le Julius. So, again, Cleopatra, when Antony dies:
"O, see, my women, the crown o' the earth doth melt";--"O, wither'd is
the garland of the war, the soldier's pole is fall'n";--"Look, our
lamp is spent, it's out." And so in Macbeth's,--"The wine of life is
drawn, and the mere lees is left this vault to brag of";--"Better be
with the dead than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless
ecstasy";--"Come, seeling night, scarf up the tender eye of pitiful
day." Also one of the Thanes, when they are about to make their
ultimate set-to against Macbeth:

"Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal;
And with him pour we in our country's purge
Each drop of us."

_Macbeth_ indeed has more of this character than any other of the
Poet's dramas; he having judged, apparently, that such a style of
suggested images was the best way of _symbolizing_ such a wild-rushing
torrent of crimes, remorses, and retributions as that tragedy consists
of.

Near akin to these is a number of passages like the following from one
of Antony's speeches:

"The hearts
That spaniel'd me at heels, to whom I gave
Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets
On blossoming Caesar; and this pine is bark'd,
That overtopp'd them all."

Here we have several distinct images merely suggested, and coming so
thick withal, that our powers might be swamped but for the prodigious
momentum or gale of thought that carries us through. I am aware that
several such passages have often been censured as mere jumbles of
incongruous metaphors; but they do not so strike any reader who is so
unconscientious of rhetorical formalities as to care only for the
meaning of what he reads; though I admit that perhaps no mental
current less deep and mighty than Shakespeare's would waft us clean
over such thought-foundering passages.

* * * * *

There is one other trait of the Poet's style which I must briefly
notice. It is the effect of some one leading thought or predominant
feeling in silently modifying the language, and drawing in sympathetic
words and phrases by unmarked threads of association. Thus in the
hero's description of Valeria, in _Coriolanus_, v. 3:

"The noble sister of Publicola,
The moon of Rome; chaste as the icicle,
That's curded by the frost from purest snow,
And hangs on Dian's temple."

Here, of course, the leading thought is chastity; and obse