Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/288

 of his women. They appear in the plots, as in the world, to discharge that great function of their being. Steele once said of a woman, "To have loved her was a liberal education,"—a happy phrase which has done duty since in other connections. There must have been floating in Steele's mind the verses of Biron in "Love's Labor Lost;" at least, the pith of his sentence is there anticipated:—

"For when would you, my lord, or you, or you, Have found the ground of study's excellence, Without the beauty of a woman's face? From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They are the ground, the books, the Academes, From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire. For where is any author in the world Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?"

"Without love I can fancy no gentleman," says Thackeray.

When Shakspeare shows his characters in love, the passion is as fresh and uncompromising as if it were still the morning of the world. His verse "dallies with the innocence of love, like the old age." The curious considerations of the modern novelist were not then invented. His lovers trump up no obstacles out of over-nice and subtle reflection: all that hampers them is circumstance, a family feud, a transparent jealousy, a disguise of fortune, a father's will, or a conspiracy. They do not take themselves apart before us, as lecturers do their manikin, to show how cunningly morbid the organs may become. There is no mesh of motives woven around and across, so intricately that if the lover