Chapter IX: Part 9

What a chaos of verbal confusion have we here, until we penetrate to the soul of the heroine! and then what a pavilion of life and beauty this soul organizes that chaos into! How ignorant the glorious creature is of grammar; yet how subtile and sinewy of discourse! How incorrect her placing of words, yet how transfigured with grace of feeling and intelligence! Just think into what a nice trim garden of elocution a priest of the correct and classical church, like Pope, would have dressed this free outpouring of the speaker's heart. No doubt the language would be faultlessly regular; you might analyze and parse it _currente lingua_; but how lifeless and odourless the whole thing! how all the soul of nature, which now throbs so eloquently in it, would have been dried and crimped out of it! The workmanship, in short, to borrow an illustration from Schlegel, would have been like the mimic gardens of children; who, eager to see the work of their hands, break off twigs and flowers, and stick them in the ground; which done, the childish gardener struts proudly up and down his showy beds.

Perhaps the Poet's autocratic overshooting of grammar and rhetoric is still better instanced in the same play, v. 3, where Posthumus relates the doings of old Belarius and the Princes in a certain lane. On being asked, "Where was this lane?" he replies:

"Close by the battle, ditch'd, and wall'd with turf;
Which gave advantage to an ancient soldier,--
An honest one, I warrant; who deserv'd
So long a breeding as his white beard came to,
In doing this for 's country: athwart the lane,
He, with two striplings,--lads more like to run
The country base than to commit such slaughter;
With faces fit for masks, or rather fairer
Than those for preservation cas'd or shame,--
Made good the passage; cried to those that fled,
_Our Britain's harts die flying, not our men_."

And so on to the end of the speech; which is all, from first to last, as glorious in conception and imagery as it is reckless of rhetorical form.

* * * * *

I am next to say somewhat touching the Poet's sentence-building, this being a matter that rhetoricians make much of; though in this, also, I must in the outset acquit him of any practical respect for the rulings of courts rhetorical. For here, again, he has no set fashion, no preferred pattern, no oft-recurring form; nothing at all stereotyped or modish; but just ranges at large in all the unchartered freedom and versatility of the English colloquial idiom. You may find in him sentences of every possible construction; but, except in his early plays, you can hardly say that he took to any one mould of structure more than another. So that his most peculiar feature here is absence of peculiarity. Thought dominates absolutely the whole material of expression, working it, shaping it, out-and-out, as clay in the potter's hands; which has no character but what it receives from the occasion and purpose of the user. As the Poet cares for nothing but to "suit the action to the word, the word to the action," so his word takes on forms as various as the action of his persons; nay, more; is pliant to all their moods and tenses of thought, passion, feeling, and volition. Thus, in the structure of his sentences, as in other things, his language is strictly physiognomic of his matter, the speaking exterior of the inward life; which life is indeed the one sole organizing principle of it. Accordingly he has specimens of the most pithy, piercing, sententious brevity; specimens with all the ample and rich magnificence of ordered pomp; specimens of terse, restrained, yet rhythmical, and finely-modulated vigour; specimens of the most copious and varied choral harmony; specimens of the most quiet, simple, and pure-flowing melody; now a full burst of the many-voiced lordly organ, now the softest and mellowest notes of the flute. Not only these, but all the intermediate, and ever so many surrounding varieties of structure are met with in his omniformity of sentence-building. In short, the leaves of a forest are hardly more varied in figure and make than Shakespeare's sentences; so that if these were all sorted into rhetorical classes, and named, it would "dizzy the arithmetic of memory" to run through their names.

The only divisions on this score that I shall attempt to speak of are those called the Period and the Loose Sentence. Everybody knows, I presume, that in a periodic sentence, when rightly fashioned, the sense is not completed till you reach the close; so that the whole has to be formed in thought before any part is set down. The beginning forecasts the end, the end remembers the beginning, and all the intermediate parts are framed with an eye to both beginning and end. And the nearer it comes to a regular circle, the better it is held to be. This style of writing, then, may be not unfitly said to go on wheels. It is naturally rolling and high-sounding, or at least may easily be made so, and therefore is apt to be in favour with geniuses of a swelling, oratorical, and elocutionary order. Besides, it is a style easily imitated, and so is not unfavourable to autorial equality. On the other hand, the Loose Sentence begins without any apparent thought of how it is to end, and proceeds with as little apparent thought of how it began: the sense may stand complete many times before it gets through: it runs on seemingly at random, winding at its "own sweet will," though the path it holds is much nearer a straight line than a circle; and it stops, not where the starting foresaw, but where the matter so carries it. Thus it is a sort of lingual straggler, if you please, and may be said to wander with little or no conscience of the rhetorical toilet.

