ion from
another play, Olivia is not so much his Juliet as his Rosalind; and
perhaps a secret persuasion to that effect is the real cause of her
rejecting his suit. Accordingly, when he sees her placed beyond his
hope, he has no more trouble about her; but turns, and builds a true
affection where, during the preoccupancy of his imagination, so many
sweet and tender appeals have been made to his heart.

In Shakespeare's delineations as in nature, we may commonly note that
love, in proportion as it is deep and genuine, is also inward and
reserved. To be voluble, to be fond of spreading itself in discourse,
or of airing itself in the fineries of speech, seems indeed quite
against the instinct of that passion; and its best eloquence is when
it ties up the tongue, and _steals_ out in other modes of expression,
the flushing of the cheeks and the mute devotion of the eyes. In its
purest forms, it is apt to be a secret even unto itself, the subjects
of it knowing indeed that something ails them, but not knowing exactly
what. So that the most effective love-making is involuntary and
unconscious. And I suspect that, as a general thing, if the true
lover's passion be not returned before it is spoken, it stands little
chance of being returned at all.

Now, in Orsino's case, the passion, or whatever else it may be, is too
much without to be thoroughly sound within. Like Malvolio's virtue, it
is too glass-gazing, too much enamoured of its own image, and renders
him too apprehensive that it will be the death of him, if disappointed
of its object. Accordingly he talks too much about it, and his
talking about it is too ingenious withal; it makes his tongue run
glib and fine with the most charming divisions of poetic imagery and
sentiment; all which shrewdly infers that he lacks the genuine thing,
and has mistaken something else for it. Yet, when we hear him dropping
such riches as this,--

"O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purg'd the air of pestilence!"

and this,--

"She that hath a heart of that fine frame
To pay this debt of love but to a brother,
How will she love when the rich golden shaft
Hath kill'd the flock of all affections else
That live in her!"--

we can hardly help wishing that such were indeed the true vernacular
of that passion. But it is not so, and on the whole it is much better
than so: for love, that which is rightly so called, uses a diviner
language even