Elements of Criticism. Henry Home, Lord Kames
entertain a chearful disposition.
Queen. To please the King, I did; to please myself,
I cannot do it. Yet I know no cause
Why I should welcome such a guest as grief;
Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest
As my sweet Richard: yet again, methinks,
Some unborn sorrow, ripe in Fortune’s womb,
Is coming tow’rd me; and my inward soul
With something trembles, yet at nothing grieves,
More than with parting from my lord the King.
Richard II. act 2. sc. 5.51
Resentment at first is vented on the relations of the offender, in order to punish him: but as resentment, when so outrageous, is contrary to conscience, the mind, to justify its passion, is disposed to paint these relations in the blackest colours; and it comes at last to be convinced, that they ought to be punished for their own demerits.
Anger raised by an accidental stroke upon a tender part of the body, is sometimes vented upon the undesigning cause. But as the passion in that case is absurd, and as there can be no solid gratification in punishing the innocent; the mind, prone to justify as well as to gratify its passion, de-<159>ludes itself into a conviction of the action’s being voluntary. The conviction however is but momentary: the first reflection shows it to be erroneous; and the passion vanisheth almost instantaneously with the conviction. But anger, the most violent of all passions, has still greater influence: it sometimes forces the mind to personify a stock or a stone if it happen to occasion bodily pain, and even to believe it a voluntary agent, in order to be a proper object of resentment. And that we have really a momentary conviction of its being a voluntary agent, must be evident from considering, that without such conviction the passion can neither be justified nor gratified: the imagination can give no aid; for a stock or a stone imagined sensible, cannot be an object of punishment, if the mind be conscious that it is an imagination merely without any reality. Of such personification, involving a conviction of reality, there is one illustrious instance: when the first bridge of boats over the Hellespont was destroyed by a storm, Xerxes fell into a transport of rage, so excessive, that he commanded the sea to be punished with 300 stripes; and a pair of fetters to be thrown into it, enjoining the following words to be pronounced: “O thou salt and bitter water! thy master hath condemned thee to this punishment for offending him without cause; and is resolved to pass over thee in despite of thy insolence: with reason all men neglect to sacrifice to thee,<160> because thou art both disagreeable and treacherous.”*
Shakespear exhibits beautiful examples of the irregular influence of passion in making us believe things to be otherwise than they are. King Lear, in his distress, personifies the rain, wind, and thunder; and in order to justify his resentment, believes them to be taking part with his daughters:
Lear. Rumble thy belly-full, spit fire, spout rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdoms, call’d you children;
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure.—Here I stand, your brave;
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man!
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That have with two pernicious daughters join’d
Your high-engender’d battles, ’gainst a head
So old and white as this. Oh! oh! ’tis foul!
Act 3. sc. 2.
King Richard, full of indignation against his favourite horse for carrying Bolingbroke, is led into the conviction of his being rational:
Groom. O, how it yearn’d my heart, when I beheld
In London streets, that coronation-day,
When Bolingbroke rode on Roan Barbary,
That horse that thou so often hast bestrid,
That horse that I so carefully have dressed.<161>
K. Rich. Rode he on Barbary? tell me, gentle friend,
How went he under him.
Groom. So proudly as he had disdain’d the ground.
K. Rich. So proud that Bolingbroke was on his back!
That jade had eat bread from my royal hand.
This hand hath made him proud with clapping him.
Would he not stumble? would he not fall down,
(Since pride must have a fall), and break the neck
Of that proud man that did usurp his back?
Richard II. act 5. sc. 11.52
Hamlet, swelled with indignation at his mother’s second marriage, was strongly inclined to lessen the time of her widowhood, the shortness of the time being a violent circumstance against her; and he deludes himself by degrees into the opinion of an interval shorter than the real one:
Hamlet. ——— That it should come to this!
But two months dead! nay, not so much; not two;—
So excellent a king, that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr: so loving to my mother,
That he permitted not the winds of heav’n
Visit her face too roughly. Heav’n and earth!
Must I remember—why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on; yet, within a month—
Let me not think—Frailty, thy name is Woman!
A little month! or ere those shoes were old,
With which she follow’d my poor father’s body,
Like Niobe, all tears—Why she, ev’n she—
(O heav’n! a beast that wants discourse of reason,<162>
Would have mourn’d longer—) married with mine uncle,
My father’s brother; but no more like my father,
Than I to Hercules. Within a month!—
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her gauled eyes,
She married—Oh, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
Act I. sc. 3.53
The power of passion to falsify the computation of time is remarkable in this instance; because time, which hath an accurate measure, is less obsequious to our desires and wishes, than objects which have no precise standard of less or more.
Good news are greedily swallowed upon very slender evidence: our wishes magnify the probability of the event, as well as the veracity of the relater; and we believe as certain, what at best is doubtful:
Quel, che l’huom vede, amor li fa invisible
E l’invisibil fa veder amore.
Questo creduto fu, che ’l miser suole
Dar facile credenza a’ quel, che vuole.
Orland. Furios. cant. I. st. 56.54