Shakespeare has many periodic sentences: at first he seems to have rather affected that structure: in the more serious parts of the plays written in his earlier style it is so common as to be almost characteristic of them. But, on the whole, he evidently much preferred writing in straight lines to writing in circles; and this preference grew stronger as he ripened in his art; so that in his later workmanship the periodic construction becomes decidedly rare: and the reason of his so preferring the linear to the circular structure seems to have been, not only because the former is the more natural and spontaneous way of speaking, but also because it offers far more scope for the proper freedom and variety of English colloquial speech. He has numberless sentences of exquisite beauty of structure; many indeed of the circular kind, but far more of the linear; and the beauty of the latter is purer and higher than that of the former, because it is much more unconscious and unsought, and comes along of its own accord in the undivided quest of something else: for, say what you will, the true law in this matter is just that so well stated by Professor Shairp in the passage before quoted in a note on page 138: "No one ever became really beautiful by aiming at beauty. Beauty comes, we scarce know how, as an emanation from sources deeper than itself." And so it was with Shakespeare in all respects,--I mean Shakespeare the master, not Shakespeare the apprentice,--and in none more so than in the matter of style.

Before quitting this branch of the theme, I will add a few illustrations. And I will begin with two specimens of the circular structure; the first being from the night-scene in _The Merchant of Venice_, v. I:

"For do but note a wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,
Fetching mad bounds, bellowing, and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood;
If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
Or any air of music touch their ears,
You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze,
By the sweet power of music."

The next is from one of Westmoreland's speeches in the Second Part of _King Henry the Fourth_, iv. 1:

"You, Lord Archbishop,--
Whose See is by a civil peace maintain'd;
Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch'd;
Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor'd;
Whose white investments figure innocence,
The dove and very blessèd spirit of peace,--
Wherefore do you so ill translate yourself
Out of the speech of peace, that bears such grace,
Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war?"

Now for some specimens in the linear style. The first is from the courtship of Ferdinand and Miranda, _The Tempest_, iii. 1:

"I do not know
One of my sex; no woman's face remember,
Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen
More that I may call men, than you, good friend,
And my dear father: how features are abroad,
I'm skilless of; but, by my modesty,--
The jewel in my dower,--I would not wish
Any companion in the world but you;
Nor can imagination form a shape,
Besides yourself, to like of."

The next is from the speech of Cominius to the people on proposing the hero for Consul, in _Coriolanus_, ii. 2:

"At sixteen years,
When Tarquin made a head for Rome, he fought
Beyond the mark of others: our then Dictator,
Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight,
When with his Amazonian chin he drove
The bristled lips before him: he bestrid
An o'erpress'd Roman, and i' the Consul's view
Slew three opposers: Tarquin's self he met,
And struck him on his knee: in that day's feats,
When he might act the woman in the scene,
He prov'd best man i' the field, and for his meed
Was brow-bound with the oak."

The following is from the history of Posthumus given by one of the Gentlemen in _Cymbeline_, i. 1:

"The King he takes the babe
To his protection; calls him Posthumus Leonatus;
Breeds him, and makes him of his bed-chamber;
Puts to him all the learnings that his time
Could make him the receiver of; which he took,
As we do air, fast as 't was minister'd,
And in his spring became a harvest; liv'd in Court--
Which rare it is to do--most prais'd, most lov'd;
A sample to the youngest; to the more mature
A glass that feated them; and to the graver
A child that guided dotards: to his mistress,
For whom he now is banish'd,--her own price
Proclaims how she esteem'd him and his virtue;
By her election may be truly read
What kind of man he is."

In all these three passages, the structure shapes itself from step to step as it goes on, one idea starting another, and each clause being born of the momentary impulse of the under-working vital current; which is indeed the natural way of unpremeditated, self-forgetting discourse. There is no care about verbal felicities; none for rounded adjustment of parts, or nice balancing of members, or for exactness of pauses and cadences, so as to make the language run smooth on the ear; or, if there be any care about these things, it is rather a care to avoid them. This it is that gives to Shakespeare's style such a truly organic character, in contradistinction to mere pieces of nicely-adjusted verbal joinery or cabinet-work; so that, as we proceed, the lingual form seems budding and sprouting at the moving of the inner mental life; the thought unfolding and branching as the expression grows, and the expression growing with the growth of the thought. In short, language with him is not the dress, but the incarnation of ideas: he does not robe his thoughts with garments externally cut and fitted to them, but his thoughts robe themselves in a living texture of flesh and blood.

* * * * *

Hence the wonderful correspondence, so often remarked, between the Poet's style and the peculiar moods, tempers, motives, and habits of his characters, as if the language had caught the very grain and tincture of their minds. So, for instance, we find him rightly making the most glib-tongued rhetoric proceed from utter falseness of heart; for men never speak so well, in the elocutionary sense, as when they are lying; while, on the other hand, "there are no tricks in plain and simple faith." Thus, in _Macbeth_, when the murder of Duncan is first announced, we have the hero speaking of it to the Princes, when one of them asks, "What is amiss?"

"You are, and do not know't:
The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood
Is stopp'd; the very source of it is stopp'd."

Of course he words the matter so finely all because he is playing the hypocrite. Compare with this the quick honest way in which Macduff dashes out the truth: "Your royal father's murder'd." We have a still more emphatic instance of the same kind in Goneril and Regan's hollow-hearted, and therefore highly rhetorical professions of love, when the doting old King invites his three daughters to an auction of falsehood, by proposing,

"That we our largest bounty may extend
Where nature doth with merit challenge."

