Puslapio vaizdai
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every bad quality, and fixes on the most humbling çircumstances;

Caffius. I cannot tell what you and other men
Think of this life; but for my fingle self,
I had as lief not be, as live to be
In awe of fuch a thing as I myself.
I was born free as Cæfar, so were you;
We both have fed as well; and we can both
Endure the winter's cold as well as he.
For once, upon a raw and gusty day,
The troubled Tyber chafing with his shores,
Cæfar says to me, Dar'st thou, Caffius, now
Leap in with me into this angry flood,
And swim to yonder point? - Upon the word,
Accoutred as I was, I plunged in,
And bid him follow; so indeed he did.
The torrent roar'd, and we did buffet it
With lusty finews; throwing it afide,
And stemming it with hearts of controverfy.
But ere we could arrive the point propos'd,
Cæfar cry'd, Help me, Caffius, or I sink.
I, as Æneas, our great ancestor,

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Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder
The old Anchises bear; fo from the waves of Tyben

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If Cæfar carelessly but nod on him.

He had a fever when he was in Spain,

And when the fit was on him, I did mark

How he did shake. 'Tis true, this god did shake;
His coward lips did from their colour fly,

And that fame eye whose bend doth awe the world,

Did lose its luftre; I did hear him grone :
Ay, and that tongue of his, that bade the Romans
Mark him, and write his speeches in their books,
Alas! it cry'd - Give me some drink, Titinius, -
As a fick girl. Ye gods, it doth amaze me,

A man of fuch a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world,
And bear the palm alone.

Julius Cæfar, act 1. fc. 3.

Glo'ster inflamed with resentment against his fon Edgar, could even force himself into a momentary conviction that they were not related:

O strange fasten'd villain !
Would he deny his letter? - I never got him.

King Lear, act 2. fc. 3.

When by great sensibility of heart, or other means, grief swells beyond what the cause can justify, the mind, in order to justify itself, is prone to magnify the cause: and if the real cause admit not of being magnified, the mind seeks a cause for its grief in imagined future events:

Busby. Madam, your Majesty is much too sad :
You promis'd, when you parted with the King,
To lay aside self-harming heaviness,
And entertain a chearful disposition.

Queen. To please the King, I did; to please myself,
I cannot do it. Yet I know no cause

Why I should welcome such a guest as grief;

Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest

As my sweet Richard: yet again, methinks,

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Some unborn forrow, ripe in Fortune's womb,
Is coming tow'rd me; and my inward foul
With something trembles, yet at nothing grieves,
More than with parting from my Lord the King.

Richard II. act 2. fc. 5.

Resentment at first is vented on the relations of the offender, in order to punish him: but as resentment, when so outrageous, is contrary to confcience, the mind, to justify its passion, is disposed to paint these relations in the blackest colours; and it actually comes to be convinced, that they ought to be punished for their own demerits.

Anger raised by an accidental stroke upon a tender part of the body, is sometimes vented upon the undesigning cause. But as the paffion in this cafe is abfurd, and as there can be no solid gratification in punishing the innocent, the mind, prone to justify as well as to gratify its paffion, deludes itself instantly into a conviction of the action's being voluntary. This conviction however is but momentary: the first reflection shows it to be erroneous; and the pafsion vanisheth almost instantaneously with the conviction. But anger, the most violent of all passions, has still greater influence: it sometimes forces the mind to perfonify a stock or a ftone when it occafions bodily pain, and even to believe it a voluntary agent, in order to be a proper object of resentment. And that we have really a momentary conviction of its being a voluntary agent, must be evident from considering, that without fuch conviction, the passion can neither be justified nor gratified: the imagination can give no aid; for a stock or a stone imagined sensible, cannot be an object of punishment, so long as the mind is confcious that it is an imagination merely without any reality. Of fuch perfonification, involving a conviction of reality, there is one illustrious instance: when the first bridge of boats over the Hellespont was destroy'd by a storm, Xerxes fell into a transport of rage, so exceffive, that he commanded the fea to be punished with 300 stripes; and a pair of fetters to be thrown into it, injoining the following words to be pronounced : "O thou falt and bitter water! "thy master hath condemned thee to this punish"ment for offending him without cause; and is "refolved to pass over thee in despite of thy in"folence: with reason all men neglect to facri"fice to thee, because thou art both difagreeable "and treacherous *."

Shakespear exhibits beautiful examples of the irregular influence of paffion in making us believe things to be otherwise than they are: King Lear, in his distress, personifies the rain, wind, and thunder; 'and in order to justify his resentment, believes them to be taking part with his daughters:

Herodotus, book 7.

K 3

Lear.

Lear. Rumble thy belly-full, spit fire, spout rain !
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdoms, call'd you children;
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand, your brave;
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man !
But yet I call you servile ministers,

That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high-engender'd battles, 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. Oh! oh! 'tis foul.

Act 3. fc. 2.

King Richard, full of indignation against his favourite horse for carrying Bolingbroke, is led into the conviction of his being rational:

Groom. O, how it yearn'd my heart, when I beheld In London streets, that coronation-day, When Bolingbroke rode on Roan Barbary, That horse that thou so often haft bestrid, That horfe that I so carefully have dress'd.

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K. Rich. Rode he on Barbary? tell me, gentle friend How went he under him?

• Groom. So proudly as he had disdain'd the ground. K. Rich. So proud that Bolingbroke was on his back! That jade had eat bread from my royal hand. This hand hath made him proud with clapping him. Would he not stumble? would he not fall down, (Since pride must have a fall), and break the neck Of that proud man that did ufurp his back ?

Richard II. act 5. fo. 11.

Hamlet, swelled with indignation at his mother's fecond

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