Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/175

160 madness. He seizes, in Edgar's nakedness, upon the first suggestion of that train of thought which makes him the grand Sartor Resartus of poetry: “Lear. Thou were better in thy grave, than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies.—Is man no more than this 2 Consider him well: Thou owest the worm

no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume:—Ha! here's three of us are sophisticated —Thou

art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.—Off, off, you lendings;–come ; unbutton here. [Tearing off his clothes.” Before this time he has placed a high value upon ap pearance and outward respect; man's need must not be argued ; the gorgeous robes and appurtenance of royalty are of exaggerated value in his eyes; but henceforth all is changed, and the spirit of that philosophy, which has found modern expression in the grotesque and powerful work of Carlyle, pervades all his rational speech. He tears his clothes, not in the common spirit of destructiveness, which instigated the epileptic Orestes to the same act, and which is seen in common operation where madmen

are accumulated ; he tears off his clothes as disguises of the real man, as he afterwards tears off the disguise of hypocritical modesty from the simpering dame whose face presages snow; as he afterwards tears off the disguises of unequal justice; and of the scurvy politician with glass eyes; and of the gilded butterflies of court; and the pretences of those who affect to look into the mysteries of things as if they were God's spies; the disguise, that is, of know ledge not possessed, the very inmost rind of Teufelsdreck himself, the disguise of philosophy. This tendency of thought is the ground of Lear's second delusion; he recognizes in Edgar, a philosopher, one who has practically reduced man to his elements ; and he holds to the idea to the end of the scene :