"O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!"[462:A]
But when Regan, following the example of her sister, inflicts upon him still greater dishonour, the fearful assurance is intimately felt, and he predicts its visitation in positive terms:—
—————————— "You think, I'll weep;
No, I'll not weep:—
I have full cause of weeping; but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I'll weep.—O, fool, I shall go mad!"[462:B]
Nothing can impress us with a more tremendous idea of this awful state of mind, than the feelings of Lear during his exposure to the
tempest. What, under other circumstances, would have been shrunk from with alarm and pain, is now unfelt, or only so, as a relief from deeper horrors:—
"Lear. Thou think'st 'tis much, that this contentious storm