moral faculties, that it does not give us the
idea of excess. It is subject to her nobler reason; it adorns and
heightens all her feelings; it does not overwhelm or mislead them. In
Juliet, it is rather a part of her southern temperament, controlling and
modifying the rest of her character; springing from her sensibility,
hurried along by her passions, animating her joys, darkening her
sorrows, exaggerating her terrors, and, in the end, overpowering her
reason. With Juliet, imagination is, in the first instance, if not the
source, the medium of passion; and passion again kindles her
imagination. It is through the power of imagination that the eloquence
of Juliet is so vividly poetical; that every feeling, every sentiment
comes to her, clothed in the richest imagery, and is thus reflected from
her mind to ours. The poetry is not here the mere adornment, the outward
garnishing of the character; but its result, or rather blended with its
essence. It is indivisible from it, and interfused through it like
moonlight through the summer air. To particularize is almost impossible,
since the whole of the dialogue appropriated to Juliet is one rich
stream of imagery: she speaks in pictures and sometimes they are crowded
one upon another--thus in the balcony scene--

I have no joy of this contract to-night:
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,
Too like the lightning which doth cease to be
Ere one can say it lightens.

This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

Again,

O for a falconer's voice
To lure this tassel-gentle back again!
Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud,
Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies,
And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine
With repetition of my Romeo's name.

Here there are three images in the course of six lines. In the same
scene, the speech of twenty-two lines, beginning,

Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face,

contains but one figurative expression, _the mask of night_; and every
one reading this speech with the context, must have felt the peculiar
propriety of its simplicity, though perhaps without examining the cause
of an omission which certainly is not fortuitous. The reason lies in the
situation and in the feeling of the moment; where confusion, and
anxiety, and earnest self-defence predominate, the excitability and play
of the imagi