nature for its origination. For such are the appointed relations of
intellectual power to truth, and of truth to goodness, that it becomes
both morally and poetically unsafe to present what is admirable--what our
nature compels us to admire--in the mind, and what is most detestable in
the heart, as co-existing in the same individual without any apparent
connection, or any modification of the one by the other. That Shakespeare
has in one instance, that of Iago, approached to this, and that he has
done it successfully, is perhaps the most astonishing proof of his genius,
and the opulence of its resources. But in the present tragedy, in which he
was compelled to present a Goneril and a Regan, it was most carefully to
be avoided;--and therefore the only one conceivable addition to the
inauspicious influences on the preformation of Edmund's character is
given, in the information that all the kindly counteractions to the
mischievous feelings of shame, which might have been derived from
co-domestication with Edgar and their common father, had been cut off by
his absence from home, and foreign education from boyhood to the present
time, and a prospect of its continuance, as if to preclude all risk of his
interference with the father's views for the elder and legitimate son:--

"He hath been out nine years, and away he shall again."

Act i. sc. 1.--

"_Cor._ Nothing my lord.

_Lear._ Nothing?

_Cor._ Nothing.

_Lear._ Nothing can come of nothing: speak again.

_Cor._ Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty
According to my bond; nor more, nor less."

There is something of disgust at the ruthless hypocrisy of her sisters,
and some little faulty admixture of pride and sullenness in Cordelia's
"Nothing;" and her tone is well contrived, indeed, to lessen the glaring
absurdity of Lear's conduct, but answers the yet more important purpose of
forcing away the attention from the nursery-tale, the moment it has served
its end, that of supplying the canvas for the picture. This is also
materially furthered by Kent's opposition, which displays Lear's moral
incapability of resigning the sovereign power in the very act of disposing
of it. Kent is, perhaps, the nearest to perfect goodness in all
Shakespeare's characters, and yet the most individualised. There is an
extraordinary charm, in his bluntness, which is that only of a nobleman,
arising from a contempt of overstrained courtesy, and combine