d with easy
placability where goodness of heart is apparent. His passionate affection
for, and fidelity to, Lear act on our feelings in Lear's own favour:
virtue itself seems to be in company with him.

_Ib._ sc. 2. Edmund's speech:--

"Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth," &c.

Warburton's note upon a quotation from Vanini.

Poor Vanini!--Any one but Warburton would have thought this precious
passage more characteristic of Mr. Shandy than of atheism. If the fact
really were so (which it is not, but almost the contrary) I do not see why
the most confirmed theist might not very naturally utter the same wish.
But it is proverbial that the youngest son in a large family is commonly
the man of the greatest talents in it; and as good an authority as Vanini
has said--"incalescere in venerem ardentius, spei sobolis injuriosum esse."

In this speech of Edmund you see, as soon as a man cannot reconcile
himself to reason, how his conscience flies off by way of appeal to
nature, who is sure upon such occasions never to find fault, and also how
shame sharpens a predisposition in the heart to evil. For it is a profound
moral, that shame will naturally generate guilt; the oppressed will be
vindictive, like Shylock, and in the anguish of undeserved ignominy the
delusion secretly springs up of getting over the moral quality of an
action by fixing the mind on the mere physical act alone.

_Ib._ Edmund's speech:--

"This is the excellent foppery of the world! that, when we are
sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour), we make
guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars," &c.

Thus scorn and misanthropy are often the anticipations and mouth-pieces of
wisdom in the detection of superstitions. Both individuals and nations may
be free from such prejudices by being below them, as well as by rising
above them.

_Ib._ sc. 3. The Steward should be placed in exact antithesis to Kent, as
the only character of utter irredeemable baseness in Shakespeare. Even in
this the judgment and invention of the poet are very observable;--for what
else could the willing tool of a Goneril be? Not a vice but this of
baseness was left open to him.

_Ib._ sc. 4. In Lear old age is itself a character,--its natural
imperfections being increased by life-long habits of receiving a prompt
obedience. Any addition of individuality would have been unnecessary and