"Love, truly such, is itself not the most common thing in the world, and mutual love still less so. But that enduring personal attachment, so beautifully delineated by Erin's sweet melodist, and still more touchingly, perhaps, in the well-known ballad, 'John Anderson, my Jo, John,' in addition to a depth and constancy of character of no every-day occurrence, supposes a peculiar sensibility and tenderness of nature; a constitutional communicativeness and utterancy of heart and soul; a delight in the detail of sympathy, in the outward and visible signs of the sacrament within,—to count, as it were, the pulses of the life of love. But, above all, it supposes a soul which, even in the pride and summer-tide of life, even in the lustihood of health and strength, had felt oftenest and prized highest that which age cannot take away, and which in all our lovings is the love; I mean, that willing sense of the unsufficingness of the self for itself, which predisposes a generous nature to see, in the total being of another, the supplement and completion of its own; that quiet perpetual seeking which the presence of the beloved object modulates, not suspends, where the heart momently finds, and, finding again, seeks on; lastly, when 'life's changeful orb has passed the full,' a confirmed faith in the nobleness of humanity, thus brought home and pressed, as it were, to the very bosom of hourly experience; it supposes, I say, a heartfelt reverence for worth, not the less deep because divested of its solemnity by habit, by familiarity, by mutual infirmities, and even by a feeling of modesty which will arise in delicate minds, when they are conscious of possessing the same, or the correspondent, excellence in their own characters. In short, there must be a mind, which, while it feels the beautiful and the excellent in the beloved as its own, and by right of love appropriates it, can call goodness its playfellow; and dares make sport of time and infirmity, while, in the person of a thousand-foldly endeared partner, we feel for aged virtue the caressing fondness that belongs to the innocence of childhood, and repeat the same attentions and tender courtesies which had been dictated by the same affection to the same object when attired in feminine loveliness or in manly beauty." (Poetical Works, vol. ii. p. 120.)—ED.]
Measure for Measure is the single exception to the delightfulness of
Shakspeare's plays. It is a hateful work, although Shakspearian throughout.
Our feelings of justice are grossly wounded in Angelo's escape. Isabella
herself contrives to be unamiable, and Claudio is detestable.
* * * * *
I am inclined to consider The Fox as the greatest of Ben Jonson's works.
But his smaller works are full of poetry.
* * * * *
Monsieur Thomas and the little French Lawyer are great favourites of mine amongst Beaumont and Fletcher's plays. How those plays overflow with wit! And yet I scarcely know a more deeply tragic scene any where than that in Rollo, in which Edith pleads for her father's life, and then, when she cannot prevail, rises up and imprecates vengeance on his murderer. [1]
[Footnote 1: Act iii. sc. 1.:—
"ROLLO. Hew off her hands!
HAMOND. Lady, hold off!
EDITH. No! hew 'em;
Hew off my innocent hands, as he commands you!
They'll hang the faster on for death's convulsion.—
Thou seed of rocks, will nothing move thee, then?
Are all my tears lost, all my righteous prayers
Drown'd in thy drunken wrath? I stand up thus, then,
Thou boldly bloody tyrant,
And to thy face, in heav'n's high name defy thee!
And may sweet mercy, when thy soul sighs for it,—
When under thy black mischiefs thy flesh trembles,—
When neither strength, nor youth, nor friends, nor gold,
Can stay one hour; when thy most wretched conscience,
Waked from her dream of death, like fire shall melt thee,—
When all thy mother's tears, thy brother's wounds,
Thy people's fears, and curses, and my loss,
My aged father's loss, shall stand before thee—