also the faculty of writing well. ”

“ Sheridan, who was not very scrupulous about applying to himself literary property at least, manufactured his play without so much as an acknowledgment, pecuniary or otherwise, from Lewis’s ideas; and bad as ‘Pizarro’ is, I know (from having been on the Drury-Lane Committee, and knowing, consequently, the comparative profits of plays,) that it brought in more money than any other play has ever done, or perhaps ever will do. ”

“ People do wisest who take care of their fame when they have got it. That’s the rock I have split on. It has been said that he has been puffed into notice by his dinners and Lady Holland. Though he gives very good ones, and female Mæcenases are no bad things now-a-days, it is by no means true. Rogers has been a spoilt child ”

“ That magico prodigioso must be worth reading, and nobody seems to know any thing about it but you and Shelley. Then the vision is not unlike that of Marlow’s, in his ‘Faustus.’ The bed-scene is from ‘Cymbeline;’ the song or serenade, a translation of Ophelia’s, in ‘Hamlet;’ and, more than all, the prologue is from Job, which is the first drama in the world, and perhaps the oldest poem. I had an idea of writing a ‘Job,’ but I found it too sublime. There is no poetry to be compared with it. ”

“ I have a great curiosity about every thing relating to Goëthe, and please myself with thinking there is some analogy between our characters and writings. So much interest do I take in him, that I offered to give 100l. to any person who would translate his ‘Memoirs,’ for my own reading. [1] Shelley has sometimes explained part of them to me. He seems to be very superstitious, and is a believer in astrology,—or rather was, for he was very young when he wrote the first part of his Life. I would give the world to read ‘Faust’ in the original. ”

“ Besides, one must write for particular actors, have them continually in one’s eye, sacrifice character to the personating of it, cringe to some favourite of the public, neither give him too many nor two few lines to spout, think how he would mouth such and such a sentence, look such and such a passion, strut such and such a scene. ”

“ The players retrenched, transposed, and even altered the text, to suit the audience or please themselves. Who knows how much rust they rubbed off? I am sure there is rust and base metal to spare left in the old plays. When Leigh Hunt comes we shall have battles enough about those old ruffiani, the old dramatists, with their tiresome conceits, their jingling rhymes, and endless play upon words. It is but lately that people have been satisfied that Shakspeare was not a god, nor stood alone in the age in which he lived ”

“ The Irish and Scotch make better husbands than we do. You will think it was an odd fancy, but I was not in the best of humours with my countrymen at that moment—you know the reason. I am told that Ada is a little termagant; I hope not. I shall write to my sister to know if this is the case: perhaps I am wrong in letting Lady Byron have entirely her own way in her education. I hear that my name is not mentioned in her presence; that a green curtain is always kept over my portrait, as over something forbidden; and that she is not to know that she has a father, till she comes of age. ”

“ He has such extent and versatility of powers in writing, that, should his Novels ever tire the public, which is not likely, he will apply himself to something else, and succeed as well.
“His mottoes from old plays prove that he, at all events, possesses the dramatic faculty, which is denied me. And yet I am told that his ‘Halidon Hill’ did not justify expectation. I have never met with it, but have seen extracts from it.”
“Do you think,” asked I, “that Sir Walter Scott’s Novels owe any part of their reputation to the concealment of the author’s name?” ”

“ The republican trio, when they began to publish in common, were to have had a community of all things, like the ancient Britons; to have lived in a state of nature, like savages, and peopled some ‘island of the blest’ with children in common, like ——. ”

“ One happened to himself whilst he was residing at Manheim. Every night, at the same hour, he heard or thought he heard in his room, when he was lying in bed, a crackling noise like that produced by parchment, or thick paper. This circumstance caused enquiry, when it was told him that the sounds were attributable to the following cause:—The house in which he lived had belonged to a widow, who had an only son. In order to prevent his marrying a poor but amiable girl, to whom he was attached, he was sent to sea. ”

“ Nothing I envy him so much as to be able to read that astonishing production in the original. As to originality, Goëthe has too much sense to pretend that he is not under obligations to authors, ancient and modern;—who is not? ”

“ And yet he deals praise very liberally sometimes; for he wrote to a little friend of mine, on the occasion of his late publication, that ‘he was born with a rose-bud in his mouth, and a nightingale singing in his ear,’—two very prettily turned Orientalisms. ”

“ This page, for instance, is a brilliant one; it is full of wit. But let us see how much of it is original. This passage, for instance, comes from Shakspeare; this bon mot from one of Sheridan’s Comedies; this observation from another writer (naming the author) ”

“ There are fine things in all the Plays on the Passions: an idea in ‘De Montfort’ struck me particularly; one of the characters said that he knew the footsteps of another. [2]
“There are four words in Alfieri that speak volumes. They are in ‘Don Carlos.’ The King and his Minister are secreted during an interview of the Infant with the Queen Consort: the following dialogue passes, which ends the scene. ‘Vedesti? Vedi. Udisti? ”