It has been remarked, that there is less of poetical imagery in this play than in many of the others. A certain solidity in Helen's character takes place of the ideal power; and with consistent truth of keeping, the same predominance of feeling over fancy, of the reflective over the imaginative faculty, is maintained through the whole dialogue. Yet the finest passages in the serious scenes are those appropriated to her; they are familiar and celebrated as quotations, but fully to understand their beauty and truth, they should be considered relatively to her character and situation; thus, when in speaking of Bertram, she says, "that he is one to whom she wishes well," the consciousness of the disproportion between her words and her feelings draws from her this beautiful and affecting observation, so just in itself, and so true to her situation, and to the sentiment which fills her whole heart:—
'Tis pity
That wishing well had not a body in't
Which might be felt: that we the poorer born,
Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes,
Might with effects of them follow our friends,
And act what we must only think, which never
Returns us thanks.
Some of her general reflections have a sententious depth and a contemplative melancholy, which remind us of Isabella:—
Our remedies oft in themselves do lie
Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
Impossible be strange events to those
That weigh their pains in sense; and do suppose
What hath been cannot be.
He that of greatest works is finisher,
Oft does them by the weakest minister;
So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,
When judges have been babes.
Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises; and oft it hits,
Where hope is coldest, and despair most sits.
Her sentiments in the same manner are remarkable for the union of profound sense with the most passionate feeling; and when her language is figurative, which is seldom, the picture presented to us is invariably touched either with a serious, a lofty, or a melancholy beauty. For instance:—
It were all one
That I should love a bright particular star,
And think to wed it—he's so far above me.
And when she is brought to choose a husband from among the young lords at the court, her heart having already made its election, the strangeness of that very privilege for which she had ventured all, nearly overpowers her, and she says beautifully:—