I
have to confess that, for depth, sweetness, energy, and solidity of
character, all drawn into one, Helena is not surpassed by more than
two or three of Shakespeare's heroines. Her great strength of mind is
well shown in that, absorbed as she is in the passion that shapes her
life, hardly any of the Poet's characters, after Hamlet, deals more in
propositions of general truth, as distinguished from the utterances of
individual sentiment and emotion. We should suppose that all her
thoughts, being struck out in such a glowing heat, would so cleave to
the circumstances as to have little force apart from them; yet much
that she says holds as good in a general application as in her own
particular. Which rightly infers that she sees things in their
principles; that is, her thoughts touch the pith of whatever matter
she takes in hand; while at the same time broad axiomatic notes of
discourse drop from her with an ease which shows that her mind is
thoroughly at home in them. For this cause, her feelings, strong as
they are, never so get the upper hand as to beguile her into any
self-delusion; as appears in the unbosoming of herself to the
Countess, where we have the greatest reluctance of modesty yielding to
a holy regard for truth. It is there manifest that she has taken a
full and just measure of her situation: she frankly avows the
conviction that she "loves in vain," and that she "strives against
hope"; that she "lends and gives where she is sure to lose";
nevertheless she resolves to "venture the well-lost life of hers on
his Grace's cure," and leave the result in other hands.

In her condition, both there and afterwards, there is much indeed to
move our pity; yet her behaviour and the grounds of it are such that
she never suffers any loss of our respect; one reason of which is,
because we see that her sound faculties and fine feelings are keenly
alive to the nature of what she undertakes. Thus she passes unharmed
through the most terrible outward dishonours, firmly relying on her
rectitude of purpose; and we dare not think any thing to her hurt,
because she looks her danger square in the face, and nobly feels
secure in that apparelling of strength. Here, truly, we have something
very like the sublimity of moral courage. And this precious, peerless
jewel in a setting of the most tender, delicate, sensitive womanhood!
It is a clear triumph of the inward and essential over the outward and
accidental; her character being rad