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128 accidental qualities. In the breadth of his strength and weakness he is painted like one of those old gods, older and greater than the heathen representatives of small virtues and vices—the usurping vulgarities of polytheism. The true divinities of Lear were old, like himself very old and kingly—Saturn and Rhea, the autochthones of the heavens; even as his qualities are laid upon the dark and far off, yet solid and deep foundations of moral personality. Well might this king of sorrows exclaim, in the words of the World-spirit, to those who attempt to tear his passions to tatters before the footlights; yea, even to the more reverent efforts of critics—

Essayists upon this drama have followed each other in giving an account of the development of Lear's character and madness, which we cannot but regard as derogatory to the one, and erroneous in relation to the other. They have described Lear as an old man, who determines upon abdication, and the partition of his kingdom, while he is of sane mind, and fully capable of appreciating the nature of the act. Thence it becomes necessary to view the original character of Lear as that of a vain weak old man; thence it becomes necessary to discuss the point when the faculties first give way; thence it becomes necessary to view the first acts of the drama as a gross improbability. "Lear is the only serious performance of Shakespeare," says Coleridge, "the interest and situations of which are derived from the assumption of a gross improbability." Such undoubtedly they would be, if they were the acts of a sane mind; but if, on the contrary, it be accepted that the mind of the old king has, from the first, entered upon the actual domain of unsoundness, the gross improbability at once vanishes, and the whole structure of the drama is seen to be founded,