Did I the tired Cæfar: and this man Is now become a god, and Caffius is A wretched creature; and must bend his body, He had a fever when he was in Spain, And when the fit was on him, I did mark And that fame eye whose bend doth awe the world, Julius Cæfar, a&t 1. sc. 3. Glo'fter inflamed with refentment against his fon Edgar, could even force himself into a mo mentary conviction that they were not related: O ftrange faften'd villain ! Would he deny his letter ?—I never got him. When by great fenfibility of heart, or other means, grief becomes immoderate, the mind, in order to justify itself, is prone to magnify the caufe and if the real caufe admit not of being magnified, magnified, the mind seeks a caufe for its grief in imagined future events: Busby. Madam, your Majefty is much too fad : Queen. To please the King, I did; to please myself, Refentment at first is vented on the relations of the offender, in order to punish him: but as refentment, when so outrageous, is contrary to conscience, the mind, to justify its paffion, is disposed to paint these relations in the blackeft colours; and it comes at laft to be convinced, that they ought to be punished for their own demerits. Anger raised by an accidental ftroke upon a tender part of the body, is fometimes vented upon the undefigning caufe. But as the paffion in that cafe is abfurd, and as there can be no folid gratification in punishing the innocent; the mind, prone to justify as well as to gratify its paffion, de ludes ludes itself into a conviction of the action's being voluntary. The conviction however is but momentary: the first reflection fhows it to be erroneous; and the paffion vanifheth almost instantaneously with the conviction. But anger, the most violent of all paffions, has still greater influence: it fometimes forces the mind to personify a stock or a stone if it happen to occafion bodily pain, and even to believe it a voluntary agent, in order to be a proper object of refentment. And that we have really a momentary conviction of its being a voluntary agent, must be evident from confidering, that without fuch conviction the paffion can neither be justified nor gratified: the imagination can give no aid; for a stock or a stone imagined fenfible, cannot be an object of punishment, if the mind be conscious that it is an imagination merely without any reality. Of fuch personification, involving a conviction of reality, there is one illuftrious instance: when the firft bridge of boats over the Hellefpont was destroyed by a ftorm, Xerxes fell into a transport of rage, so excessive, that he commanded the fea to be punished with 300 ftripes; and a pair of fetters to be thrown into it, enjoining the following words to be pronounced: "O thou falt and bitter water! thy "master hath condemned thee to this punishment "for offending him without caufe; and is refol"ved to pafs over thee in defpite of thy infolence: "with reason all men neglect to facrifice to thee, "because "because thou art both difagreeable and treache66 rous *,, Shakespear exhibits beautiful examples of the irregular influence of paffion in making us believe things to be otherwise than they are. King Lear, in his distress, perfonifies the rain, wind, and thunder; and in order to justify his refentment, believes them to be taking part with his daughters: Lear. Rumble thy belly-full, fpit fire, spout rain! That have with two pernicious daughters join'd King Richard, full of indignation against his favourite horse for carrying Bolingbroke, is led into the conviction of his being rational : Groom. O, how it yearn'd my heart, when I beheld *In London streets, that coronation-day, When Bolingbroke rode on Roan Barbary, That horfe that thou fo often haft beftrid, That horse that I fo carefully have dreffed. * Herodotus, book 7. K. Riche K. Rich. Rode he on Barbary? tell me, gentle friend, How went he under him. Groom. So proudly as he had difdain'd the ground. K. Rich. So proud that Bolingbroke was on his back! That jade had eat bread from my royal hand. This hand hath made him proud with clapping him. Would he not ftumble? would he not fall down, (Since pride muft have a fall), and break the neck Of that proud man that did usurp his back? Richard II. at 5. fc. 11. Hamlet, fwelled with indignation at his mother's fecond marriage, was ftrongly inclined to leffen the time of her widowhood, the fhortness of the time being a violent circumftance against her; and he deludes himself by degrees into the opinion of an interval fhorter than the real one: Hamlet. -That it should come to this! But two months dead! nay, not so much; not two;— So excellent a king, that was, to this, Hyperion to a fatyr: fo loving to my mother, That he permitted not the winds of heav'n By what it fed on; yet, within a month With which she follow'd my poor father's body, (O heav'n! a beast that wants difcourfe of reason, VOL. I. L Would |