unsuspecting Countess, the style rises yet again--and really, this time,
much to the author's credit. It would need a very fine touch from a very
powerful hand to improve on the delicacy and dexterity of the prelude or
overture to the King's avowal of adulterous love. But when all is said,
though very delicate and very dexterous, it is not forcible work: I do
not mean by forcible the same as violent, spasmodic, emphatic beyond the
modesty of nature; a poet is of course only to be commended, and that
heartily, for keeping within this bound; but he is not to be commended
for coming short of it. This whole scene is full of mild and temperate
beauty, of fanciful yet earnest simplicity; but the note of it, the
expression, the dominant key of the style, is less appropriate to the
utterance of a deep and deadly passion than--at the utmost--of what
modern tongues might call a strong and rather dangerous flirtation.
Passion, so to speak, is quite out of this writer's call; the depths and
heights of manly as of womanly emotion are alike beyond his reach.

Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
He turns to favour and to prettiness.

"To favour and to prettiness"; the definition of his utmost merit and
demerit, his final achievement and shortcoming, is here complete and
exact. Witness the sweet quiet example of idyllic work which I extract
from a scene beginning in the regular amoebaean style of ancient
pastoral.

_Edward_. Thou hear'st me say that I do dote on thee.

_Countess_. If on my beauty, take it if thou canst;
Though little, I do prize it ten times less:
If on my virtue, take it if thou canst;
For virtue's store by giving doth augment:
Be it on what it will that I can give
And thou canst take away, inherit it.

_Edward_. It is thy beauty that I would enjoy.

_Countess_. O, were it painted, I would wipe it off,
And dispossess myself to give it thee:
But, sovereign, it is soldered to my life;
Take one and both; for like an humble shadow
It haunts the sunshine of my summer's life.

_Edward_. But thou mayst lend it me to sport withal.

_Countess_. As easy may my intellectual soul
Be lent away, and yet my body live,
As lend my body, palace to my soul,
Away from her, and yet retain my soul.
My body is her bower, her court, her abbey,
And she an angel, pure, divine, unspotted;
If I should lend her house, my lord, to thee,
I ki