Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/94

Rh eloquent remorse seems too instinct with the longing for real repentance to have been uttered by this cowardly fratricide, who even in the act is juggling with heaven itself. We feel no pity for the scheming hypocrite, in spite of the anguish which wrings from him the cry: “O wretched state

O bosom, black as death !

O limed soul; that struggling to be free, Art more engag'd [" If in that fine appreciation of mercy and of Heaven's justice, in which

“There is no shuffling; there the action lies In his true nature ; and we ourselves compell'd, Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, To give in evidence;”

if these thoughts appear too just to be expressed by so foul a mouth, even as the polished wisdom of the precepts given to Laertes appear inconsistent with the senile capacity of Polonius, we must attribute the fact to that lavish wealth of power and beauty which we find only in Shakespeare; who sometimes in wanton extravagance sets pearls in pinchbeck, and strews diamonds on the sanded floor, who pours nectar into the wooden cup, and feeds us with ambrosia when we should have been satisfied with bread.

It will scarcely be denied by those who have escaped that blindness of bigotry, which the intense admiration Shakespeare naturally excites in those who study him closely accounts for and excuses, that he sometimes gives to one of his personages an important speech, somewhat out of har mony with the general delineation of the character; his characters being in other parts so thoroughly natural and consistent, that he is able to do this without injury to the general effect. But when he does so, what breadth of wisdom and beauty of morality does not the discursive caprice afford The soliloquy of the King, a homily in thirty lines, on the