In the delineation of that sentiment which forms the groundwork of the drama, nothing in fact can equal the power of the picture, but its inexpressible sweetness and its perfect grace: the passion which has taken possession of Juliet's whole soul, has the force, the rapidity, the resistless violence of the torrent: but she is herself as "moving delicate," as fair, as soft, as flexible as the willow that bends over it, whose light leaves tremble even with the motion of the current which hurries beneath them. But at the same time that the pervading sentiment is never lost sight of, and is one and the same throughout, the individual part of the character in all its variety is developed, and marked with the nicest discrimination. For instance,—the simplicity of Juliet is very different from the simplicity of Miranda: her innocence is not the innocence of a desert island. The energy she displays does not once remind us of the moral grandeur of Isabel, or the intellectual power of Portia;—it is founded in the strength of passion, not in the strength of character:—it is accidental rather than inherent, rising with the tide of feeling or temper, and with it subsiding. Her romance is not the pastoral romance of Perdita, nor the fanciful romance of Viola; it is the romance of a tender heart and a poetical imagination. Her inexperience is not ignorance: she has heard that there is such a thing as falsehood, though she can scarcely conceive it. Her mother and her nurse have perhaps warned her against flattering vows and man's inconstancy; or she has even
——Turned the tale by Ariosto told,
Of fair Olympia, loved and left, of old!
Hence that bashful doubt, dispelled almost as soon as felt—
Ah, gentle Romeo!
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully.
That conscious shrinking from her own confession—
Fain would I dwell on form; fain, fain deny
What I have spoke!
The ingenuous simplicity of her avowal—
Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won,
I'll frown, and be perverse, and say thee nay,
So thou wilt woo—but else, not for the world!
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
And therefore thou may'st think my 'havior light,
But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true
Than those who have more cunning to be strange.
And the proud yet timid delicacy, with which she throws herself for forbearance and pardon upon the tenderness of him she loves, even for the love she bears him—
Therefore pardon me,
And not impute this yielding to light love,
Which the dark night hath so discovered.