called the master-mistress of the poet's love. This view presents no difficulty, for the object, though double, is still a unity; but in this unity the student must perceive on the one side (the feminine side), a sufficient provision for an endless generation of "still breeding thoughts;" while on the masculine or soul side, so to say, there is no division conceivable; and this is the characteristic of what some call the pure reason; for this is always one and the same: we do not say this of reasoning, but of reason. Let the reader catch the poet's idea in the drama, and then see how it is expressed in the abstract Sonnets, particularly in the 144th and 147th Sonnets. The 144th commences 144. Two loves [or tendencies, the poet means to say, precisely in the sense of St. Paul in the 7th chapter of Romans] Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still; [that is, the two loves or tendencies drew or instigated the poet in contrary directions: he procecds]: The better angel or [tendency] is a MAN right fair, The worser spirit a woman, color'd ill. In the 11th line of the Sonnet the poet tells us that both of the spirits were "from,"—that is, they proceeded from himself; or, in other words, they were in himself: and, to be brief, these two spirits are no other than those popularly known as the reason and the affections, the latter being the feminine side of the master-mistress; and here we must see the Eve or evil side of Adam, wherein corruption becomes possible, when the affections pass into passions in a bad sense. This is the meaning of the expression color'd ill, color being a figurative word for the changeable passions. We do not look in the direction of the passions for truth and reason; and although the reason in itself is incorruptible, yet, in the composite nature of man, the man himself, when under the dominion of the passions, comes under a cloud; and then, in the way of a metonym, the reason is said to be clouded or corrupted. This view will fully prepare the reader for the 147th Sonnet, to wit: 147. My love [here regarded as the passion side of life] My love is as a fever, longing still For that which longer nurseth the disease; The uncertain sickly appetite to please; My reason, the physician to my love, Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, Here the reason and the love are the man and the woman of the 144th Sonnet, the former being the physician, who is said to have left the poet: that is, as expressed in the 144th Sonnet, the female evil had tempted his better angel until he is said to have left his side. CHAPTER IV. Ar this stage of the development exhibited in the Sonnets, the poet had become deeply sensible of the evil nature of the affections when, refusing obedience to reason, they degenerate into passions; though, at the first, they had not appeared so, but had worn an angel-like face, which the poet had thought both "fair and bright." Hence the closing lines of the 147th Sonnet: I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, We have already taken one or two confirmations of these views from the poet's dramas, and will here take one from the closing scene of the 2d Act of Cymbeline, where the poet has evidently framed a scene as if on purpose to place a character in a suitable dramatic position for an appropriate expression of the doctrine just indicated, in which the evil side of life is placed to the feminine ac count. Posthumous is artistically placed in a position to doubt the fidelity of Imogen, and then ex ǝlaims: The woman's part in me! For there's no motion That tends to vice in man, but I affirm It is the woman's part: be it lying, note it, All faults that may be named, nay that hell knows, For even to vice They are not constant, but are changing still One vice, but of a minute old, for one Not half so old as that. I'll write against them, The very devils cannot plague them better. If the poet is to be condemned for thus figuring the evil side of life by charging it upon woman, it |