_
And if, in deeper or more superficial sense, the dead _do_ care at all
for their name and fame, then how must the souls of Shakespeare and
Webster have been stirred, after so long converse with things that
stopped their ears, whether above or below the soil, at his exquisite
appreciations of them; the souls of Titian and of Hogarth too; for, what
has not been observed so generally as the excellence of his literary
criticism, Charles Lamb is a fine critic of painting also. It was as
loyal, self-forgetful work for others, for Shakespeare's self first, for
instance, and then for Shakespeare's readers, that that too was done: he
has the true scholar's way of forgetting himself in his subject. For
though "defrauded," as we saw, in his young years, "of the sweet food of
academic institution," he is yet essentially a scholar, and all his work
mainly retrospective, as I said; his own sorrows, affections,
perceptions, being alone real to him of the present. "I cannot make
these present times," he says once, "present to _me_.
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