The Essential Works of Robert G. Ingersoll. Robert Green Ingersoll
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
Keeps death his court; and there the antick sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit.—
As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus;
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and—farewell king!"
So, too, he knew that gold could not bring joy—that death and misfortune come alike to rich and poor, because:
"If thou art rich thou art poor;
For like an ass whose back with ingots bows
Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee."
In some of his philosophy there was a kind of scorn—a hidden meaning that could not in his day and time have safely been expressed. You will remember that Laertes was about to kill the king, and this king was the murderer of his own brother, and sat upon the throne by reason of his crime—and in the mouth of such a king Shakespeare puts these words:
"There's such divinity doth hedge a king."
So, in Macbeth:
"How he solicits
Heaven himself best knows; but strangely visited people
All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
The mere despairs of surgery, he cures;
Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,
Put on with holy prayers; and 'tis spoken
To the succeeding royalty—he leaves
The healing benediction.
With this strange virtue
He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy,
And sundry blessings hang about his throne,
That speak him full of grace."
Shakespeare was the master of the human heart—knew all the hopes, fears, ambitions and passions that sway the mind of man; and thus knowing, he declared that
"Love is not love that alters
When it alteration finds."
This is the sublimest declaration in the literature of the world.
Shakespeare seems to give the generalization—the result—without the process of thought. He seems always to be at the conclusion—standing where all truths meet.
In one of the Sonnets is this fragment of a line that contains the highest possible truth:
"Conscience is born of love."
If man were incapable of suffering, the words right and wrong never could have been spoken. If man were destitute of imagination, the flower of pity never could have blossomed in his heart.
We suffer—we cause others to suffer—those that we love—and of this fact conscience is born.
Love is the many-colored flame that makes the fireside of the heart. It is the mingled spring and autumn—the perfect climate of the soul.
XIII.
IN the realm of comparison Shakespeare seems to have exhausted the relations, parallels and similitudes of things, He only could have said:
"Tedious as a twice-told tale
Vexing the ears of a drowsy man."
"Duller than a great thaw.
Dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage."
In the words of Ulysses, spoken to Achilles, we find the most wonderful collection of pictures and comparisons ever compressed within the same number of lines:
"Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion—
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes—
Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devoured
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done; perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honor bright: to have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
For honor travels in a strait so narrow
Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path;
For emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue; if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an entered tide, they all rush by
And leave you hindmost:
Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O'errun and trampled on: then what they do in present,
Tho' less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours;
For time is like a fashionable host
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretched as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer: Welcome ever smiles,
And Farewell goes out sighing."
So the words of Cleopatra, when Charmain speaks:
"Peace, peace:
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast
That sucks the nurse asleep?"
XIV.
NOTHING is more difficult than a definition—a crystallization of thought so perfect that it emits light. Shakespeare says of suicide:
"It is great to do that thing
That ends all other deeds,
Which shackles accident, and bolts up change."
He defines drama to be:
"Turning the accomplishments of many years
Into an hour glass."
Of death:
"This sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod,
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot."
Of memory:
"The warder of the brain."
Of the body:
"This muddy vesture of decay."
And he declares that
"Our little life is rounded with a sleep."
He speaks of Echo as:
"The babbling gossip of the air"—
Romeo, addressing the poison that he is about to take, says:
"Come, bitter conduct, come unsavory guide,
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing