“There seems to have been a period of Shakespeare's life when his heart was ill at ease, and ill-content with the world
or his own conscience; the memory of hours misspent, the
pang of affection misplaced or unrequited, the experience of man's worser nature, which intercourse with ill-chosen asso
ciates, by choice or circumstance, peculiarly teaches; these, as they sank down into the depths of his great mind, seem not only to have inspired into it the conception of Lear and Timon, but that of one primary character, the censurer of
mankind. This type is first seen in the philosophic melan choly of Jacques, gazing with undiminished serenity, and with a gaiety of fancy, though not of manners, on the follies of the world.
It assumes a graver cast in the exiled Duke of the
same play, and next one rather more severe in the Duke of Measure for Measure.
In all these, however, it is merely
contemplative philosophy. In Hamlet this is mingled with the impulses of a perturbed heart, under the pressure of ex traordinary circumstances; it shines no longer as in the former characters, with a steady light, but plays in fitful corruscations,
amid feigned gaiety and extravagance.
In Lear it is the
flash of sudden inspiration across the incongruous imagery of
madness; in Timon it is obscured by the exaggerations of misanthropy.” However true this may be in the main, we can scarcely agree to recognise any part of our own ideal of Shakespeare's individuality in any of these characters, except in Hamlet and in Jacques. Doubtless there was melancholy and cynicism enough in the great bard, but there could have been no real misanthropy, no mad fury, no stern congelation of feeling, as in Timon, Lear, and the Duke ; nor is there any of these
in Hamlet or Jacques, or in the real heart history as it is written in the Sonnets.
Misanthropy and cynicism appear to have been very gene
rally confounded.
Doubtless they are often found together;
yet is there a wide difference between the two in their real nature. The cynic may even carp and sneer at the faults of his brother men, from the depth of his human love, and thus be at quite the opposite pole of feeling to him who avows,
