enthusiasm of temperament, decision of purpose, and buoyancy of spirit. There is seen a commanding grace, a high-bred, airy elegance, a spirit of magnificence in all she does and says: she is full of penetrative wisdom, and genuine tenderness, and lively wit; her unruffled life has left this wisdom without a touch of the sombre or the sad—this tenderness, without peril to faith, hope, and joy—this wit, without a particle of malevolence or causticity. Her strength of intellect "takes a natural tinge from the flush and bloom of her young and prosperous existence, and from her fervent imagination."[1] If Portia is like the orange-tree, hung at once with golden fruit and luxuriant flowers, which has expanded into bloom and fragrance beneath feivouring skies, and has been nursed into beauty by the sunshine and the dews of heaven,—Isabella is like a stately and graceful cedar, towering on some alpine cliff, unbowed and unscathed amid the storm. Isabella combines natural grace and grandeur with the habits and sentiments of a recluse—of austerity of life with gentleness of manner—of inflexible moral principle with humility and even bashfulness of deportment; her fine powers of reasoning are allied to a natural uprightness and purity, which no sophistry can warp and no allurement betray. A strong under-current of passion and enthusiasm flows beneath this calm and saintly self-possession—the impressiveness of her character is indeed created by the observed capacity for high feeling and generous indignation, veiled beneath the sweet austere composure of the religieuse. Beatrice, again, is treated as wilful, not wayward; volatile, but not unfeeling; exuberant not only in wit and gaiety, but in heart, and soul, and energy of spirit—a faithful portrait of the fine lady of Shakspeare's time, but as unlike the head-tossing, fan-flirting, fine ladies of modern comedy as Sir Philip Sydney was unlike one of our modern dandies. Rosalind;—superior to Beatrice as a woman, though inferior in dramatic force; a portrait of infinitely more delicacy and variety, but of less strength and depth; a being playful, pastoral, and picturesque—breathing of "youth and youth's sweet prime"—afresh as the morning, sweet as the dew-awakened blossoms, and light as the breeze that plays among them; her volubility, like the bird's song, the outpouring of a heart filled to overflowing with life, love, and joy, and all sweet and affectionate impulses; her mixture of playfulness, sensibility, and naïveté, like a delicious strain of music.
Of the characters of Passion and Imagination, comes Juliet first. Love, in its poetical aspect, is the union of passion and imagination; and Juliet is Love itself. It is her very being; the soul within her soul, the pulse within her heart, the life-blood along her veins.[2] In her it is exhibited under every variety of aspect, and every gradation of feeling it could possibly assume in a delicate female heart. In Helena, there is superadded to fervent, enthusiastic, self-forgetting love, a strength of
- ↑ Mrs. Jameson's "moral," in the instance of Portia, is, that such a woman, placed in this age, would find society armed against her; and instead of being, like Portia, a gracious, happy, beloved, and loving creature, would be a victim, immolated in fire to that multitudinous Moloch termed Opinion.
- ↑ Mrs. Jameson warmly protests against likening Shakspeare's Juliet to Rousseau's Julie—that impetticoated paradox—that strange combination of youth and innocence, philosophy and pedantry, sophistical prudery and detestable grossièreté. She does well to be angry at the comparison, common as it is.
