ve a perception of innate character apart from all
accidental circumstance: we see that if Cordelia had never known her
father, had never been rejected from his love, had never been a born
princess or a crowned queen, she would not have been less Cordelia; less
distinctly _herself_; that is, a woman of a steady mind, of calm but
deep affections, of inflexible truth, of few words, and of reserved
deportment.

As to Regan and Goneril--"tigers, not daughters"--we might wish to
regard them as mere hateful chimeras, impossible as they are detestable;
but fortunately there was once a Tullia. I know not where to look for
the prototype of Cordelia: there was a Julia Alpinula, the young
priestess of Aventicum,[65] who, unable to save her father's life by the
sacrifice of her own, died with him--"_infelix patris, infelix
proles_"--but this is all we know of her. There was the Roman daughter,
too. I remember seeing at Genoa, Guido's "Pieta Romana," in which the
expression of the female bending over the aged parent, who feeds from
her bosom, is perfect,--but it is not a Cordelia: only Raffaelle could
have painted Cordelia.

But the character which at once suggests itself in comparison with
Cordelia, as the heroine of filial tenderness and piety, is certainly
the Antigone of Sophocles. As poetical conceptions, they rest on the
same basis: they are both pure abstractions of truth, piety, and natural
affection; and in both, love, as a passion, is kept entirely out of
sight: for though the womanly character is sustained, by making them the
objects of devoted attachment, yet to have portrayed them as influenced
by passion, would have destroyed that unity of purpose and feeling which
is one source of power; and, besides, have disturbed that serene purity
and grandeur of soul, which equally distinguishes both heroines. The
spirit, however, in which the two characters are conceived, is as
different as possible; and we must not fail to remark, that Antigone,
who plays a principal part in two fine tragedies, and is distinctly and
completely made out, is considered as a masterpiece, the very triumph of
the ancient classical drama; whereas, there are many among Shakspeare's
characters which are equal to Cordelia as dramatic conceptions, and
superior to her in finishing of outline, as well as in the richness of
the poetical coloring.

When Oedipus, pursued by the vengeance of the gods, deprived of sight
by his own mad act, and driven from Th