What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence,
As pearls from diamonds dropp'd. In brief,
Sorrow would be a rarity most belov'd,

If all could so become it.

Kent.

Made she no verbal question?

Gent. Faith, once or twice she heav'd the name of

"father"

Pantingly forth, as if it press'd her heart;

Cried, "Sisters! sisters! Shame of ladies ! sisters!

Kent! father! sisters! What, i' the storm? i' the night?

Let pity not be believed!" There she shook

The holy water from her heavenly eyes,

And clamour-moisten'd, then away she started
To deal with grief alone.

II

Enter LEAR, with CORDELIA dead in his arms;
EDGAR, Officer, and Others.

Lear. Howl, howl, howl, howl! O! you are men of

stones :

Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so

That heaven's vaults should crack. She's gone for ever.

I know when one is dead, and when one lives;
She's dead as earth. Lend me a looking-glass;
If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,
Why, then she lives.

Kent.

Is this the promis'd end?

Edg. Or image of that horror?
Albany.

Fall and cease?

Lear. This feather stirs; she lives! if it be so, It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows

That ever I have felt.

Kent (kneeling). O, my good master !

Lear. Prithee, away.

Edg.

'Tis noble Kent, your friend.

Lear. A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all!

I might have sav'd her; now, she's gone for ever!
Cordelia, Cordelia! stay a little. Ha!

What is't thou sayst? Her voice was ever soft,
Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.

I kill'd the slave that was a hanging thee.
Off. 'Tis true, my lord, he did.

Lear.

Did I not, fellow?

I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion
I would have made them skip: I am old now,
And these same crosses spoil me.

Viola

IOLA

Ay, but I know,—

Duke. What dost thou know?

Vio. Too well what love women to men may owe:

In faith, they are as true of heart as we.
My father had a daughter lov'd a man,
As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman,
I should your lordship.

Duke.

And what's her history?

Vio. A blank, my lord. She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,

Feed on her damask cheek: she pin'd in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy,

She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?
We men may say more, swear more; but indeed
Our shows are more than will, for still we prove
Much in our vows, but little in our love.

Bianca

Lo

UCENTIO. Sacred and sweet was all I saw in her.

Shakespeare's Women

YES,

ES, truth is the token of Shakespearian love, no matter what the form may be in which it appears, be it Miranda, or Juliet, or Cleopatra.

While I mention these names rather by accident than with intention, it occurs to me that they really represent the three most deeply significant types of love. Miranda

is the representative of a love which, without previous influences of any kind, could only develop its highest ideality as the flower of an untrodden soil which only the feet of spirits had trodden.

Ariel's melodies have trained her heart, and sensuality has never been known to her, save in the horribly hideous form of a Caliban. The love which Ferdinand awakes in her is therefore not really naïve but of a happy trueheartedness, of an early-world-like, almost terrible purity. Juliet's love shows like her age and all around her, a more romantic mediaval character, and one blooming into the Renaissance; it glitters in colours like the court of the Scaligeri, and yet is strong as of those noble races of Lombardy which were rejuvenated with German blood and loved as strongly as they hated.

Juliet represents the love of a youthful, rather rough, but of an unspoiled and fresh era. She is entirely inspired with the sensuous glow and strength of belief of such a time, and even the cold decay of the burial vault can neither shake her faith nor cool her flame.

Our Cleopatra!-ah, she sets forth the love of a sickly

civilisation

- an eye whose beauty is faded, whose locks are curled with the utmost art, anointed with all pleasant perfumes, but in which many a grey hair may be seen, a time which will empty the cup held out to it all the more hastily because it is full of dregs. This love is without faith or truth, but for all that none the less wild or glowing. In the vexed consciousness that this heart is not to be subdued, the impatient woman pours still more oil into it, and casts herself like a Bacchante into the blazing flame. She is cowardly, and yet inspired with desire for her own destruction. Love is always a kind of madness, more or less beautiful, but in this Egyptian queen it rises to the most horrible lunacy. Such love is a raging comet, which with its flaming train darts into unheard-of orbits through heaven, terrifies all even if it does not injure them, and at last, miserably crackling together, is scattered like a rocket into a thousand pieces.

Yes, thou wert like a terrible comet, beautiful Cleopatra, and thou didst glow not only into thine own ruin, but wert ominous of evil for those of thy time! With Antony the old heroic Roman spirit came to a wretched end.

But wherewith shall I compare you, O Juliet and Miranda? I look again to heaven, seeking for a simile. It may be behind the stars where my glance cannot pierce. Perhaps if the glowing sun had the mildness of the moon I could compare it to thee, O Juliet! And were the gentle moon gifted with the glow of the sun, I would say it was like thee, Miranda!

Heinrich Heine

ΧΙ

SIR WALTER'S LADIES

Sir Walter's Ladies

Ν

IN the whole range of these [the Waverley novels] there

are but three men who reach the heroic type- Dandie Dinmont, Rob Roy, and Claverhouse: of these, one is a border farmer; another a freebooter; the third a soldier in a bad cause. And these touch the ideal of heroism only in their courage and faith, together with a strong, but uncultivated, or mistakenly applied, intellectual power; while his younger men are the gentlemanly playthings of fantastic fortune, and only by aid (or accident) of that fortune, survive, not vanquish, the trials they involuntarily sustain. Of any disciplined, or consistent character, earnest in a purpose wisely conceived, or dealing with forms of hostile evil, definitely challenged, and resolutely subdued, there is no trace in his conceptions of men. Whereas in his imaginations of women,

in the characters of Ellen Douglas, of Flora MacIvor, Rose Bradwardine, Catherine Seyton, Diana Vernon, Lilias Redgauntlet, Alice Bridgenorth, Alice Lee, and Jeanie Deans, with endless varieties of grace, tenderness, and intellectual power, we find in all a quite infallible and inevitable sense of dignity and justice; a fearless, instant, and untiring self-sacrifice to even the