have been willing to confess, even to herself. In the same
manner Benedick betrays a lurking partiality for his fascinating enemy;
he shows that he has looked upon her with no careless eye, when he says,

There's her cousin, (meaning Beatrice,) an' she were not
possessed with a fury, excels her as much in beauty as the
first of May does the last of December.

Infinite skill, as well as humor, is shown in making this pair of airy
beings the exact counterpart of each other; but of the two portraits,
that of Benedick is by far the most pleasing, because the independence
and gay indifference of temper, the laughing defiance of love and
marriage, the satirical freedom of expression, common to both, are more
becoming to the masculine than to the feminine character. Any woman
might love such a cavalier as Benedick, and be proud of his affection;
his valor, his wit, and his gayety sit so gracefully upon him! and his
light scoffs against the power of love are but just sufficient to render
more piquant the conquest of this "heretic in despite of beauty." But a
man might well be pardoned who should shrink from encountering such a
spirit as that of Beatrice, unless, indeed, he had "served an
apprenticeship to the taming school." The wit of Beatrice is less
good-humored than that of Benedick; or, from the difference of sex,
appears so. It is observable that the power is throughout on her side,
and the sympathy and interest on his: which, by reversing the usual
order of things, seems to excite us _against the grain_, if I may use
such an expression. In all their encounters she constantly gets the
better of him, and the gentleman's wits go off halting, if he is not
himself fairly _hors de combat_. Beatrice, woman-like, generally has the
first word, and will have the last. Thus, when they first meet, she
begins by provoking the merry warfare:--

I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick;
nobody marks you.

BENEDICK.

What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?

BEATRICE.

Is it possible Disdain should die, while she hath such meet
food to feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must
convert to disdain, if you come in her presence.

It is clear that she cannot for a moment endure his neglect, and he can
as little tolerate her scorn. Nothing that Benedick addresses to
Beatrice personally can equal the malicious