abstract
and sum-total of an utterly useless yet perfectly harmless man,
seeking wisdom by abjuring its first principle. An odd choice mixture
of reality and affectation, he does nothing but think, yet avowedly
thinks to no purpose; or rather thinking is with him its own end. On
the whole, if in Touchstone there is much of the philosopher in the
Fool, in Jaques there is not less of the fool in the philosopher; so
that the German critic, Ulrici, is not so wide of the mark in calling
them "two fools."

Jaques is equally wilful, too, with Touchstone, in his turn of thought
and speech, though not so conscious of it; and as he plays his part
more to please himself so he is proportionably less open to the
healing and renovating influences of Nature. We cannot justly affirm,
indeed, that "the soft blue sky did never melt into his heart," as
Wordsworth says of his Peter Bell; but he shows more of resistance
than all the other persons to the poetries and eloquences of the
place. Tears are a great luxury to him: he sips the cup of woe with
all the gust of an epicure. Still his temper is by no means sour: fond
of solitude, he is nevertheless far from being unsocial. The society
of good men, provided they be in adversity, has great charms for him.
He likes to be with those who, though deserving the best, still have
the worst: virtue wronged, buffeted, oppressed, is his special
delight; because such moral discrepancies offer the most salient
points to his cherished meditations. He himself enumerates nearly all
the forms of melancholy except his own, which I take to be the
melancholy of self-love. And its effect in his case is not unlike that
of Touchstone's art; inasmuch as he greatly delights to see things
otherwise than as they really are, and to make them speak out some
meaning that is not in them; that is, their plain and obvious sense is
not to his taste. Nevertheless his melancholy is grateful, because
free from any dash of malignity. His morbid habit of mind seems to
spring from an excess of generative virtue. And how racy and original
is everything that comes from him! as if it bubbled up from the centre
of his being; while his perennial fulness of matter makes his company
always delightful. The Duke loves especially to meet him in his
"sullen fits," because he then overflows with his most idiomatic
humour. After all, the worst that can be said of Jaques is, that the
presence of men who are at once fortunate and deserving c