So, again in _Hamlet_, i. 2, the King opens with an elaborate strain of phrase-making, full of studied and ingenious antitheses; and he keeps up that style so long as he is using language to conceal his thoughts; but afterwards, in the same speech, on coming to matters of business, he falls at once into the direct, simple style of plain truth and intellectual manhood.

But we have a more curious illustration, though in quite another kind, in _Macbeth_, iv. 3, where Ross, fresh from Scotland, comes to Macduff in England:

"_Macd_. Stands Scotland where it did?

_Ross_. Alas, poor country,
Almost afraid to know itself! it cannot
Be call'd our mother, but our grave: where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks that rend the air,
Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstasy: the dead man's knell
Is there scarce ask'd for whom; and good men's lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying or e'er they sicken.

_Macd_. O, relation
Too nice, and yet too true!"

Here Ross's picked and precise wording of the matter shows his speech to be the result of meditated preparation; for he has come with his mind so full of what he was to say, that he could think of nothing else; and Macduff, with characteristic plainness of ear and tongue, finds it "too nice." His comment, at once so spontaneous and so apt, is a delightful touch of the Poet's art; and tells us that Shakespeare's judgment as well as his genius was at home in the secret of a perfect style; and that he understood, no man better, the essential poverty of "fine writing."

Equally apt and characteristic is another speech of Macduff's later in the same scene, after learning how "all his pretty chickens and their dam" have been put to death by the tyrant:

"Gentle Heaven,
Cut short all intermission; front to front
Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself;
Within my sword's length set him; if he 'scape,
Heaven forgive him too."

Macduff is a man of great simplicity, energy, and determination of character; and here we have all these qualities boiled down to the highest intensity, as would naturally be the effect of such news on such a man. And observe how much is implied in that little word _too_,--"Heaven forgive him too." As much as to say, "Let me once but have a chance at him, if I don't kill him, then I'm as great a sinner as he, and so God forgive us both!" I hardly know of another instance of so great a volume of meaning compressed into so few words. And how like it is to noble Macduff!

I could fill many pages with examples of this perfect suiting of the style to the mental states of the dramatic speakers, but must rest with citing a few more.

Hotspur is proverbially a man of impatient, irascible, headstrong temper. See now how all this is reflected in the very step of his language, when he has just been chafed into a rage by what the King has said to him about the Scottish prisoners:

"Why, look you, I am whipp'd and scourg'd with rods,
Nettled, and stung with pismires, when I hear
Of this vile politician, Bolingbroke.
In Richard's time,--what do you call the place?--
A plague upon 't!--it is in Glostershire;--
'Twas where the madcap duke his uncle kept,
His uncle York;--where I first bow'd my knee
Unto this king of smiles, this Bolingbroke;--
When you and he came back from Ravenspurg.--
Why, what a candy deal of courtesy
This fawning greyhound then did proffer me!
Look, _When his infant fortune came to age_,
And, _Gentle Harry Percy_, and, _Kind cousin_,--
O, the Devil take such cozeners!"

Hotspur's spirit is so all-for-war, that he can think of nothing else; hence he naturally scorns poetry, though his soul is full of it. But poetry is so purely an impulse with him, that he is quite unconscious of it. With Glendower, on the contrary, poetry is a purpose, and he pursues it consciously. Note, then, in iii. 1, how this poetical mood shapes and tunes his style, when he interprets his daughter's Welsh to her English husband:

"She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down,
And rest your gentle head upon her lap,
And she will sing the song that pleaseth you,
And on your eyelids crown the god of sleep,
Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness;
Making such difference betwixt wake and sleep,
As is the difference betwixt day and night,
The hour before the heavenly-harness'd team
Begins his golden progress in the East."

Here the whole expression seems born of melody, and the melody to pervade it as an essence. So, too, in the same scene, Mortimer being deep in the lyrical mood of honeymoon, see how that mood lives in the style of what he says about his wife's speaking of Welsh, which is all Greek to him; her tongue

"Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penn'd,
Sung by a fair queen in a Summer's bower,
With ravishing division, to her lute."

For another instance, take a part of the exiled Duke's speech in _As You Like It_, ii. 1:

"Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing."

The Duke is a thoughtful, pensive, kind-hearted man, feeling keenly the wrong that has been done him, but not at all given to cherishing a resentful temper; and here, if I mistake not, his language relishes of the benevolent, meditative, and somewhat sentimental melancholy that marks his disposition.

Still more to the point, perhaps, is the passage in _Hamlet_, iv. 5, where Ophelia so touchingly scatters out the secrets of her virgin heart: "They say the owl was a baker's daughter.--Lord, we know what we are, but we know not what we may be.--God be at your table!" And again: "I hope all will be well. We must be patient; but I cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him i' the cold ground. My brother shall know of it; and so I thank you for your good counsel.--Come, my coach!--Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night." A poor, crazed, but still gentle, sweet-tempered, and delicate-souled girl, quite unconscious of her own distress, yet still having a dim remembrance of the great sorrows that have crazed her,--such is Ophelia here; and her very manner of speech takes the exact colour and tone of her mind.

