Читать книгу The Essays of Douglas Jerrold онлайн

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The finer part of the picture, in which as we receive it, Shakespeare, with immortal tints, has shadowed forth the souls of a herd of men, is Bottom doted upon by the Queen of Fairies. It is here we have the true lineaments of a vulgar nature emblazoned by luck. It is here we recognise the self-sufficient creature of worldly success—the ignorant bashaw of life wearing his bravery as an ordained and necessary part of himself. He has the riches, the sweets of the earth, at his command, and he pauses not in passing wonder at his prosperity. To him there is no such power as a Providence. It is a part of the world’s destiny that he should be precisely what he is; he is the begotten of fate, and owes no obligation to vulgar fortune.

Nor are Bottom’s Babes less like their putative sire, if they have suffered no transformation. There are those who come into the world with the ass’s head, and live and die wound in the arms of doting wealth. The hard task-masters of life are often of these. The foolish, arrogant censors of the faults and backslippings of penury are to be found among them—the full fleshed moralists who shake their shaggy ears at the small delinquencies of struggling men. They eat, drink, sport, and sleep in fairyland; their lightest wish evokes a minister to do their bidding; and in their most fantastic, foolish moods, still Fortune—weak, besotted quean!—cries, with silverest voice:—