nstantly know; and of that letter too:
This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me
That which my father loses; no less than all:
The younger rises when the old doth fall.

He goes out; and the next moment, as the fourth scene opens, we find
ourselves in the icy storm with Lear, Kent and the Fool, and yet in the
inmost shrine of love. I am not speaking of the devotion of the others
to Lear, but of Lear himself. He had consented, merely for the Fool's
sake, to seek shelter in the hovel:

Come, your hovel.
Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
That's sorry yet for thee.

But on the way he has broken down and has been weeping (III. iv. 17),
and now he resists Kent's efforts to persuade him to enter. He does not
feel the storm:

when the mind's free
The body's delicate: the tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
Save what beats there:

and the thoughts that will drive him mad are burning in his brain:

Filial ingratitude!
Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand
For lifting food to't? But I will punish home.
No, I will weep no more. In such a night
To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure.
In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril!
Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,--
O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that.

And then suddenly, as he controls himself, the blessed spirit of
kindness breathes on him 'like a meadow gale of spring,' and he turns
gently to Kent:

Prithee, go in thyself; seek thine own ease:
This tempest will not give me leave to ponder
On things would hurt me more. But I'll go in.
In, boy; go first. You houseless poverty--
Nay, get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.

But his prayer is not for himself.

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,

it begins, and I need not quote more. This is one of those passages
which make one worship Shakespeare.[160]

Much has been written on the representation of insanity in _King Lear_,
and I will confine myself to one or two points which may have escaped
notice. The most obvious symptom of Lear's insanity, especially in its
first stages, is of course the domination of a fixed idea. Whatever
presents itself to his senses, is seized on by this idea and compelled
to express it; as