Probably, however, the best example of all is one that I can but refer to, it being too long for quotation. It is in the second scene of _The Tempest_, where Prospero relates to his daughter the story of his past life, at the same time letting her into the fact and the reasons of what he has just been doing, and still has in hand to do. The dear wise old gentleman is here absent-minded, his thoughts being busy and very intent upon the tempest he has lately got up, and upon the incoming and forthcoming consequences of it; and he thinks Miranda is not attentive to what he is saying, because he is but half-attending to it himself. This subdued mental agitation, and wandering of his thoughts from the matter his tongue is handling, silently registers itself in a broken, disjointed, and somewhat rambling course of narrative; that is, his style runs so in sympathy with his state of mind as to be unconsciously physiognomic of it. Certainly it is among the Poet's finest instances of "suiting the word to the action"; while at the same time it perfectly remembers the "special observance" of "o'erstepping not the modesty of nature."

* * * * *

Since Homer, no poet has come near Shakespeare in originality, freshness, opulence, and boldness of imagery. It is this that forms, in a large part, the surpassing beauty of his poetry; it is in this that much of his finest idealizing centres. And he abounds in all the figures of speech known in formal rhetoric, except the Allegory and the Apologue. The Allegory, I take it, is hardly admissible in dramatic writing; nor is the Apologue very well suited to the place: the former, I believe, Shakespeare never uses; and his most conspicuous instance of the latter, in fact the only one that occurs to me, is that of the Belly and the Members, so quaintly delivered to the insurgent people by the juicy old Menenius in the first scene of _Coriolanus_. But, though Shakespeare largely uses all the other figures of speech, I shall draw most of what I have to say of his style in this respect, under the two heads of Simile and Metaphor, since all that can properly be called imagery is resolvable into these. Shakespeare uses both a great deal, but the Simile in a way somewhat peculiar: in fact, as it is commonly used by other poets, he does not seem to have been very fond of it; and when he admits it, he generally uses it in the most informal way possible. But, first, at the risk of seeming pedantic, I will try to make some analysis of the two figures in question.

Every student knows that the Simile may be regarded as an expanded Metaphor, or the Metaphor as a condensed Simile. Which implies that the Metaphor admits of greater brevity. What, then, is the difference?

Now a simile, as the name imports, is a comparison of two or more things, more or less unlike in themselves, for the purpose of illustration. The thing illustrated and the thing that illustrates are, so to speak, laid alongside each other, that the less known may be made more intelligible by the light of that which is known better. Here the two parts are kept quite distinct, and a sort of parallel run between them. And the actions or the qualities of the two things stand apart, each on their own side of the parallel, those of neither being ascribed to the other. In a metaphor, on the other hand, the two parts, instead of lying side by side, are drawn together and incorporated into one. The idea and the image, the thought and the illustration, are not kept distinct, but the idea is incarnated in the image, so that the image bears the same relation to the idea as the body does to the soul. In other words, the two parts are completely identified, their qualities interfused and interpenetrating, so that they become one. Thus a metaphor proceeds by ascribing to a given object certain actions or qualities which are not literally true of that object, and which have in reference to it only the truth of analogy.

To illustrate this. When, in his sonnet composed on Westminster Bridge, Wordsworth says, "This City now doth, like a garment, wear the beauty of the morning," the language is a simile in form. If he had said, This City hath now robed herself in the beauty of the morning, it would have been in form a metaphor. On the other hand, when in the same sonnet he says, "The river glideth at his own sweet will," the language is a metaphor. If in this case he had said, The river floweth smoothly along, like a man led on by the free promptings of his own will, it would have been a simile. And so, when Romeo says of Juliet,--

"O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night,
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear";

here we have two metaphors, and also one simile. Juliet cannot be said literally to teach the torches any thing; but her brightness may be said to make them, or rather the owner of them ashamed of their dimness; or she may be said to be so radiant, that the torches, or the owner of them may learn from her how torches ought to shine. Neither can it be said literally that her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night, for the night has no cheek; but it may be said to bear the same relation to the night as a diamond pendant does to the dark cheek that sets it off. Then the last metaphor is made one of the parts in a simile; what is therein expressed being likened to a rich jewel hanging in an Ethiop's ear. So, too, when Wordsworth apostrophizes Milton,--

"Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea";--

here we have two similes. But when he says,--

"Unruffled doth the blue lake lie,
The mountains looking on";

and when he says of the birds singing,--

"Clear, loud, and lively is the din,
From social warblers gathering in
Their harvest of sweet lays";

and when he says of his Lucy,--

"The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face";--

in these lines we have four pure and perfect metaphors.

Again: In _Cymbeline_, old Belarius says of the "two princely boys" that are with him,--

"They are as gentle
As zephyrs, blowing below the violet,
Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as rough,
Their royal blood enchaf'd, as the rud'st wind,
That by the top doth take the mountain pine,
And make him stoop to th' vale."

Here are two similes, of the right Shakespeare mintage. As metaphors from the same hand, take this from Iachimo's temptation of Imogen, "This object, which takes prisoner the wild motion of mine eye"; and this from Viola, urging Orsino's suit to the Countess,--

"Holla your name to the reverberate hills,
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out, _Olivia_!"

and this of Cleopatra's with the asp at her bosom,--

"Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
That sucks the nurse asleep?"

