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Then suddenly he addresses Gonerill and Regan in the severest terms, and with the bitterest threats:

No, you unnatural hags!

I will have such revenges on you both—

That all the world shall-I will do such things-
What they are yet, I know not—

Nothing occurs to his mind severe enough for them to suffer, or him to inflict. His passion rises to a height that deprives him of articulation. He tells them that he will subdue his sorrow, though almost irresistible; and that they shall not triumph over his weakness:

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No! I'll not weep; I have full cause of weeping:
But this heart shall break into a thousand flaws,
Or e'er I'll weep!

He concludes,

O fool-I shall go mad!—

which is an artful anticipation, that judiciously prepares us for the dreadful event that is to follow in the succeeding acts.

W

JOSEPH WARTON."

Adventurer, No. 113, December 4, 1753.

No. IV.

OBSERVATIONS ON KING LEAR CONTINUED.

THUNDER and a ghost have been frequently introduced into tragedy by barren and mechanical play-wrights, as proper objects to impress terror and astonishment, where the distress has not been important enough to render it probable that nature would interpose for the sake of the sufferers, and where these objects themselves have not been supported by suitable sentiments. Thunder has, however, been made use of with great judgment and good effect by Shakspeare, to heighten and impress the distresses of Lear.

The venerable and wretched old king is driven out by both his daughters, without necessaries and without attendants, not only in the night, but in the midst of a most dreadful storm, and on a bleak and barren heath. On his first appearance in this situation, he draws an artful and pathetic comparison betwixt the severity of the tempest and of his daughters:

Rumble thy belly full! spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters.
I tax not you, ye elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children;
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall

Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man

The storm continuing with equal vi drops for a moment the consideration o miseries, and takes occasion to morali terrors which such commotions of nat raise in the breast of secret and u villainy :

- Tremble, thou wretch! That hast within thee undivulged crimes Unwhipt of justice! Hide thee, thou blood Thou perjur'd, and thou similar of virtue That art incestuous !

Close pent-up guilts

Rive your concealing continents, and cry
These dreadful summoners grace!—

He adds, with reference to his own cas

I am a man

More sinn'd against, than sinning.

Kent most earnestly intreats him to en which he had discovered on the heat pressing him again and again to take sh Lear exclaims,

Wilt break my heart?

Much is contained in these four word had said, 'the kindness and the grati servant exceeds that of my own childre I have given them a kingdom, yet have discarded me, and suffered a head

white as mine to be exposed to this terrible tempest, while this fellow pities and would protect me from its rage. I cannot bear this kindness from a perfect stranger; it breaks my heart.' All this seems to be included in that short exclamation, which another writer, less acquainted with nature, would have displayed at large: such a suppression of sentiments, plainly implied, is judicious and affecting. The reflections that follow are drawn likewise from an intimate knowledge of man:

When the mind's free,

The body's delicate: the tempest in my mind.
Doth from my senses take all feeling else,

Save what beats there

Here the remembrance of his daughters' behaviour rushes upon him, and he exclaims, full of the idea of its unparalleled cruelty,

Filial ingratitude!

Is it not, as this mouth should tear this hand
For lifting food to it!

He then changes his style, and vows with impotent menaces, as if still in possession of the power he had resigned, to revenge himself on his oppressors, and to steel his breast with fortitude: But I'll punish home.

No, I will weep no more!

But the sense of his sufferings returns again, and he forgets the resolution he had formed the moment before:

In such a night,

To shut me out!-Pour on, I will endure-
In such a night as this!

At which, with a beautiful apostrophe, he suddenly addresses himself to his absent daughters, tenderly reminding them of the favours he had so lately and so liberally conferred upon them:

O Regan, Gonerill,

Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all!-
O that way madness lies; let me shun that;

No more of that!

The turns of passion in these few lines are so quick and so various, that I thought they merited to be minutely pointed out by a kind of perpetual commentary.

The mind is never so sensibly disposed to pity the misfortunes of others, as when it is itself subdued and softened by calamity. Adversity diffuses a kind of sacred calm over the breast, that is the parent of thoughtfulness and meditation. The following reflections of Lear in his next speech, when his passion has subsided for a short interval, are equally proper and striking:

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er ye are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm!
How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these!

He concludes with a sentiment finely suited to his condition, and worthy to be written in charac

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