1 7° Shakspeare 



through his eyes, which saw a thousand faults, that 

 he was bewitched, it was his fond heart which 

 doted ; therefore he refuses to believe his eyes,, 

 and knowing all the while what beauty is, sees 

 beauty where it is not. Neither his five senses 

 nor his five wits can dissuade his foolish heart ; 

 like the ecstasized courser of Adonis when it 

 broke loose at sight of the young and lusty 

 jennet — 



He sees his love and nothing else he sees, 

 For nothing else with his proud sight agrees.* 



Such is his infatuation that he cannot help 

 believing her oaths of fidelity, although he knows 

 she lies, and crediting her false-speaking tongue 

 when she flatters him that he is still young, 

 although both she and he know that his days are 

 past their best. Vanity in years will not own to 

 itself that he is old and she is false — 



* Of the exclusive, all-absorbing rapture produced by the 

 ecstasy or hypnotism of the love-passion and its blunting or 

 1'aralyzing effects on all sense and thought not enthralled in its 

 workings he frequently dilates, estimating its operation and 

 effects as perfectly as if he had possessed a physiological 

 intuition of the cerebral structure and the consequences of its 

 organic mechanism being thrown out of gear. His psychology 

 is not general and barren ; it is concerned with real things and 

 men and women in real action, not with sublime abstractions 

 out of all touch with realities ; cannot compare, still less 

 compete, with that of the clever mental acrobat who tries 

 strenuously with wondrous agility metaphysically to wriggle 

 out of his own skin and to make himself and others believe that 

 he has succeeded. 



