’Specimens of Modern English Poets,’ ‘Specimens of Ancient English Prose Writers,’ without end.  They used to be called ‘Beauties’!  You have seen ’Beauties of Shakspeare’? so have many people that never saw any beauties in Shakspeare.”  Lamb was not by any means, however, an imitator of the unfortunate clerical forger, Dodd, in the scheme which he had in hand.  When we turn to the “Specimens” themselves we discover them to be fine indeed, and in reading them and the brief but pregnant notes upon them, we marvel at the sureness of the touch and the maturity of the writer.  The notes, or commentary, rarely extend beyond a score of lines, and are most often far below that, yet they are always wonderfully pertinent; there is “no philology, no antiquarianism, no discussion of difficult or corrupt passages,” no pedantry in fact, or dry-as-dustism.  It must not be forgotten when we look over the volume with scenes from the plays of Kyd, Peele, Marlowe, Dekker, Marston, Chapman, Heywood, Middleton, Tourneur, Webster, Ford, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, Shirley and others—­it must not be forgotten that Lamb was pleading the merits of these dramatic poets before a generation to which some of them were but names and the rest practically non-existent.  The suggestion which Lamb throws out in the preface that he had desired to show “how much of Shakspeare shines in the great men his contemporaries” is amply borne out in his brief notes upon his selections.  This can best be proved by giving some of the editorial comments from the collection itself, comments which fully establish Lamb in his high place among the clearest sighted if least voluminous of our true critics: 

Heywood is a sort of prose Shakspeare.  His scenes are to the full as natural and affecting.  But we miss the Poet, that which in Shakspeare always appears out and above the surface of the nature.  Heywood’s characters, his Country Gentlemen, etc., are exactly what we see (but of the best kind of what we see) in life.  Shakspeare makes us believe, while we are among his lovely creations, that they are nothing but what we are familiar with, as in dreams new things seem old:  but we awake, and sigh for the difference.

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The insipid levelling morality to which the modern stage is tied down would not admit of such admirable passions as these scenes are filled with.  A Puritanical obtuseness of sentiment, a stupid infantile goodness, is creeping among us, instead of the vigorous passions and virtues clad in flesh and blood, with which the old dramatists present us.  Those noble and liberal casuists could discern in the differences, the quarrels, the animosities of man, a beauty and truth of moral feeling, no less than in the iterately inculcated duties of forgiveness and atonement.  With us all is hypocritical meekness.  A reconciliation scene (let the occasion be never so absurd or