* * * * *

Malvolio, the self-love-sick Steward, has hardly had justice done him, his bad qualities being indeed of just the kind to defeat the recognition of his good ones.  He represents a perpetual class of people, whose leading characteristic is moral demonstrativeness, and who are never satisfied with a law that leaves them free to do right, unless it also give them the power to keep others from doing wrong.  To quote again from Mr. Verplanck, Malvolio embodies “a conception as true as it is original and droll; and its truth may still be frequently attested by comparison with real Malvolios, to be found everywhere from humble domestic life up to the high places of learning, of the State, and even of the Church.”  From the central idea of the character it follows in course that the man has too much conscience to mind his own business, and is too pure to tolerate mirth in others, because too much swollen and stiffened with self-love to be merry himself.  His highest exhilaration is when he contemplates the image of his self-imputed virtues:  he lives so entranced with the beauty of his own inward parts, that he would fain hold himself the wrong side out, to the end that all the world may duly appreciate and admire him.  Naturally, too, the more he hangs over his own moral beauty, the more pharisaical and sanctimonious he becomes in his opinion and treatment of others.  For the glass which magnifies to his view whatever of good there may be in himself, also serves him as an inverted telescope to minify the good of those about him; and, which is more, the self-same spirit that prompts him to invert the instrument upon other men’s virtues, naturally moves him to turn the big end upon their faults and the small end upon his own.  Of course, therefore, he is never without food for censure and reproof save when he is alone with himself, where, to be sure, his intense consciousness of virtue just breathes around him “the air of Paradise.”  Thus his continual frothing over with righteous indignation all proceeds from the yeast of pride and self-importance working mightily within him.  Maria, whose keen eye and sure tongue seldom fail to hit the white of the mark, describes him as not being “any thing constantly, but a time-pleaser.”  And it is remarkable that the emphasized moral rigidity of such men is commonly but the outside of a mind secretly intent on the service of the time, and caring little for any thing but to trim its sails to the winds of self-interest and self-advancement.  Yet Malvolio is really a man of no little talent and accomplishment, as he is also one of marked skill, fidelity, and rectitude in his calling; so that he would be a right worthy person all round, but for his inordinate craving

                 “to be dress’d in an opinion
    Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;
    As who should say, I am Sir Oracle,
    And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark.”