Yet notwithstanding, being incensed, he’s flint:
As humorous as winter, and as sudden
As flaws[40] congealed in the spring of day.
His temper, therefore, must be well observed:
Chide him for faults, and do it reverently,
When you perceive his blood inclined to mirth:
But being moody, give him line and scope;
Till that his passions, like a whale on ground,
Confound themselves with working.”
In a later one, again, of his noble series of English history plays—indeed the latest—Shakspeare makes a ducal politician, astute in practical psychology as well as in politics, utter this apophthegm, of his own coinage:—