When the mind's free,

The body's delicate; the tempest in my mind

Does from my senses take all feeling else,

Save what beats there.

Still reason, though feebly and tremulously, holds the rein; and he feels a kind of instinctive horror, a soreness that penetrates to the quick, and at which he writhes when he adverts to his daugh

ters:

O Regan! Goneril!

Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave you all;
Oh! that way madness lies: let me shun that;
No more of that.

Although Lear's mind had been strained by the torture it had undergone, he has only hitherto approached the confines of madness; he has perceived the dangerous brink on which he stands, and caught in momentary glimpses the distractions that hover round him. It is not till he comes in contact with the counterfeit lunatic that the fabric of his intellect loosens; and he presumes that no misfortune could have reduced another so low in the scale of humanity, but the sources of his own affliction. At sight of Edgar, (who feigns madness to answer a purpose,) he asks

What! have his daughters brought him to this pass?
Could'st thou save nothing? Didst thou give them all?

How admirable is the contrivance, and how natural the result of this interview between Lear and Edgar. The king, with his mind oppressed

and weakened by the ingratitude of his children, meets the pretended maniac, and concludes that

Nothing could have subdued nature

To such a lowness but his unkind daughters.

Adding

Judicious punishment! 'twas this flesh begot
Those Pelican daughters.

The declension of Lear's mind into raving madness by force of sympathy created by the frantic appearance and manner of Edgar is exquisitely simple and natural. In stripping off his garments, to copy the nakedness of Edgar, Lear manifests the first overt act of insanity.

Off, off, you lendings:-Come, unbutton here.

Delighted with the maniac, the pitiless pelting of
the storm is disregarded, and he leaves his friends
unheeded to form a nearer intimacy with his
new acquaintance: his derangement magnifies the
wretched and apparently brainless wanderer into
an oracle of wisdom, and a sage preceptor; the
remonstrance of his attendants is disregarded, he
lingers" to talk with this philosopher,"
"this
learned Theban," "this good Athenian." He
adheres to him with an affection and confidence
that banish all fears for his own safety; he
seems inspired by his associate, and his madness
blazes with a rival flame:-

To have a thousand with red burning spits
Come hissing in upon them.

And again,

The little dogs and ali,

Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me.

The poet felt that the mere impertinency of madness could not be long sustained; it would fail to excite the attention, and would lower the dignity of the scene: the deprivation of reason is therefore supplied by acuteness of feeling, and an impassioned recurrence to the source of his derangement:

"Then let them anatomize Regan, see what breeds about her heart: Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?"

In the ruins of his mind many fragments of the stately pile still remain entire; for even madness cannot extinguish pride and ambition: and in his wildest sallies recollection prompts him, "that he is every inch a king;" and that when a Monarch "stares" "the Subject quakes."-Even in our ashes live our wonted fires.

The dutiful and affectionate Cordelia, hearing that her father wanders about "mad as the vext sea, singing loud," is solicitous for his restoration by medical sagacity and experience. She is informed that he lacks repose; that there

Are many simples operative whose power
Will close the eye of anguish.

These remedial agents are employed with so much effect, that in the heaviness of his sleep his attend

ants put fresh garments on him. In this scene Shakespeare displays not only a perfect knowledge of the disease under which Lear labours, but an intimate acquaintance with the course of medical treatment which in those days, and indeed until very recently, was pursued with a view to its cure. It may fairly be presumed that some narcotic drug, some oblivious antidote, had been administered in order to procure the desired repose, as the king's first impressions when he is awakened by Cordelia are obviously the broken continuation of a distressing dream, as if he had been roused before the operation of the opiate had been exhausted:

You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave:

Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound

Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears

Do scald like molten lead.

Cordelia inquires, "Sir, do you know me?" Lear replies, "You are a spirit, I know; When did you die?"

The gradual and imperfect return of perception, the glance at his sufferings, and the doubt of his personal identity, are exquisitely drawn:

Where have I been?

Where am I? fair day-light?

I am mightily abused.—I should e'en die with pity
To see another thus.-I know not what to say.-

I will not swear these are my hands: let's see;

I feel this pin prick. Would I were assur'd
Of my condition.

After these waverings he entertains suspicions of his sanity:

And to deal plainly,

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

From repeated examinations he is impressed that Kent and Cordelia are not entire strangers; but the impression is feeble and obscure,-the dawn of reminiscence:

Methinks I should know you, and know this man;
Yet I am doubtful:

At length comes that beautiful and pathetic burst where Nature, throwing off the imbecilities of age and the incumbrance of disease, by an instinctive act of recollection claims the dutiful Cordelia :

Do not laugh at me;

For as I am a man I think this lady

To be my child Cordelia.

The concluding scene exhibits Cordelia dead in the arms of her father; and amidst the tumult of his distraction there are some vivid gleams of rational tenderness and parental anxiety, alternations of groundless hope and fatal discouragement. Here the poet has again manifested his metaphysical acumen, and his acquaintance with the laws of the human mind and its attendant passions. The monarch's lamentations are awhile suspended that he may relate the energy with which he slew the villain that hanged his daughter; and this

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