weave the moral which nevertheless lies hid in his unrequited life. At
that time the number of Lamb's old intimates was gradually diminished. The
eternally recurring madness of his sister was more frequent. The
hopelessness of it--if hope indeed ever existed--was more palpable, more
depressing. His own spring of mind was fast losing its power of rebound.
He felt the decay of the active principle, and now confined his efforts to
morsels of criticism, to verses for albums, and small contributions to
periodicals, which (excepting only the "Popular Fallacies") it has not
been thought important enough to reprint. To the editor of the
"Athenaeum," indeed, he laments sincerely over the death of Munden. This
was in February, 1832, and was a matter that touched his affections. "He
was not an actor" (he writes), "but something better." To a reader of the
present day--even to a contemporary of Lamb himself--there was something
almost amounting to extravagance in the terms of his admiration. Yet
Munden was, in his way, a remarkable man; and although he was an actor in
farce, he often stood aloof and beyond the farce itself. The play was a
thing merely on which to hang his own conceptions. These did not arise
from the drama, but were elsewhere cogitated, and were interleaved, as it
were, with the farce or comedy which served as an excuse for their
display. The actor was to all intents and purposes _sui generis_.

To speak of my own impressions, Munden did not affect me much in some of
his earlier performances; for then he depended on the play. Afterwards,
when he took the matter into his own hands, and created personages who
owed little or nothing to the playwright, then he became an inventor. He
rose with the occasion. _Sic ivit ad astra_. In the drama of "Modern
Antiques," especially, space was allowed him for his movements. The words
were nothing. The prosperity of the piece depended exclusively on the
genius of the actor. Munden enacted the part of an old man credulous
beyond ordinary credulity; and when he came upon the stage there was in