192
A Study of Shakespeare.
Leu to the son of Letizia Buonaparte of Ajaccio. For Shakespeare too, like Landor, had watched his "sweet Octavius" smilingly and frowningly "draw under nose the knuckle of forefinger" as he looked out upon the trail of innocent blood after the bright receding figure of his brave young kinsman. The fair-faced false "present God" of his poetic parasites, the smooth triumphant patron and preserver with the heart of ice and iron, smiles before us to the very life. It is of no account now to remember that
he at Philippi kept
His sword even like a dancer:
for the sword of Antony that struck for him is in the renegade hand of Dercetas.
I have said nothing of Enobarbus or of Eros, the fugitive once ruined by his flight and again redeemed by the death-agony of his dark and doomed repentance, or the freedman transfigured by a death more fair than freedom through the glory of the greatness of his faith: for who can speak of all things or of half that are in Shakespeare? And who can speak worthily of any?
I am come now to that strange part of a task too high for me, where I must needs speak not only (as may indeed well be) unworthily, but also (as may well seem) unlovingly, of some certain