He would find in neither face anything on which he could lay hold for the Purpose of making a distinction.  Two ample bald foreheads, two reg ular profiles, two full faces of the same oval form, would baffle his art ; and he would be reduced to the miserable shift of writing their names at the foot of his picture.  Yet there was a great difference ; and a person who had seen them once would no more have mistaken one of them for the other than he would have mistaken Mr. Pitt for Mr. Fox.  But the difference lay in delicate lineaments and shades, reserved for pencils of a rare order,

This distinction runs through all the imitative arts.  Foote’s mimicry was exquisitely ludicrous, but it was all caricature.  He Page xlviii

could take off only some strange peculiarity, a stammer or a lisp, a Northumbrian burr or an Irish brogue, a stoop or a shuffle.  “If a man,” said Johnson, “hops on one leg, Foote can hop on one leg.”  Garrick, on the other hand, could seize those differences of manner and pronunciation, which, though highly characteristic, are yet too slight to be described, Foote, we have no doubt, could have made the Haymarket theatre shake with laughter by imitating a conversation between a Scotchman and a Somersetshire man.  But Garrick could have imitated a dialogue between two fashionable men both models of the best breeding, Lord Chesterfield, for example, and Lord Albemarle, so that no person could doubt which was which, although no person could say that, in any point, either Lord Chesterfield or Lord Albemarle spoke or moved otherwise than in conformity with the usages of the best society.

The same distinction is found in the drama, and in fictitious narrative.  Highest among those who have exhibited human nature by means of dialogue, stands Shakspeare.  His variety is like the variety of nature, endless diversity, scarcely any monstrosity.  The characters of which he has given us an impression as vivid as that which we receive from the characters of our own associates, are to be reckoned by scores.  Yet in all these scores hardly one character is to be found which deviates widely from the common standard, and which we should call very eccentric if we met it in real life.  The silly notion that every man has one ruling passion, and that this clue, once known, unravels all the mysteries of his conduct, finds no countenance in the plays of Shakspeare.  There man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions, which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn.  What is Hamlet’s ruling passion?  Or Othello’s?  Or Harry the Fifth’s?  Or Wolsey’s?  Or Lear’s?  Or Shylock’s?  Or Benedick’s?  Or Macbeth’s?  Or that of Cassius?  Or that of Falconbridge?  But we might go on for ever.  Take a single example-Shylock.  Is he so eager for money as to be indifferent to revenge?  Or so eager for revenge as to be indifferent to money?  Or so bent on both together as to be indifferent to the honour of his nation and the