Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/146

 condition of madness, but in themselves fragments of coherent truth, the reason of an unreasonable mind."

If this great and sound critic had possessed any practical knowledge of mental pathology, he could not have taken this view of the development of the character. Intellectual energy may, indeed, sometimes be seen to grow stronger under the greatest trials of life, but never when the result of these trials is mental disease. So far as eloquence is the result of passion, excitement of passion may stimulate its display; and it is remarkable that so long as Lear retains the least control over his passion, his imagination remains comparatively dull, his eloquence tame. It is only when emotional expression is unbridled, that the majestic flow of burning words finds vent. It is only when all the barriers of conventional restraint are broken down, that the native and naked force of the soul displays itself. The display arises from the absence of restraint, and not from the stimulus of disease.

The consistency of Shakespeare is in no characters more close and true, than in those most difficult ones wherein he portrays the development of mental unsoundness, as in Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear; into these he throws the whole force of his genius; in these he transcends, not only all that other poets have effected before him, but all that he has ever done himself. The border country between sanity and insanity—that awful region of doubt and fear, where the distorted shadows of realities, and the chimeras dire of the brain, are distinguishable in the sunless gloom of our unreason by flickering corruscations of the fancy, by fog meteors of humour, and by lightning flashes of passion—this region his bold and fearless mind delights to explore, and to lead those who can follow him, even as Virgil led Dante through the circles of hell. He delights to observe and to explore it, and, with his own clear light of genius, to look down