then her drawing from that universal object of reverence and
indulgence the very reason for her frightful conclusion--

"Say, you have wrong'd her!"

All Lear's faults increase our pity for him. We refuse to know them
otherwise than as means of his sufferings, and aggravations of his
daughters' ingratitude.

_Ib._ Lear's speech:--

"O, reason not the need: our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous," &c.

Observe that the tranquillity which follows the first stunning of the blow
permits Lear to reason.

Act iii. sc. 4. O, what a world's convention of agonies is here! All
external nature in a storm, all moral nature convulsed,--the real madness
of Lear, the feigned madness of Edgar, the babbling of the Fool, the
desperate fidelity of Kent--surely such a scene was never conceived before
or since! Take it but as a picture for the eye only, it is more terrific
than any which a Michael Angelo, inspired by a Dante, could have
conceived, and which none but a Michael Angelo could have executed. Or let
it have been uttered to the blind, the howlings of nature would seem
converted into the voice of conscious humanity. This scene ends with the
first symptoms of positive derangement; and the intervention of the fifth
scene is particularly judicious,--the interruption allowing an interval for
Lear to appear in full madness in the sixth scene.

_Ib._ sc. 7. Gloster's blinding.

What can I say of this scene?--There is my reluctance to think Shakespeare
wrong, and yet--

Act iv. sc. 6. Lear's speech:--

"Ha! Goneril!--with a white beard!--They flattered me like a dog;
and told me, I had white hairs in my beard, ere the black ones
were there. To say _Ay_ and _No_ to every thing I said!--Ay and No
too was no good divinity. When the rain came to wet me once," &c.

The thunder recurs, but still at a greater distance from our feelings.

_Ib._ sc. 7. Lear's speech:--

"Where have I been? Where am I?--Fair daylight?--
I am mightily abused.--I should even die with pity
To see another thus," &c.

How beautifully the affecting return of Lear to reason, and the mild
pathos of these speeches prepare the mind for the last sad, yet sweet,
consolation of the aged sufferer's death!

"Hamlet."

Hamlet was the play, or rather Hamlet himself was the character, in the
intuition and exposition of which I first made my turn for philosophical
criticism, and especially for insight into the genius