e nobler for the unworthiness of
its object. Then, he does not marry her as a coward, but merely
because he has no choice; nor does he yield till he has shown all the
courage that were compatible with discretion. She is forced upon him
by a stretch of prerogative which seems strange indeed to us, but
which in feudal times was generally held to be just and right, so that
resistance to it was flat rebellion. And, as before observed,
Bertram's purpose of stealing away to the war was bravely formed
without any reference to Helena, and from a manly impulse or ambition
to be doing something that might show him not unworthy of his House
and his social inheritance. The King presses him with the hard
alternative of taking Helena as his wife,

"Or I will throw thee from my care for ever
Into the staggers and the cureless lapse
Of youth and ignorance; both my revenge and hate
Loosing upon thee, in the name of justice,
Without all terms of pity."

Nor, when thus driven to make a show of mastering his aversion, is
there any thing mean or cringing in the way he does it: his language
is not only reluctant and reserved, but is even made severe with a
dash of irony:

"When I consider
What great creation and what dole of honour
Flies where you bid it, I find that she, which late
Was in my nobler thoughts most base, is now
_The praised of the King_."

Marriage, in truth, is a thing that he has not begun to think of; the
passion that rightly leads to it is yet dormant in him; to the proper
charms of woman he is insensible, his heart being all set on other
things. Then, again, he does not leave Helena as a profligate, but
rather to escape from what is to him an unholy match, as being on his
side without love; and his profligacy is not so much the cause as the
consequence of his flight and exile. In the midst of his manlier work,
he is surprised into a passion unfelt by him before; and the tie which
has been strained upon him, and which his heart still disowns, is
partly to blame for the profligate intrigue into which he plunges,
because it shuts off the conditions of an honourable love.--Finally,
he is not dismissed to happiness, but rather left where he cannot be
happy, unless he shall have dismissed his faults. And, surely, he may
have some allowance, because of the tyranny laid upon him,--this too
in a sentiment where nature pleads loudest for freedom, and which, if
fr