Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/337

 "Strange is it, that our bloods Of color, weight, and heat, pour'd all together, Would quite confound distinction, yet stand off In differences so mighty:                   Good alone Is good without a name."

It has not yet occurred to Bertram that Helena entertains for him an affection which he might duplicate. When he departs for the court, he only says to her, "The best wishes that can be forged in your thoughts be servants to you," little conscious how implicitly they would serve her. His soul is preoccupied with the image of Maud, the fair daughter of Lafeu.

"I stuck my choice upon her, ere my heart Durst make too bold a herald of my tongue."

Beyond her beauty there stretched a long perspective of contempt for all other women. Maud was too near to him, and blocked up the outlets of each eye, that no glances might get forth to scour the region which was so fruitful with Helena, to forage for her heart and gather it,—

"Thence it came, That she, whom all men prais'd, and whom myself, Since I have lost, have lov'd, was in mine eye The dust that did offend it."

He is at first superior in rank and inferior in nature, his blood and virtue contending for empire in him. She is still the woman whom Nature has elected for him, notwithstanding his surprise and contempt when she summons him out of the crowd of courtiers in pursuance of the boon she had craved of the King, if he recovered by the use of her prescriptions. In her the voice of