Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/52

 by amputation and remediable by cautery. It is even a worse offence against ethics, a more grievous insult to the moral sentiment or sense, because more deliberate and elaborate, than the two actual and unpardonable sins of Shakespeare: the menace of unnatural marriage between Oliver and Celia, and again between Isabella and her 'old fantastical duke of dark corners.' Scandalous and injurious as these vile suggestions are, they are yet but as hasty blots dropped by an impatient hand, as crude excrescences which may be pared and leave no scar, as broken hints of a bad dream which the waking memory may be fain and able to forget, to shake off it and be clean again; retaining no thought of Rosalind's cousin but as she first came into