The word that causes a shudder when it is
spoken in a drawing-room gives a sombre and satisfying pleasure when
we dwell upon it in our hours of solitude. Sometimes the poets are
palpably guilty of hypocrisy, for they pretend to crave for the
passage into the shades. That is unreal and unhealthy; the wise man
neither longs for death nor dreads it, and the fool who begs for
extinction before the Omnipotent has willed that it should come is a
mere silly blasphemer. But, though the men who put the thoughts of
humanity into musical words are sometimes insincere, they are more
often grave and consoling. I know of two supreme expressions of dread,
and one of these was written by the wisest and calmest man that ever
dwelt beneath the sun. Marvellous it is to think that our most sane
and contented poet should have condensed all the terror of our race
into one long and awful sentence. Perhaps Shakspere was stricken with
momentary pity for the cowardice of his fellows, and, out of pure
compassion, gave their agony a voice. That may be; at any rate, the
fragment of "Measure for Measure" in which the cry of loathing and
fear is uttered stands as the most striking and unforgettable saying
that ever was conceived in the brain of man.
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