"Alcun' dal collo in giu d'uomini han forma,
Col viso altri di simie, altri di gatti;
Stampano alcun' con piè caprigni l'orma;
Alcun son centauri agili et atti;
Son gioveni impudenti, e vecchi stolti,
Chi nudi, echi distrane pelli involti."
There is nothing of this in the works of the Supreme Mind, whose poem is created nature. There is nothing of this in the works of that human mind, who, in the consistency and power of his work, has attained the nearest approximation to his great Author. Neither in nature, that is, in the works of God, nor in high art, that is, in truthful imitation of nature, is any such monster to be found as a vain and weak old man developing into the strength and grandeur of a prophet; the voice of Isaiah in the mouth of an imbecile.
Hallam expresses unreservedly the opinion that Lear's wondrous intellectual vigour and eloquence are the result of his madness, and that the foundation of his character is that of a mere "headstrong, feeble, and selfish being."
“In preparing us for the most intense sympathy with this old man, he first abases him to the ground; it is not Œdipus, against whose respected age the gods themselves have conspired; it is not Orestes, noble minded and affectionate, whose crime has been virtue; it is a headstrong, feeble, and selfish being; whom, in the first act of the tragedy, nothing seems capable of redeeming in our eyes; nothing but what follows—intense woe, unnatural wrong. Then comes on that splendid madness, not absurdly sudden as in some tragedies, but in which the strings, that keep his reasoning powers together, give way, one after the other, in the frenzy of rage and grief. Then it is that we find, what in life may sometimes be seen, the intellectual energies grow stronger in calamity, and especially under wrong. An awful eloquence belongs to unmerited suffering. Thoughts burst out more profound than Lear, in his prosperous hour, could ever have conceived; inconsequent, for such is the
