Page:A study of Shakespeare (IA cu31924013158393).pdf/284

 If we do fear, with fear we do but aid The thing we fear to seize on us the sooner; If we fear not, then no resolved proffer Can overthrow the limit of our fate:

and so forth. Again the hastiest reader will have been reminded of a passage in the transcendant central scenes of Measure for Measure:

Merely, thou art death's fool; For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun, And yet runn'st toward him still;

and hence also some may infer that this pitiful penny-whistle was blown by the same breath which in time gained power to fill that archangelic trumpet. Credat Zoilus Shakespearomastix, non ego.

The next scene is something better than passable, but demands no special analysis and affords no necessary extract. We may just observe as examples of style the play on words between the flight of hovering ravens and the flight of routed soldiers, and the description of the sudden fog

Which now hath hid the airy floor of heaven, And made at noon a night unnatural Upon the quaking and dismayed world.

The interest rises again with the reappearance and release of Salisbury, and lifts the style for a moment to its own level. À tout seigneur tout honneur; the author deserves some dole of moderate approbation for his tribute to the national chivalry of a Frenchman as here exemplified in the person of Prince Charles.