To jeer my ripe calamities.”[93:2]
At times—and this is surely the greatest praise we can give him—his ravings remind us of Lear’s, with their mingled sarcasm, pathos and unconcealed rage. His brother’s son Menaphon approaches him with a “Good uncle!” What, outside Shakespeare, can be more like Lear before his eloquence goes and leaves his rage supreme, than Meleander’s furious reply:[93:3]
“Fools, desperate fools!
You’re cheated, grossly cheated; range, range on,
And roll about the world to gather moss,
The moss of honour, gay reports, gay clothes,
Gay wives, huge empty buildings, whose proud roofs
Shall with their pinnacles even reach the stars,
Ye work and work like moles, blind in the paths
That are bored through the crannies of the earth,