Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/290

260 Duke. But died thy sister of her love, my boy? Viola. I am all the daughters of my father's house, And all the brothers too;—and yet I know not."—

Shakespear alone could describe the effect of his own poetry.

What we so much admire here is not the image of Patience on a monument, which has been generally quoted, but the lines before and after it. "They give a very echo to the seat where love is throned." How long ago it is since we first learnt to repeat them; and still, still they vibrate on the heart, like the sounds which the passing wind draws from the trembling strings of a harp left on some desert shore! There are other passages of not less impassioned sweetness. Such is Olivia's address to Sebastian whom she supposes to have already deceived her in a promise of marriage.

We have already said something of