At point to sink for food.’
She afterwards finds, as she thinks, the dead body of Posthumus, and engages herself as a foot-boy to serve a Roman Officer, when she has done all due obsequies to him whom she calls her former master:
——‘And when
With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha’ strewed his grave,
And on it said a century of pray’rs,
Such as I can, twice o’er, I’ll weep and sigh,
And leaving so his service, follow you,
So please you entertain me.’
Now this is the very religion of love. Is it not? All this, which is the essence of the character, is free from every thing like personal flattery or laboured description. She relies little on her personal charms, which she fears may have been eclipsed by some painted jay of Italy; she relies only on her merit, and her merit is in the depth of her love, her truth and constancy. Our admiration of her beauty is excited as it were with as little consciousness as possible on her part. There are two delicious descriptions given of her, one when she is asleep, and one when she is supposed dead. Arviragus thus addresses her:
——‘With fairest flowers,