Page:A study of Shakespeare (IA cu31924013158393).pdf/267

 No, he's my friend; and where is found the friend That will do friendship such endamagement? — Neither my daughter, nor my dear friend's wife, I am not Warwick, as thou think'st I am, But an attorney from the court of hell; That thus have housed my spirit in his form To do a message to thee from the king.

This beginning is fair enough, if not specially fruitful in promise; but the verses following are of the flattest order of commonplace. Hay and grass and the spear of Achilles—of which tradition

the moral is, What mighty men misdo, they can amend—

these are the fresh and original types on which our little poet is compelled to fall back for support and illustration to a scene so full of terrible suggestion and pathetic possibility.

The king will in his glory hide thy shame; And those that gaze on him to find out thee Will lose their eyesight, looking on the sun. What can one drop of poison harm the sea, Whose hugy vastures can digest the ill And make it lose its operation?

And so forth, and so forth; ad libitum if not ad nauseam. Let us take but one or two more instances of the better sort.

Countess.Unnatural besiege! Woe me unhappy, To have escaped the danger of my foes, And to be ten times worse invir'd by friends!