Or, as an instance of both figures together, take the following from _King Lear_, iv. 3, where the Gentleman describes to Kent the behaviour of Cordelia on hearing of her father's condition:

"You have seen
Sunshine and rain at once; her smiles and tears
Were like: a better way,--those happy smilets
That play'd on her ripe lip seem'd not to know
What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence
As pearls from diamonds dropp'd."

Here we have two similes, in the first two and last clauses; and also two metaphors, severally conveyed in,--"That play'd on her ripe lip," and, "What guests were in her eyes." Perhaps I ought to add that a simile is sometimes merely suggested or implied; as in these lines from Wordsworth:

"What is glory?--in the socket
See how dying tapers fare!
What is pride?--a whizzing rocket
That would emulate a star.

What is friendship?--do not trust her,
Nor the vows which she has made;
Diamonds dart their brightest lustre
From a palsy-shaken head."

Thus much by way of analyzing the two figures, and illustrating the difference between them. In all these instances may be seen, I think, how in a metaphor the intensity and fire of imagination, instead of placing the two parts side by side, melts them down into one homogeneous mass; which mass is both of them and neither of them at the same time; their respective properties being so interwoven and fused together, that those of each may be affirmed of the other.

I have said that Shakespeare uses the Simile in a way somewhat peculiar. This may require some explication.--Homer, Virgil, Dante, Spenser, Milton, and the great Italian poets of the sixteenth century, all deal largely in what may be styled full-drawn similes; that is, similes carefully elaborated through all their parts, these being knit together in a balanced and rounded whole. Here is an instance of what I mean, from _Paradise Lost_, i.:

"As when the potent rod
Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day,
Wav'd round the coast, up call'd a pitchy cloud
Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like night, and darken'd all the land of Nile;
So numberless where those bad angels seen
Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell,
'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires."

This may be fitly taken as a model specimen of the thing; it is severely classical in style, and is well worthy of the great hand that made it. Here is another, somewhat different in structure, and not easy to beat, from Wordsworth's _Miscellaneous Sonnets_, Part ii.:

"Desponding Father! mark this alter'd bough,
So beautiful of late, with sunshine warm'd,
Or moist with dews; what more unsightly now,
Its blossoms shrivell'd, and its fruit, if form'd,
Invisible? yet Spring her genial brow
Knits not o'er that discolouring and decay
As false to expectation. Nor fret thou
At like unlovely process in the May
Of human life: a Stripling's graces blow,
Fade, and are shed, that from their timely fall
(Misdeem it not a cankerous change) may grow
Rich mellow bearings, that for thanks shall call."

It may be worth noting, that the first member of this no less beautiful than instructive passage contains one metaphor,--"Spring her genial brow knits not"; and the second two,--"in the May of human life," and, "a Stripling's graces blow, fade, and are shed." Herein it differs from the preceding instance; but I take it to be none the worse for that.

Shakespeare occasionally builds a simile on the same plan; as in the following from _Measure for Measure_, i. 3:

"Now, as fond fathers,
Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch,
Only to stick it in their children's sight
For terror, not to use, in time the rod
Becomes more mock'd than fear'd; so our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead;
And liberty plucks justice by the nose;
The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart
Goes all decorum."

But the Poet does not much affect this formal mode of the thing: he has comparatively few instances of it; while his pages abound in similes of the informal mode, like those quoted before. And his peculiarity in the use of the figure consists partly in what seems not a little curious, namely, that he sometimes begins with building a simile, and then runs it into a metaphor before he gets through; so that we have what may be termed a mixture of the two; that is, he sets out as if to form the two parts distinct, and ends by identifying them. Here is an instance from the Second Part of _King Henry the Fourth_, iv. 1:

"His foes are so enrooted with his friends,
That, plucking to unfix an enemy,
He doth unfasten so and shake a friend.
So that this land, like an offensive wife
That hath enrag'd him on to offer strokes,
As he is striking, holds his infant up,
And hangs resolv'd correction in the arm
That was uprear'd to execution."

And so in _King Henry the Fifth_, ii. 4:

"In cases of defence 'tis best to weigh
The enemy more mighty than he seems:
So the proportions of defence are fill'd;
Which of a weak and niggardly projection,
Doth, like a miser, spoil his coat with scanting
A little cloth."

Also in _Hamlet_, iv. 1:

"So much was our love,
We would not understand what was most fit;
But, like the owner of a foul disease,
To keep it from divulging, let it feed
Even on the pith of life."

And somewhat the same again in iii. 4:

"No, in despite of sense and secrecy,
Unpeg the basket on the house's top,
Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape,
To try conclusions, in the basket creep,
And break your own neck down."

Something very like this mixing of figures occurs, also, in _Timon of Athens_, iv. 3:

"But myself,
Who had the world as my confectionary;
The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, and hearts of men
At duty, more than I could frame employment;
That numberless upon me stuck, as leaves
Do on an oak, have with one Winter's brush
Fell from their boughs, and left me open, bare
For every storm that blows."

