Cornwall. My villain!
Regan. A PEASANT stand up thus?
Thus too, indeed, in that rude scene above referred to, in which the king finds his messenger in the stocks, and Regan's door, too, shut against him, the same ground of criticism had already been revealed, the same delicacy and rigour in the exactions had already betrayed the depth of the poetic design, and the real comprehension of that law, whose violations are depicted here, the scientific law, the scientific sovereignty, the law of universal nature; commanding, in the human, that specific human excellence, for the degenerate movement is in violation of nature, that is not nature but her profanation and undoing.
This is one of those passages, however, which admit, as the modern reader will more easily observe than the contemporary of the Poet was likely to of a second reading.
Goneril. Why might not you, my lord, receive attendance From those that she calls servants, or from mine?
* * * * *
What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five, To follow in a house, where twice so many Have a command to tend you?
Regan. What need one?
Lear. O reason not the need: our basest beggars Are in the poorest things superfluous.
[Poor Tom must have his 'rubans.']