Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/166

Rh make and material of his hat, and suggested cavalry shod with felt, and the surprise and slaughter of his enemies. The

idea-chain

of

a

sane mind

is

somewhat

like

the

images in a moving panorama; one can tell, if the country is known, what has preceded and what will follow any particular scene; but the sequence of ideas in the insane mind is more like the arbitrary or accidental succession of grotesque images, which are thrown on the curtain of a

magic lanthorn; there is no apparent connection between them, and no certainty of sequence: it is as if ideas were suggested by the points and corners of those which pre cede, by the unessential parts, and not by their real na ture and character. This, no doubt, is owing to the rapid flow of ideas which takes place in these phases of insanity; an idea is not grasped in its entirety, it only touches the mind as it were, and suggests another. The Ideen-jagd of the Germans is a good descriptive term for a common form of incoherence.

Lear, however, is not yet incoherent; he is only approach ing that phase of the malady. He has entirely lost that obstinate resolve, which his heady and passionate will gave him at the commencement. He is flighty, even on subjects of the most dire moment to him. He takes up and lays down his determinations, with equal want of purpose. This is evident in his hasty references to the treatment which Kent has met with from the fiery

duke and Regan. (This flightiness of thought is accom panied by a rapid and undirected change of emotion, a still weightier evidence of the mind's profound malady. This is strongly marked in the speech to Goneril, whom, in eight lines, he addresses in four different tempers: irri tation; sadness, with some memory of affection ; followed

by an outburst of rage and hate; and again by straining

patience.)