ch of Shakespeare's Arthur," says Swinburne.
"There are one or two figures in the world of his work of which there
are no words that would be fit or good to say. Another of these is
Cordelia. The place they have in our lives and thoughts is not one for
talk. The niche set apart for them to inhabit in our secret hearts is
not penetrable by the lights and noises of common day. There are chapels
in the cathedrals of man's highest art, as in that of his inmost life,
not made to be set open to the eyes and feet of the world. Love, and
Death, and Memory, keep charge for us in silence of some beloved names.
It is the crowning glory of genius, the final miracle and transcendent
gift of poetry, that it can add to the number of these and engrave on
the very heart of our remembrance fresh names and memories of its own
creation."

"Lear is the occasion for Cordelia," says Victor Hugo. "Maternity of the
daughter toward the father; profound subject; maternity venerable among
all other maternities, so admirably rendered by the legend of that Roman
girl, who, in the depths of a prison, nurses her old father. The young
breast near the white beard! There is not a spectacle more holy. This
filial breast is Cordelia. Once this figure dreamed of and found,
Shakespeare created his drama.... Shakespeare, carrying Cordelia in his
thoughts, created that tragedy like a god who, having an aurora to put
forward, makes a world expressly for it."

"In 'King Lear,' Shakespeare's vision sounded the abyss of horror to its
very depths, and his spirit showed neither fear, nor giddiness, nor
faintness, at the sight," says Brandes. "On the threshold of this work,
a feeling of awe comes over one, as on the threshold of the Sistine
Chapel, with its ceiling of frescoes by Michael Angelo,--only that the
suffering here is far more intense, the wail wilder, and the harmonies
of beauty more definitely shattered by the discords of despair."

Such are the judgments of the critics about this drama, and therefore I
believe I am not wrong in selecting it as a type of Shakespeare's best.

As impartially as possible, I will endeavor to describe the contents of
the drama, and then to show why it is not that acme of perfection it is
represented to be by critics, but is something quite different.

II

The drama of "Lear" begins with a scene giving the conversation between
two courtiers, Kent and Gloucester. Kent, pointing to a young man
present, asks Gloucester