AND OBSERVANCES OF SHAKSPEARE. 263 



Sacred to neatness and repose, th' alcove, 

 The chamber, or refectory, may die ; 

 A necessary act incurs no blame." 



Nothing will better prove my allegation, that morally " a beetle 

 suffers as much as when a giant dies," than the argument of Bishop 

 Hall, who in discussing the subject of an equality of happiness here- 

 after, says — " Yet to conceive of these heavenly degrees that the 

 least is glorious, so do these vessels differ, though all are full." 

 The amount is relative to the individual. A man feels more, abso- 

 lutely, than a worm ; but not relative to the capacity for suffering 

 in each. The worm writhes and lives, but its sufferings are as 

 great as they can be, and therefore does he feel, by comparison, as 

 great a pang as when a giant dies. The poet here, by the bye, has, 

 by choosing a giant, thrown the comparison to its utmost limit 

 — Polyphemus to a worm. 



The discourse between Claudio and Isabella continues ; how na- 

 tural is the vacillating feelings of a young, hopeful mind ; oscillat- 

 ing between honour and the dread of death. 



•£> 



" Claudio. — Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ; 

 To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot ; 

 This sensible warm motion to become 

 A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit 

 To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 

 In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice ; 

 To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, 

 And blown with restless violence round about 

 The pendent world ; or to be worse than worst 

 Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts 

 Imagine howling ! — 'tis too horrible ! 

 The weariest and most loathed worldly life, 

 That age, ach, penury, and imprisonment 

 Can lay on nature, is a paradise 

 To what we fear of death." 



How mysteriously, "sublimely grand is this passage : therein is 

 folded all the philosophy of life and death ; the hopes and fears of 

 man, the essentiality of life : let us think awhile, for we have all 

 a personal interest in the subject. The man who could read un- 

 moved, these lines, is less than little — is worse than wicked, — ""to die 

 and go we know not where f death opens with a mystery—" to lie 

 in cold obstruction and to rot ;" death personified is horrible ! — "this 

 sensible warm clay to become a kneaded clod ;" the life, the quick 

 compelling nerves, the rounded form, the eloquent eye, the life, the 



