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"Their understanding Begins to swell; and the approaching tide Will shortly fill the reasonable shore That now lies foul and muddy."

And here is another, of perhaps still more questionable character, from Macbeth, i. 7:

"His two chamberlains Will I with wine and wassail so convince, That memory, the warder of the brain, Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason A limbeck only."

What, again, shall be said of the two following, where Coriolanus snaps off his fierce scorn of the multitude?—

"What's the matter, you dissentious rogues, That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion, Make yourselves scabs?"

"So shall my lungs Coin words till their decay against those measles, Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought The very way to catch them."

Either from overboldness in the metaphors, or from some unaptness in the material of them, I have to confess that my mind rather rebels against these stretches of poetical prerogative. Still more so, perhaps, in the well-known passage of King Henry the Fifth, iv. 3; though I am not sure but, in this case, the thing rightly belongs to the speaker's character:

"And those that leave their valiant bones in France, Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills, They shall be fam'd; for there the Sun shall greet them, And draw their honours reeking up to heaven; Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime, The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France. Mark, then, abounding valour in our English; That, being dead, like to the bullet's grazing, Break out into a second course of mischief, Killing in rélapse of mortality."

But, whatever be the right mark to set upon these and some other instances, I find but few occasions of such revolt; and my only wonder is, how any mere human genius could be so gloriously audacious, and yet be so seldom chargeable with passing the just bounds of poetical privilege.

Metaphors are themselves the aptest and clearest mode of expressing much in little. No other form of speech will convey so much thought in so few words. They often compress into a few words what would else require as many sentences. But even such condensations of meaning did not—so it appears—always answer Shakespeare's purpose: he sometimes does hardly more than suggest metaphors, throwing off several of them in quick succession. We have an odd instance of this in one of Falstaff's speeches, Second Part of King Henry the Fourth, i. 2: "Well, he may sleep in security; for he hath the horn of abundance, and the lightness of his wife shines through it: and yet cannot he see, though he have his own lantern to light him." Here we have a thick-coming series of punning metaphors, all merely suggested. So Brutus, when hunting after reasons for killing Cæsar: "It is the bright day that brings forth the adder." Here the metaphor suggested is, that the sunshine of kingly power will develop a venomous serpent in the hitherto noble Julius. So, again, Cleopatra, when Antony dies: "O, see, my women, the crown o' the earth doth melt";—"O, wither'd is the garland of the war, the soldier's pole is fall'n";—"Look, our lamp is spent, it's out." And so in Macbeth's,—"The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees is left this vault to brag of";—"Better be with the dead than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy";—"Come, seeling night, scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day." Also one of the Thanes, when they are about to make their ultimate set-to against Macbeth:

"Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal; And with him pour we in our country's purge Each drop of us."

Macbeth indeed has more of this character than any other of the Poet's dramas; he having judged, apparently, that such a style of suggested images was the best way of symbolizing such a wild-rushing torrent of crimes, remorses, and retributions as that tragedy consists of.

Near akin to these is a number of passages like the following from one of Antony's speeches:

"The hearts That spaniel'd me at heels, to whom I gave Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets On blossoming Cæsar; and this pine