first place, there is no necessity that we _should_
reconcile ourselves to him. In this consists a part of the wonderful
beauty of the character of Helena--a part of its womanly truth, which
Johnson, who accuses Bertram, and those who so plausibly defend him, did
not understand. If it never happened in real life, that a woman, richly
endued with heaven's best gifts, loved with all her heart, and soul, and
strength, a man unequal to or unworthy of her, and to whose faults
herself alone was blind--I would give up the point: but if it be in
nature, why should it not be in Shakspeare? We are not to look into
Bertram's character for the spring and source of Helena's love for him,
but into her own. She loves Bertram,--because she loves him!--a woman's
reason,--but here, and sometimes elsewhere, all-sufficient.

And although Helena tells herself that she loves in vain, a conviction
stronger than reason tells her that she does not: her love is like a
religion, pure, holy, and deep: the blessedness to which she has lifted
her thoughts is forever before her; to despair would be a crime,--it
would be to cast herself away and die. The faith of her affection,
combining with the natural energy of her character, believing all things
possible makes them so. It could say to the mountain of pride which
stands between her and her hopes, "Be thou removed!" and it is removed.
This is the solution of her behavior in the marriage scene, where
Bertram, with obvious reluctance and disdain, accepts her hand, which
the king, his feudal lord and guardian, forces on him. Her maidenly
feeling is at first shocked, and she shrinks back--

That you are well restor'd, my lord, I am glad:
Let the rest go.

But shall she weakly relinquish the golden opportunity, and dash the cup
from her lips at the moment it is presented? Shall she cast away the
treasure for which she has ventured both life and honor, when it is just
within her grasp? Shall she, after compromising her feminine delicacy by
the public disclosure of her preference, be thrust back into shame, "to
blush out the remainder of her life," and die a poor, lost, scorned
thing? This would be very pretty and interesting and characteristic in
Viola or Ophelia, but not at all consistent with that high determined
spirit, that moral energy, with which Helena is portrayed. Pride is the
only obstacle opposed to her. She is not despised and rejected as a
woman, but as a poor physician's daughter;