he workings of jealousy, know right well that
in all this Shakespeare does not one whit "overstep the modesty of
Nature."

The Poet manages with great art to bring Leontes off from the
disgraces of his passion, and repeal him home to our sympathies, which
had been freely drawn to him at first by his generosity of friendship.
To this end, jealousy is represented as his only fault, and this as a
sudden freak, which passes on directly into a frenzy, and whips him
quite out of himself, temporarily overriding his characteristic
qualities, but not combining with them; the more violent for being
unwonted, and the shorter-lived for being violent. In his firm,
compact energy of thought and speech, after his passion has cleared
itself, and in his perennial flow of repentance after his bereavement,
are displayed the real tone and texture of his character. We feel
that, if his sin has been great, his suffering is also great, and that
if he were a greater sinner, his suffering would be less. Quick,
impulsive, headstrong, he admits no bounds to anger or to penitence;
condemns himself as vehemently as he does others; and will spend his
life in atoning for a wrong he has done in a moment of passion: so
that we are the more willing to forgive him, inasmuch as he never
forgives himself.

* * * * *

The old poets seem to have contemplated a much wider range of female
excellence than it has since grown customary to allow; taking for
granted that whatsoever we feel to be most divine in man might be
equally so in woman; and so pouring into their conceptions of
womanhood a certain _manliness_ of soul, wherein we recognize an union
of what is lovely with what is honourable,--such a combination as
would naturally inspire any right-minded man at the same time with
tenderness and with awe. Their ideas of delicacy did not preclude
strength: in the female character they were rather pleased than
otherwise to have the sweetness of the violet blended with the
grandeur of the oak; probably because they saw and felt that woman
might be big-hearted and brave-minded, and yet be none the less
womanly; and that love might build all the higher and firmer for
having its foundations laid deep in respect. This largeness of heart
and liberality of thought often comes out in their writings, and that
too whether in dealing with ideal or with actual women; which suggests
that in what they chose to create they were a good deal infl