Part 6 (1/2)
So, in Macbeth
”How he solicits Heaven himself best knows; but strangely visited people All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despairs of surgery, he cures; Hanging a golden stamp about their necks.
Put on with holy prayers; and 'tis spoken To the succeeding royalty--he leaves The healing benediction.
”With this strange virtue He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy, And sundry blessings hang about his throne, That speak him full of grace.”
Shakespeare was the master of the human heart--knew all the hopes, fears, ambitions, and pa.s.sions that sway the mind of man; and thus knowing, he declared that
”Love is not love that alters When it alteration finds.”
This is the sublimest declaration in the literature of the world.
Shakespeare seems to give the generalization--the result--without the process of thought. He seems always to be at the conclusion--standing where all truths meet.
In one of the Sonnets is this fragment of a line that contains the highest possible truth:
”Conscience is born of love.”
If man were incapable of suffering, the words right and wrong never could have been spoken. If man were dest.i.tute of imagination, the flower of pity never could have blossomed in his heart.
We suffer--we cause others to suffer--those that we love--and of this fact conscience is born.
Love is the many-colored flame that makes the fireside of the heart. It is the mingled spring and autumn--the perfect climate of the soul.
XIII.
IN the realm of comparison Shakespeare seems to have exhausted the relations, parallels and similitudes of things, He only could have said:
”Tedious as a twice-told tale Vexing the ears of a drowsy man.”
”Duller than a great thaw.
Dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage.”
In the words of Ulysses, spoken to Achilles, we find the most wonderful collection of pictures and comparisons ever compressed within the same number of lines:
”Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,-- A great-sized monster of ingrat.i.tudes-- Those sc.r.a.ps are good deeds pa.s.sed; which are devoured As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done; perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honor bright: to have done is to hang Quite out of fas.h.i.+on, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery.
”Take the instant way; For honor travels in a strait so narrow Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path; For emulation hath a thousand sons That one by one pursue; if you give way, Or hedge aside from the direct forthright, Like to an entered tide, they all rush by And leave you hindmost: Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank, Lie there for pavement to the abject rear, O'errun and trampled on: then what they do in present, Tho' less than yours in past, must o' ertop yours; For time is like a fas.h.i.+onable host That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And with his arms outstretched as he would fly, Grasps in the comer: Welcome ever smiles, And Farewell goes out sighing.”
So the words of Cleopatra, when Charmain speaks:
”Peace, peace: Dost thou not see my baby at my breast That sucks the nurse asleep?”
XIV.
NOTHING is more difficult than a definition--a crystallization of thought so perfect that it emits light. Shakespeare says of suicide: