wish to be “a glove upon that hand that he might touch that cheek:”  three minutes afterwards he beholds Romeo refresh himself with a pot of porter.  We see the Moor, who “loved not wisely, but too well,” smother Desdemona with the nuptial bolster:  he sees them sit down to a hot supper.  We always think of the actor as on the stage:  he always thinks of us as in the boxes.  In justice to the poets of the present day, it may be noticed that they have improved on their brethren in Johnson’s time, who were, according to Lord Macaulay, hunted by bailiffs and familiar with sponging-houses, and who, when hospitably entertained, were wont to disturb the household of the entertainer by roaring for hot punch at four o’clock in the morning.  Since that period the poets have improved in the decencies of life:  they wear broadcloth, and settle their tailors’ accounts even as other men.  At this present moment Her Majesty’s poets are perhaps the most respectable of Her Majesty’s subjects.  They are all teetotallers; if they sin, it is in rhyme, and then only to point a moral.  In past days the poet flew from flower to flower, gathering his honey; but he bore a sting, too, as the rude hand that touched him could testily.  He freely gathers his honey as of old, but the satiric sting has been taken away.  He lives at peace with all men—­his brethren excepted.  About the true poet still there is something of the ancient spirit,—­the old “flash and outbreak of the fiery mind,”—­the old enthusiasm and dash of humourous eccentricity.  But he is fast disappearing from the catalogue of vagabonds—­fast getting commonplace, I fear.  Many people suspect him of dulness.  Besides, such a crowd of well-meaning, amiable, most respectable men have broken down of late years the pales of Parnassus, and become squatters on the sacred mount, that the claim of poets to be a peculiar people is getting disallowed.  Never in this world’s history were they so numerous; and although some people deny that they are poets, few are cantankerous enough or intrepid enough to assert that they are vagabonds.  The painter is the most agreeable of vagabonds.  His art is a pleasant one:  it demands some little manual exertion, and it takes him at times into the open air.  It is pleasant, too, in this, that lines and colours are so much more palpable than words, and the appeal of his work to his practised eye has some satisfaction in it.  He knows what he is about.  He does not altogether lose his critical sense, as the poet does, when familiarity stales his subject, and takes the splendour out of his images.  Moreover, his work is more profitable than the poet’s.  I suppose there are just as few great painters at the present day as there are great poets; yet the yearly receipts of the artists of England far exceed the receipts of the singers.  A picture can usually be painted in less time than a poem can be written.  A second-rate picture has a certain market value,—­its frame is at least something.  A second-rate poem