AND OBSERVANCES OF SHAKSPEARE. 253 



It lias been thought injurious to the higher feelings to cross them 

 with a lighter word; and hence Voltaire, that sardonic sceptic, 

 observes that Hamlet "appears the work of a drunken savage."* 

 John of Gaunt, in Richard II., dies with a joke upon his lips. 

 The old man is visited by Richard, who inquires — 



" What comfort man ? How is't with aged Gaunt ? 



Gaunt. — O, how that name befits my composition ! 

 Old Gaunt, indeed ; and gaunt in being old : 

 Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast ! 

 And who abstains from meat that is not gaunt ? 

 For sleeping England long time have I watched : 

 Watching breeds leanness ; leanness is all gaunt : 

 The pleasures, that some fathers feed upon, 

 Is my strict fast — I mean, my children's looks ; 

 And, therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt : 

 Gaunt am I for the grave ; gaunt as a grave, 

 Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones." 



Poor old duke ! thy " half-jesting'' upon death and grief would 

 enforce more tears than the loudest lamentation ; ridicule is dis- 

 armed at once by the voluntary contrasts of the poor old man. 

 Such is the nature of life, and, in spite of all complaints, Shakspeare 

 is right ; amid the deepest scenes — 



" Yet so to temper passion that our ears 

 Take pleasure in their pain, and eyes in tears 

 Both smile and weep." 



Goethe has ingeniously compared Shakspeare's characters to watches 

 with crystalline plates and cases, which, while they point out the 

 hours as correctly as other watches, enable us, at the same time, to 

 perceive the inward springs by which all this is accomplished. 

 Proteus, bantered by Valentine for the folly of his love, replies — 



•< Yet writers say, ' As in the sweetest bud 

 The eating canker dwells, so eating love 

 Inhabits in the finest wits of all.' " 



This is true : love is the idol set up, not in the plains of Dura, but, 

 as the sun, over the whole world, by that sensitive, empty-purse 

 race of Parnassus. Like that fabled eastern bird which is nourished 

 only by its own song, love lives in every thought, in every inspira- 



* What better could we expect from a Thersities — a serpent, whose only 

 weapon was his sting. 



