the dull ache of exhaustion. To use a term now almost naturalized among us, he is thoroughly blasé with licentious freedom. He has squandered his means and exhausted his powers of enjoyment; having been forgetful that moderation is the true epicureanism of enjoyment, he will now rail upon the pleasures of the world in the false stoicism of disgust. Falstaff says that old men "measure the heat of our livers by the bitterness of their own galls;" but in Jaques it is the heat of his own liver which has embittered the gall of his opinion. He says
“Invest me in my motley; give me leave To speak my mind, and I will through and through Cleanse the foul body of the infected world,
If they will patiently receive my medicine. Duke S. Fye on thee I can tell what thou wouldst do. Jaq. What, for a counter, would I do, but good Duke S. Most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin : For thou thyself hast been a libertine, As sensual as the brutish sting itself; And all the embossed sores, and headed evils,
That thou with licence of free foot hast caught, Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world.” The contrast of this philosophy with the nobler one of the banished Duke, which leads him to discover the sweet uses of
adversity, and to find good in everything, is all in favour of the latter ; for the loving humanity of the Duke, as con templative in its way as the cynicism of the other, is felt to be that of goodness, and nobleness, and truth ; while that of Jaques is made to throw, not only on his thoughts, but on himself, that tinge of ridicule which belongs to perverse exaggeration. His general cynicism, however, is combined with tenderness of heart; he grieves even at the physical pain endured by brutes; and the moral evil of the world, which he sees through and through, pains and distresses him. The selfishness which makes worldlings bequeath wealth to the rich, and which makes “misery part the flux of company,”
