Still more to the point, perhaps, is the passage in _Hamlet_, iv. 5,
where Ophelia so touchingly scatters out the secrets of her virgin
heart: "They say the owl was a baker's daughter.--Lord, we know what
we are, but we know not what we may be.--God be at your table!" And
again: "I hope all will be well. We must be patient; but I cannot
choose but weep, to think they should lay him i' the cold ground. My
brother shall know of it; and so I thank you for your good
counsel.--Come, my coach!--Good night, ladies; good night, sweet
ladies; good night, good night." A poor, crazed, but still gentle,
sweet-tempered, and delicate-souled girl, quite unconscious of her own
distress, yet still having a dim remembrance of the great sorrows that
have crazed her,--such is Ophelia here; and her very manner of speech
takes the exact colour and tone of her mind.

Probably, however, the best example of all is one that I can but refer
to, it being too long for quotation. It is in the second scene of _The
Tempest_, where Prospero relates to his daughter the story of his past
life, at the same time letting her into the fact and the reasons of
what he has just been doing, and still has in hand to do. The dear
wise old gentleman is here absent-minded, his thoughts being busy and
very intent upon the tempest he has lately got up, and upon the
incoming and forthcoming consequences of it; and he thinks Miranda is
not attentive to what he is saying, because he is but half-attending
to it himself. This subdued mental agitation, and wandering of his
thoughts from the matter his tongue is handling, silently registers
itself in a broken, disjointed, and somewhat rambling course of
narrative; that is, his style runs so in sympathy with his state of
mind as to be unconsciously physiognomic of it. Certainly it is among
the Poet's finest instances of "suiting the word to the action"; while
at the same time it perfectly remembers the "special observance" of
"o'erstepping not the modesty of nature."

* * * * *

Since Homer, no poet has come near Shakespeare in originality,
freshness, opulence, and boldness of imagery. It is this that forms,
in a large part, the surpassing beauty of his poetry; it is in this
that much of his finest idealizing centres. And he abounds in all the
figures of speech known in formal rhetoric, except the Allegory and
the Apologue. The Allegory, I take it, is hardly admissible in
dramatic writing; n