And I suspect that certain passages, often faulted for confusion of metaphors, are but instances of the same thing, as this:

"Blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please."

This feature mainly results, no doubt, from the Poet's aptness or endeavour to make his style of as highly symbolical a character as possible without smothering the sense. And by _symbolical_ I here mean the taking a representative part of a thing, and using it in such a way as to convey the sense and virtue of the whole. Metaphors are the strongest and surest mode of doing this; and so keen was the Poet's quest of this, that his similes, in the very act of forming, often become half-metaphors, as from a sort of instinct. Thus, instead of fully forming a simile, he merely _suggests_ it; throwing in just enough of it to start the thoughts on that track, and then condensing the whole into a semi-metaphorical shape. Which seems to explain why it is that these suggestions of similes, notwithstanding the stereotyped censures of a too formal criticism, seldom trouble any reader who is so unsophisticated as to care little for the form, so he be sure of the substance.

* * * * *

The thoughtful student can hardly choose but feel that there is something peculiar in Shakespeare's metaphors. And so indeed there is. But the peculiarity is rather in degree than kind. Now the Metaphor, as before remarked, proceeds upon a likeness in the relations of things; whereas the Simile proceeds upon a likeness in the things themselves, which is a very different matter. And so surpassing was Shakespeare's quickness and acuteness of eye to discern the most hidden resemblances in the former kind, that he outdoes all other writers in the exceeding fineness of the threads upon which his metaphors are often built. In other words, he beats all other poets, ancient and modern, in constructing metaphors upon the most subtile, delicate, and unobvious analogies.

Among the English poets, Wordsworth probably stands next to Shakespeare in the frequency, felicity, originality, and strength of his metaphorical language. I will therefore quote a few of his most characteristic specimens, as this seems the fairest way for bringing out the unequalled virtue of Shakespeare's poetry in this kind.

"With heart as calm as lakes that sleep,
In frosty moonlight glistening;
Or mountain rivers, where they creep
Along a channel smooth and deep,
To their own far-off murmurs listening."
_Memory_.

"Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;
A privacy of glorious light is thine;
Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood
Of harmony, with instinct more divine."
_To a Skylark_.

"And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,
I love to see the look with which it braves--
Cas'd in th' unfeeling armour of old time--
The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves."
_Peele Castle_.

"Bright gem instinct with music, vocal spark;
The happiest bird that sprang out of the Ark!"
_A Morning Exercise_.

"One who was suffering tumult in his soul,
Yet fail'd to seek the sure relief of prayer,
Went forth,--his course surrendering to the care
Of the fierce wind, while midday lightnings prowl
Insidiously, untimely thunders growl;
While trees, dim-seen, in frenzied numbers tear
The lingering remnants of their yellow hair."
_Mis. Son., Pt. ii_. 15.

"So deem'd the man who fashion'd for the sense
These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
Self-pois'd, and scoop'd into ten thousand cells,
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering,--and wandering on as loth to die."

"But, from the arms of silence,--list, O list!--
The music bursteth into second life;
The notes luxuriate, every stone is kiss'd
By sound, or ghost of sound, in mazy strife."
_Eccle. Son., Pt. iii_. 43, 44.

"The towering headlands, crown'd with mist,
Their feet among the billows, know
That Ocean is a mighty harmonist."
_Power of Sound_.

"Whate'er
I saw, or heard, or felt, was but a stream
That flow'd into a kindred stream; a gale
Confederate with the current of the soul,
To speed my voyage."

"Past and Future are the wings
On whose support harmoniously conjoin'd
Moves the great spirit of human knowledge."
_Prelude, Book vi_.

"Child of loud-throated War! the mountain Stream
Roars in thy hearing; but thy hour of rest
Is come, and thou art silent in thy age."

"What art thou, from care
Cast off,--abandon'd by thy rugged Sire,
Nor by soft Peace adopted?"

"Shade of departed Power,
Skeleton of unflesh'd humanity,
The chronicle were welcome that should call
Into the compass of distinct regard
The toils and struggles of thy infant years!"
_Kilchurn Castle_.

"Advance,--come forth from thy Tyrolean ground,
Dear Liberty! stern Nymph of soul untam'd;
Sweet Nymph, O rightly of the mountains nam'd!
Through the long chain of Alps from mound to mound,
And o'er th' eternal snows, like Echo, bound;
Like Echo, when the hunter-train at dawn
Have rous'd her from her sleep; and forest-lawn,
Cliffs, woods, and caves her viewless steps resound,
And babble of her pastime!"

"Ye Storms, resound the praises of your King!
And ye mild Seasons--in a sunny clime,
Midway on some high hill, while father Time
Looks on delighted--meet in festal ring,
And long and loud of Winter's triumph sing!
Sing ye, with blossoms crown'd, and fruits, and flowers,
Of Winter's breath surcharg'd with sleety showers,
And the dire flapping of his hoary wing!
Knit the blithe dance upon the soft green grass;
With feet, hands, eyes, looks, lips, report your gain;
Whisper it to the billows of the main,
And to th' aerial Zephyrs as they pass,
That old decrepit Winter--_He_ hath slain
That Host which render'd all your bounties vain."
_Son. to Lib., Pt. ii_. 10, 35.

