Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/261

246 perspective or telescope when rightly gazed upon, is said to shew confusion, and when eyed awry, to distinguish form aright; a statement opposed both to the context and to the fact. The text in both Collier's and Knight's editions stands thus: “Like perspectives, which rightly gazed upon, Shew nothing but confusion,-eyed awry,

Distinguish form : so your sweet majesty,” &c. In the endeavour to restore that which appears to me the true meaning, I have omitted one word and inserted another,

which are needful to maintain the rythm, but are not essen tial to the sense.

The old authors commonly used the word ‘perspective' for telescope, and by Bishop South, the word is not only used in this sense, but is employed in a simile closely parallel to the above; disturbed position being substituted for disturbed refraction.

“It being as impossible to keep the judging faculty steady in such a case, as it would be to view a thing distinctly and perfectly, through a perspective glass held by a shaking paralytic hand.” Vol. iii., sermon 2. Thus, in different characters, Shakespeare has refered to melancholy, as the cause, or the consequence, or the accom

paniment of various and very different emotions. The villain-melancholy described by John, the love-melancholy by Viola, the melancholy of pride in Achilles, of prosperity in Antonio, of constitution and timidity in the Queen of Richard II, of contemplation in Jaques, have their several anatomies opened to view with more skill, if less labour, than that employed by the quaint and learned diligence of old Burton, the professed dissector of the passion. In Cymbeline, this diversity of melancholy’s habitation is positively though poetically expressed : “Oh, melancholy! Whoever yet could find thy bottom 7 find