from the outset; but when the decent sobrieties of the character began to give way, and the poison of self-love, in his conceit of the Countess’s affection, gradually to work, you would have thought that the hero of La Mancha in person stood before you.  How he went smiling to himself! with what ineffable carelessness would he twirl his gold chain! what a dream it was! you were infected with the illusion, and did not wish that it should be removed! you had no room for laughter! if an unseasonable reflection of morality obtruded itself, it was a deep sense of the pitiable infirmity of man’s nature, that can lay him open to such frenzies—­but in truth you rather admired than pitied the lunacy while it lasted—­you felt that an hour of such mistake was worth an age with the eyes open.  Who would not wish to live but for a day in the conceit of such a lady’s love as Olivia?  Why, the Duke would have given his principality but for a quarter of a minute, sleeping or waking, to have been so deluded.  The man seemed to tread upon air, to taste manna, to walk with his head in the clouds, to mate Hyperion.  O! shake not the castles of his pride—­endure yet for a season bright moments of confidence—­“stand still ye watches of the element,” that Malvolio may be still in fancy fair Olivia’s lord—­but fate and retribution say no—­I hear the mischievous titter of Maria—­the witty taunts of Sir Toby—­the still more insupportable triumph of the foolish knight—­the counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked—­and “thus the whirligig of time,” as the true clown hath it, “brings in his revenges.”  I confess that I never saw the catastrophe of this character, while Bensley played it, without a kind of tragic interest.  There was good foolery too.  Few now remember Dodd.  What an Aguecheek the stage lost in him!  Lovegrove, who came nearest to the old actors, revived the character some few seasons ago, and made it sufficiently grotesque; but Dodd was it, as it came out of Nature’s hands.  It might be said to remain in puris naturalibus.  In expressing slowness of apprehension this actor surpassed all others.  You could see the first dawn of an idea stealing slowly over his countenance, climbing up by little and little, with a painful process, till it cleared up at last to the fulness of a twilight conception—­its highest meridian.  He seemed to keep back his intellect, as some have had the power to retard their pulsation.  The balloon takes less time in filling, than it took to cover the expansion of his broad moony face over all its quarters with expression.  A glimmer of understanding would appear in a corner of his eye, and for lack of fuel go out again.  A part of his forehead would catch a little intelligence, and be a long time in communicating it to the remainder.