In the foregoing passages, the imagery of course loses more or less of its force and beauty from being cut out of its proper surroundings; for Wordsworth's poetry, too, is far from being mere gatherings of finely-carved chips: as a general thing, the several parts of a poem all rightly know each other as co-members of an organic whole. Far more must this needs be the case in the passages that follow, inasmuch as these are from the most dramatic of all writing; so that the virtue of the imagery is inextricably bound up with the characters and occasions of the speakers:

"Look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East:
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops."
_Rom. and Jul., iii_. 5.

"Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:
Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death's pale flag is not advancèd there."

"Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe
That unsubstantial Death is amorous;
And that the lean abhorrèd monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?"
_Ibid., v_. 3.

"My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou remember'st
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music."
_Midsum. Night's D., ii_. 1.

"Rush on his host, as doth the melted snow
Upon the valleys, whose low vassal seat
The Alps doth spit and void his rheum upon."
_King Henry V., iii_. 5.

"His face is all bubukles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames of
fire; and his lips plows at his nose, and it is like a coal of
fire, sometimes plue, and sometimes red; but his nose is
executed, and his fire is out." _Ibid., iii_. 6.

"O, then th' Earth shook to see the heavens on fire,
And not in fear of your nativity.
Diseasèd Nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions; oft the teeming Earth
Is with a kind of cholic pinch'd and vex'd
By the imprisoning of unruly wind
Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving,
Shakes the old beldame Earth, and topples down
Steeples and moss-grown towers. At your birth,
Our grandam Earth, having this distemperature,
In passion shook."
1 _King Henry IV., iii_. 1.

"Let heaven kiss earth! now let not Nature's hand
Keep the wild flood-confin'd! let order die!
And let this world no longer be a stage
To feed contention in a lingering act;
But let one spirit of the first-born Cain
Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set
On bloody courses, the rude scene may end,
And darkness be the burier of the dead!"
2 _King Henry IV., i_. 1.

"An habitation giddy and unsure
Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.
O thou fond many! with what loud applause
Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke,
Before he was what thou would'st have him be!
And being now trimm'd in thine own desires,
Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him,
That thou provok'st thyself to cast him up.
So, so, thou common dog, did'st thou disgorge
Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard;
And now thou would'st eat thy dead vomit up,
And howl'st to find it."
_Ibid., i_. 3.

"But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill."
_Hamlet, i_. 1.

"So, haply slander--
Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter,
As level as the cannon to his blank,
Transports his poison'd shot--may miss our name,
And hit the woundless air."
_Ibid., iv_. 1.

"Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
The very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it."
_Macbeth, ii_. 1.

"O thou day o' the world,
Chain mine arm'd neck; leap thou, attire and all,
Through proof of harness to my heart, and there
Ride on the pants triúmphing!"
_Ant. and Cleo., iv_. 8.

"For his bounty,
There was no Winter in't; an Autumn 'twas
That grew the more by reaping: his delights
Were dolphin-like; they show'd his back above
The element they liv'd in: in his livery
Walk'd crowns and crownets."
_Ibid., v_. 2.

"The ample proposition that hope makes
In all designs begun on earth below
Fails in the promis'd largeness: checks and disasters
Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd."

"Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,
Puffing at all, winnows the light away."
_Troil. and Cres., i_. 3.

"Be as a planetary plague, when Jove
Will o'er some high-vie'd city hang his poison
In the sick air."

"Put armour on thine ears and on thine eyes;
Whose proof, nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes,
Nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeding,
Shall pierce a jot."

"Common mother, thou,
Whose womb unmeasurable, and infinite breast,
Teems, and feeds all; whose self-same mettle,
Whereof thy proud child, arrogant man, is puff'd.
Engenders the black toad and adder blue,
The gilded newt and eyeless venom'd worm;
Yield him, who all thy human sons doth hate,
From forth thy plenteous bosom, one poor root!"

"What, think'st
That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain,
Will put thy shirt on warm? will these moss'd trees,
That have outliv'd the eagle, page thy heels,
And skip where thou point'st out? will the cold brook.
Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste,
To cure thy o'er-night's surfeit?"

"O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce
'Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler
Of Hymen's purest bed! thou valiant Mars!
Thou ever young, fresh, lov'd, and delicate wooer,
Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow
That lies on Dian's lap! thou visible god,
That solder'st close impossibilities,
And mak'st them kiss! that speak'st with every tongue,
To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts!
Think, thy slave man rebels; and by thy virtue
Set them into confounding odds, that beasts
May have the world in empire!"
_Timon of Athens, iv_. 3.

Shakespeare's boldness in metaphors is pretty strongly exemplified in some of the forecited passages; but he has instances of still greater boldness. Among these may be named Lady Macbeth's--

"Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry _Hold, hold_!"

Here "blanket of the dark" runs to so high a pitch, that divers critics, Coleridge among them, have been staggered by it, and have been fain to set it down as a corruption of the text. In this they are no doubt mistaken: the metaphor is in the right style of Shakespeare, and, with all its daring, runs in too fair keeping to be ruled out of the family. Hardly less bold is this of Macbeth's--

"Heaven's cherubin, hors'd
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind."

