Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/200

170 Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life is cheap as beast's: thou art a lady; If only to go warm were gorgeous, Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st; Which scarcely keeps thee warm.But, for true need You heavens, give me that patience which I need! You see me here, you gods; a poor old man, As full of grief as age; wretched in both! If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts Against their father, fool me not so much To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger! O, let no woman's weapons, water-drops, Stain my man's cheeks!No, you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both, That all the world shallwill do such things What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be The terrors of the earth. You think, I'll weep: No, I'll not weep: I have full cause of weeping; but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, Or e'er I'll weep:O, fool, I shall go mad! [Exeunt Lear, Gloster, Kent, and Fool."

If there is any thing in any author like this yearning of the heart, these throes of tenderness, this profound expression of all that can be thought and felt in the most heart-rending situations, we are glad of it; but it is in some author that we have not read.

The scene in the storm, where he is exposed to all the fury of the elements, though grand and terrible, is not so fine, but the moralising