Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/253

238 of worldly power. Jaques himself has no want of belief in human goodness, and in his own heart there is so much of it that he is quite unable to support consistently, the part of scoffer, much less that of misanthrope. “With too much knowledge for the sceptic's side, With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, He hangs between ;” between his general theory of man, painted in the sombre colours of his own emotional sadness, and his love of indi

vidual men. Instigated not less by his own goodness of heart than by his profound knowledge of the strength and weak ness of men, their good and evil, their virtue and vice, mixed human nature receives from him more pity than contempt.

Jaques leaves upon my mind the impression, that he was absolutely sane. In him judgment remained master of the direction of thought, and the dilatation of feeling. It is true he cherished his melancholy, but if he had thought fit to do so, he retained the power to oppose, if not to repress it. Herein appears to exist the psychical distinction between the sane and the insane melancholist; a distinction, which it

may often be very difficult, if not impossible to establish, but the only one which can be safely propounded, and which must be constantly borne in mind, and sought for, even when it cannot be found. The still more essential difference, that in one case there is cerebral disease, and in the other there is not,

can only be proved by the symptoms of disease, which are often obscure or concealed.

But if Jaques was sane, it cannot also be said that he was

safe. The voluntary indulgence of melancholy is a perilous experiment. Health may carry a man through it, as it will carry one through the miasm of a marsh reeking with ague, or through the pestilential breath of a fever ward. But if under any change of circumstances health should fail, or the