Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/289

 breaks from one of his own threads he can catch himself by another, and keep worrying the poor fly of his feeling. Shakspeare's women love without sparing a moment for analysis: the rose is crushed to the bosom, a glory of stamens, petals, and perfume, whose names are unknown and unheeded; for the botanizing of emotions was the æsthetic of a later day when men cull a herbarium from their mothers' graves. In this regard Shakspeare is as direct as the Greeks, though far more vital. He puts into his live people the passion which the old chorus used to hold up like a placard:—

Love, thou invincible battle! Love, thou router of lucre, To capture the softness of youth And lodge in the bloom of its cheeks! 'Tis all one to thee if thou farest By sea, or dost loiter in farm-yards. It helps not to be an immortal; Mankind is no refuge from thee Who art of men the first madness. Thou dost ravish the just of their judgment, Dost snatch them to blame; Thou art the bicker that vexes The blood in the hearts that are kin. Vivid the promise of bride-bed Thou kindlest on eyelids of virgins, Great prescripts of past time undoing; So sports Aphrodite, and rules.

Shakspeare has inherited the antique single-mindedness, undisturbed by all our modern after-thoughts of sentiment. His heroines do not understand what refinements of torture a cultivated soul can invent to make itself wretched. They are frank and instantane-*.]