Characteristics of Women: Moral, Poetical, and Historical. Mrs. (Anna) Jameson

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СКАЧАТЬ by her own natural spirit, she returns to the charge—she gains energy and self-possession as she proceeds, grows more earnest and passionate from the difficulty she encounters, and displays that eloquence and power of reasoning for which we had been already prepared by Claudio's first allusion to her:—

      … In her youth

       There is a prone and speechless dialect,

       Such as moves men; besides, she hath prosperous art,

       When she will play with reason and discourse,

       And well she can persuade.

      It is a curious coincidence that Isabella, exhorting Angelo to mercy, avails herself of precisely the same arguments, and insists on the self-same topics which Portia addresses to Shylock in her celebrated speech; but how beautifully and how truly is the distinction marked! how like, and yet how unlike! Portia's eulogy on mercy is a piece of heavenly rhetoric; it falls on the ear with a solemn measured harmony; it is the voice of a descended angel addressing an inferior nature: if not premeditated, it is at least part of a preconcerted scheme; while Isabella's pleadings are poured from the abundance of her heart in broken sentences, and with the artless vehemence of one who feels that life and death hang upon her appeal. This will be best understood by placing the corresponding passages in immediate comparison with each other.

      PORTIA.

      The quality of mercy is not strain'd,

       It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,

       Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd;

       It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:

       'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

       The throned monarch better than his crown;

       His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,

       The attribute to awe and majesty,

       Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.

       But mercy is above this sceptred sway—

       It is enthron'd in the hearts of kings.

      ISABELLA.

      Well, believe this,

       No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,

       Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,

       The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe.

       Become them with one half so good a grace

       As mercy does.

      PORTIA.

      Consider this—

       That in the course of justice, none of us

       Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy;

       And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

       The deeds of mercy.

      ISABELLA.

      … Alas! alas!

       Why all the souls that were, were forfeit once;

       And He, that might the 'vantage best have took,

       Found out the remedy. How would you be,

       If He, which is the top of judgment, should

       But judge you as you are? O, think on that,

       And mercy then will breathe within your lips,

       Like man new made!

      The beautiful things which Isabella is made to utter, have, like the sayings of Portia, become proverbial; but in spirit and character they are as distinct as are the two women. In all that Portia says, we confess the power of a rich poetical imagination, blended with a quick practical spirit of observation, familiar with the surfaces of things; while there is a profound yet simple morality, a depth of religious feeling, a touch of melancholy, in Isabella's sentiments, and something earnest and authoritative in the manner and expression, as though they had grown up in her mind from long and deep meditation in the silence and solitude of her convent cell:—

      O it is excellent

       To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous

       To use it like a giant.

      Could great men thunder,

       As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet:

       For every pelting, petty officer

       Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder

       Merciful Heaven!

       Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt

       Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak

       Than the soft myrtle. O but man, proud man!

       Drest in a little brief authority,

       Most ignorant of what he's most assured,

       His glassy essence, like an angry ape,

       Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,

       As make the angels weep.

      Great men may jest with saints, 'tis wit in them;

       But in the less, foul profanation.

       That in the captain's but a choleric word,

       Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

      Authority, although it err like others,

       Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself

       That skins the vice o' the top. Go to you, bosom;

       Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know

       That's like my brother's fault: if it confess

       A natural guiltiness such as his is,

       Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue

       Against my brother's life.

      Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good,

       But graciously to know I am no better.

      The sense of death is most in apprehension;

       And the poor beetle that we tread upon,

       In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great

       As when a giant dies.

      'Tis not impossible

       But one, the wicked'st caitiff on the ground,

       May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute

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