With these I suspect may be fitly classed, notwithstanding its delicacy, the following from Iachimo's description of Imogen, when he comes out of the trunk in her chamber:

"The flame o' the taper
Bows toward her; and would under-peep her lids,
To see th' enclosèd lights, now canopied
Under these windows, white and azure, lac'd
With blue of heaven's own tinct."

Also this, from the soliloquy of Posthumus in repentance for the supposed death of Imogen by his order:

"My conscience, thou art fetter'd
More than my shanks and wrists: you good gods give me
The penitent instrument to pick that bolt,
Then free for ever!"

I add still another example; from one of old Nestor's speeches on the selection of a champion to fight with the Trojan hero:

"It is suppos'd,
He that meets Hector issues from our choice:
And choice, being mutual act of all our souls,
Makes merit her election; and doth boil,
As 'twere from forth us all, a man distill'd
Out of our virtues."

All these--and I could quote a hundred such--are, to my thinking, instances of happy and, I will add, even wise audacity: at least, if there be any overstraining of imagery, I can easily shrive the fault, for the subtile felicity involved in them. They are certainly quite at home in the millennium of poetry which Shakespeare created for us; albeit I can well remember the time when such transcendent raptures were to me as

"Some joy too fine,
Too subtle-potent, tun'd too sharp in sweetness,
For the capacity of my ruder powers."

It would be strange indeed if a man so exceedingly daring did not now and then overdare. And so I think the Poet's boldness in metaphor sometimes makes him overbold, or at least betrays him into infelicities of boldness. Here are two instances, from _The Tempest_, v. 1:

"The charm dissolves apace;
And as the morning steals upon the night,
Melting the darkness, so their rising senses
Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle
Their clearer reason."

"Their understanding
Begins to swell; and the approaching tide
Will shortly fill the reasonable shore
That now lies foul and muddy."

And here is another, of perhaps still more questionable character, from _Macbeth_, i. 7:

"His two chamberlains
Will I with wine and wassail so convince,
That memory, the warder of the brain,
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only."

What, again, shall be said of the two following, where Coriolanus snaps off his fierce scorn of the multitude?--

"What's the matter, you dissentious rogues,
That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,
Make yourselves scabs?"

"So shall my lungs
Coin words till their decay against those measles,
Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought
The very way to catch them."

Either from overboldness in the metaphors, or from some unaptness in the material of them, I have to confess that my mind rather rebels against these stretches of poetical prerogative. Still more so, perhaps, in the well-known passage of _King Henry the Fifth_, iv. 3; though I am not sure but, in this case, the thing rightly belongs to the speaker's character:

"And those that leave their valiant bones in France,
Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills,
They shall be fam'd; for there the Sun shall greet them,
And draw their honours reeking up to heaven;
Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime,
The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France.
Mark, then, abounding valour in our English;
That, being dead, like to the bullet's grazing,
Break out into a second course of mischief,
Killing in rélapse of mortality."

But, whatever be the right mark to set upon these and some other instances, I find but few occasions of such revolt; and my only wonder is, how any mere human genius could be so gloriously audacious, and yet be so seldom chargeable with passing the just bounds of poetical privilege.

Metaphors are themselves the aptest and clearest mode of expressing much in little. No other form of speech will convey so much thought in so few words. They often compress into a few words what would else require as many sentences. But even such condensations of meaning did not--so it appears--always answer Shakespeare's purpose: he sometimes does hardly more than _suggest_ metaphors, throwing off several of them in quick succession. We have an odd instance of this in one of Falstaff's speeches, Second Part of _King Henry the Fourth_, i. 2: "Well, he may sleep in security; for he hath the horn of abundance, and the lightness of his wife shines through it: and yet cannot he see, though he have his own lantern to light him." Here we have a thick-coming series of punning metaphors, all merely suggested. So Brutus, when hunting after reasons for killing Cæsar: "It is the bright day that brings forth the adder." Here the metaphor suggested is, that the sunshine of kingly power will develop a venomous serpent in the hitherto noble Julius. So, again, Cleopatra, when Antony dies: "O, see, my women, the crown o' the earth doth melt";--"O, wither'd is the garland of the war, the soldier's pole is fall'n";--"Look, our lamp is spent, it's out." And so in Macbeth's,--"The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees is left this vault to brag of";--"Better be with the dead than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy";--"Come, seeling night, scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day." Also one of the Thanes, when they are about to make their ultimate set-to against Macbeth:

"Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal;
And with him pour we in our country's purge
Each drop of us."

_Macbeth_ indeed has more of this character than any other of the Poet's dramas; he having judged, apparently, that such a style of suggested images was the best way of _symbolizing_ such a wild-rushing torrent of crimes, remorses, and retributions as that tragedy consists of.

Near akin to these is a number of passages like the following from one of Antony's speeches:

"The hearts
That spaniel'd me at heels, to whom I gave
Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets
On blossoming Cæsar; and this pine is bark'd,
That overtopp'd them all."