Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/42

12 We are beastly; subtle as the fox for prey, Like warlike as the wolf for what we eat: Our valour is to chase what flies; our cage We make a quire, as doth the prison'd bird, And sing our bondage freely."

The answer of Bellarius to this expostulation is hardly satisfactory; for nothing can be an answer to hope, or the passion of the mind for unknown good, but experience.—The forest of Arden in As you like it can alone compare with the mountain scenes in : yet how different the contemplative quiet of the one from the enterprising boldness and precarious mode of subsistence in the other! Shakespear not only lets us into the minds of his characters, but gives a tone and colour to the scenes he describes from the feelings of their imaginary inhabitants. He at the same time preserves the utmost propriety of action and passion, and gives all their local accompaniments. If he was equal to the greatest things, he was not above an attention to the smallest. Thus the gallant sportsmen in have to encounter the abrupt declivities of hill and valley: Touchstone and Audrey jog along a level path. The deer in are only regarded as objects of prey, "The game's a-foot," &c.—with Jaques they are fine subjects to moralize upon at leisure, "under the shade of melancholy boughs."

We cannot take leave of this play, which is