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be reasonably true to the human comedy; and any work that is so
serves the turn of instruction. But the course of our education is
answered best by those poems and romances where we breathe a
magnanimous atmosphere of thought and meet generous and pious
characters. Shakespeare has served me best. Few living friends
have had upon me an influence so strong for good as Hamlet or
Rosalind. The last character, already well beloved in the reading,
I had the good fortune to see, I must think, in an impressionable
hour, played by Mrs. Scott Siddons. Nothing has ever more moved,
more delighted, more refreshed me; nor has the influence quite
passed away. Kent's brief speech over the dying Lear had a great
effect upon my mind, and was the burthen of my reflections for
long, so profoundly, so touchingly generous did it appear in sense,
so overpowering in expression. Perhaps my dearest and best friend
outside of Shakespeare is D'Artagnan--the elderly D'Artagnan of the
Vicomte de Bragelonne. I know not a more human soul, nor, in his
way, a finer; I shall be very sorry for the man who is so much of a
pedant in morals that he cannot learn from the Captain of
Musketeers. Lastly, I must name the Pilgrim's Progress, a book
that breathes of every beautiful and valuable emotion.
But of works of art little can be said; their influence is profound
and silent, like the influence of nature; they mould by contact; we
drink them up like water, and are bettered, yet know not how. It
is in books more specifically didactic that we can follow out the
effect, and distinguish and weigh and compare. A book which has
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