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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
writer puts this word in italics to show that Captain Ager was a coward for not fighting in a wrong cause ;) " according to the Captain ' s ethics , justifies his fighting . " ( This is not according to the ethics of the London Reviewer , who thus infers that it was unjustifiable to fight with some cause , though cowardly not to fight in a wrong cause . ) " He draws , and as might be expected , disarms the Colonel . Our critic ' s indignation at our degenerate age , and his scorn of present notions" ( which are so very true to philosophy and nature !) " are to us extremely curious . The manner in which he expresses his strange notions
—those dreams and visions of his misplaced existence in a period to which he did not belong—gives the passage the appearance of such effusions as clever men , under a certain degree of delirium , are apt to bring forth . "
These remarks are far beneath an answer ; and we leave the writer to the deliberate contempt of his readers . At the conclusion of the extract from Lamb , the reviewer says , We are certainly willing to fall under the condemnation of Mr . Lamb , on the moral question at issue . " In oth ^ r words , the reviewer would have preferred no more < c delicate perception in questions of right and wrong , than goes to the writing of two or three hackneyed sentences about the laws of honour as opposed to the laws of the land , or a common-place against duelling . " This he would have considered as far better morality than that taught in this instance by Rowley and Middleton ? " The preceding passage , " pursues the reviewer , " is a more curious "—( really this gentleman is so vain of his style and diction , that he thinks his very tautologies cannot be too profuse!)— " a more curious specimen than any he has given us in his collection . "
A great quantity of similar stuff follows . Lamb ' s fine comprehension of the best passages in the old dramatists , is termed " a complete hallucination . ' Lamb is compared ( meaning an insult ) to Don Quixote . The whole article , indeed , is the reviewer ' s " commission of lunacy" against his betters . Lamb ' s st y le in the last quotation is said to be * ' tainted with the vices of verbosity and diffuseness . " The instance given is " the ark of an honest confidence , found to be frail and tottering . " To find such remarks made on such passages , is really enough to shake our confidence in the capacity and literary sanity of certain instances of " regular culture ; educated men ; critical spirit of persons of refinement ; blessings of a confirmed hterarv taste , " &c .
• r He goes on : — < c We might multiply instauces of similar absurdities In the conception and development of character , which Mr . Lamb regarded as almost supernatural revelations respecting the human heart . He is quite in raptures with the * Revenger ' s Tragedy' by Cyril Tourneur , "
Untitled Article
The London Review v . The British Drama . 249
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1836, page 249, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2656/page/57/
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