rve how, as
by a kind of silent sympathy, all the words and images are selected
and toned in perfect unison with that thought, so that the whole may
be said literally to relish of nothing else. Something of the same,
though in a manner perhaps still better, because less pronounced,
occurs in _As You Like It_, ii. 1, where, the exiled Duke having
expressed his pain that the deer, "poor dappled fools, being native
burghers of this desert city," should on their own grounds "have their
round haunches gor'd," one of the attendant lords responds:

"Indeed, my lord,
The melancholy Jaques grieves at that.
To-day, my Lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind him, as he lay along
Under an oak whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood;
To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish: and indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heav'd forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Cours'd one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on th' extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears."

Here the predominant feeling of the speaker is that of kindred or
half-brotherhood with the deer; and such words as _languish, groans,
coat, tears, innocent_, and _hairy fool_, dropping along so quietly,
impart a sort of semi-humanizing tinge to the language, so that the
very pulse of his feeling seems beating in its veins.

The Poet has a great many passages from which this feature might be
illustrated. And it often imparts a very peculiar charm to his
poetry;--a charm the more winning, and the more wholesome too, for
being, I will not say unobtrusive, but hardly perceptible; acting like
a soft undertone accompaniment of music, which we are kept from
noticing by the delicate concert of thought and feeling it insensibly
kindles and feeds within us. Thus the Poet touches and rallies all our
most hidden springs of delight to his purpose, and makes them
unconsciously tributary to the refreshment of the hour; stealing fine
inspirations into us, which work their effect upon the soul without
prating of their presence, and not unlike the virtue that lets not the
left hand know what the right hand doeth. And all this