Mr. John Hammond, of Jesus College, in Oxford, a respectable
Welsh curate, between whom and him there existed at his birth
eighteen prior claimants. He took the name of Lucy.
The reader will form to himself, from this "Examination of
Shakspeare," more favourable opinion of Sir Thomas than is left upon
his mind by the dramatist in the character of Justice Shallow. The
knight, indeed, is here exhibited in all his pride of birth and
station, in all his pride of theologian and poet; he is led by the
nose, while he believes that nobody can move him, and shows some
other weaknesses, which the least attentive observer will discover;
but he is not without a little kindness at the bottom of the heart,-
-a heart too contracted to hold much, or to let what it holds
ebulliate very freely. But, upon the whole, we neither can utterly
hate nor utterly despise him. Ungainly as he is. -
Circum praecordia ludit.
The author of the "Imaginary Conversations" seems, in his "Boccacio
and Petrarca," to have taken his idea of Sir Magnus from this
manuscript. He, however, has adapted that character to the times;
and in Sir Magnus the coward rises to the courageous, the unskilful
in arms becomes the skilful, and war is to him a teacher of
humanity.
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