1 84 S/iakspeare 



Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye, 

 And all my soul, and all my every part ; 

 And for this sin there is no remedy, 

 It is so grounded inward in my heart. — S. 72. 



If he had not more head than heart, he 

 certainly had a head which kept the heart well 

 in hand, realizing, no doubt, that self-love in the 

 end is not so vile a sin as self-forgetting. Could 

 he have lived the life of sinful loving he lived in 

 London, leaving his wife and children at Strat- 

 ford, had he not possessed a solid basis of cool- 

 headed egoism ? What proper answer could he 

 have made to the straight question which a 

 friend, dealing faithfully with him, might have 

 pertinently put ? 



And may it be that you have quite forgot 

 A husband's office ? * 



If it be true that there was such a deep 

 egoistic bottom to his character — in what great 

 character was there ever not ? — that is no matter 

 of sensible regret to the world, which has had 

 the inestimable profit of it and could not have 

 had him without it. Wanting a large measure 

 of mental aloofness from men and things incom- 



1 Comedy of Errors, Act ii., Scene ii., where Luciana 

 explains at length how smoothly the husband who truants with 

 his bed should counterfeit to the deceived wife, bidding him, 

 if he likes elsewhere, to do it by stealth, to muffle his love with 

 some show of blindness, to look sweet, speak fair, become dis- 

 loyalty, bear a fair presence — 



Be secret false ; what need she be acquainted ? 



