excellent pathos delivered out to them:  an they would receive it, so; an they would not receive it, so.  There was no offence against decorum in all this; nothing to condemn, to damn.  Not an irreverent symptom of a sound was to be heard.  The procession of verbiage stalked on through four and five acts, no one venturing to predict what would come of it, when, towards the winding-up of the latter, Antonio, with an irrelevancy that seemed to stagger Elvira herself,—­for she had been coolly arguing the point of honor with him,—­suddenly whips out a poniard, and stabs his sister to the heart.  The effect was as if a murder had been committed in cold blood.  The whole house rose up in clamorous indignation, demanding justice.  The feeling rose far above hisses.  I believe at that instant, if they could have got him, they would have torn the unfortunate author to pieces.  Not that the act itself was so exorbitant, or of a complexion different from what they themselves would have applauded upon another occasion in a Brutus or an Appius,—­but, for want of attending to Antonio’s words, which palpably led to the expectation of no less dire an event, instead of being seduced by his manner, which seemed to promise a sleep of a less alarming nature than it was his cue to inflict upon Elvira, they found themselves betrayed into an accompliceship of murder, a perfect misprision of parricide, while they dreamed of nothing less.

“M., I believe, was the only person who suffered acutely from the failure; for G. thenceforward, with a serenity unattainable but by the true philosophy, abandoning a precarious popularity, retired into his fast hold of speculation,—­the drama in which the world was to be his tiring-room, and remote posterity his applauding spectators, at once, and actors.”

* * * * *

“The least shavings of gold are valuable, men say,” says Archbishop Leighton, in his masterly Commentary on Peter; and the veriest trifle from the pen of such a writer as Charles Lamb should be highly prized by all readers that are readers.  Therefore I think it would be unwise in me not to print Elia’s Postscript to his “Chapter on Ears,” and his Answers to Correspondents.  Indeed, I do not know but that they contain some of the most racy sentences Lamb ever wrote.  At any rate, they do contain some delightful banter and “most ingenious nonsense.”  In their pleasantry, archness, and good-natured raillery, these two little articles of Elia’s remind me of some of Addison’s happiest papers in the “Spectator.”

Better than anything in Southey’s “Doctor” concerning the authorship of that queer, quaint, delightful book are Elia’s affected anger and indignation against the author of the “Indicator” for attributing the essays of Elia to their right author.  Leigh Hunt must have “laughed consumedly,” as he read the P.S. to the “Chapter on Ears.”  And in his Answers to Correspondents how many delightful changes Elia rings upon the name of the unlucky Peter Bell!  How cavalierly he answers “Indagator,” and the others, who are so importunate about the true locality of his birth,—­“as if, forsooth, Elia were presently about to be passed to his parish “!