“She, that forgat the greatness of her grief
And miseries, that must follow such mad passions,
Endless and wild as women!” &c.
Seward’s note and suggestion of “in.”
It would be amusing to learn from some existing friend of Mr. Seward what
he meant, or rather dreamed, in this note. It is certainly a difficult
passage, of which there are two solutions;—one, that the writer was
somewhat more injudicious than usual;—the other, that he was very, very
much more profound and Shakespearian than usual. Seward’s emendation, at
all events, is right and obvious. Were it a passage of Shakespeare, I
should not hesitate to interpret it as characteristic of Tigranes’ state
of mind, disliking the very virtues, and therefore half-consciously
representing them as mere products of the violence of the sex in general
in all their whims, and yet forced to admire, and to feel and to express
gratitude for, the exertion in his own instance. The inconsistency of the
passage would be the consistency of the author. But this is above Beaumont
and Fletcher.
“The Scornful Lady.”