Search -
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections, Critical, Satirical, and Moral
Maxims Characters and Reflections Critical Satirical and Moral Author:Fulke Greville General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1768 Original Publisher: T. Cadell Subjects: Maxims Reference / Quotations Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial acc... more »ess to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: XXXV. -She never told her love, ' But let concealment like a worm i' th' bud ' Feed on her damaflc cheek; fhe pin'd in thought, And with a green and yellow melancholy if She fate like Patience on a monument ' Smiling at grief. How juftly celebrated are thefe lines ! and let me obferve, that they prove a certain elegance of thought, a certain delicate tendernefs tor which Shakespeare has not, I think, been generally celebrated. Nothing furely can be more fenti- mental! and yet let me venture at an objection, where all the world feems hitherto only to have approved. Is there not fomething of a faulty image, fomething of a difpleafing idea conveyed in that " green and yellow melancholy?" It may indeed reprefent ficknefs, and fuch ficknefs as was produced by the delicate love Shakespeare defcribes; but yet, methinks, he rather lefTens than increafes our companionate concern, by telling us fo exprefsjy, that the countenance of the fufferer was tinged wjtli green and yellow. I fear it is natural for us to pity, not inexact proportion to feminine diftrefs, but in proportion as we are ftruck with the beauty of the fufferer, and that our pity is always . comparatively weak when we are difgufted with the object: this hue of countenance neceffarily difgufts., a, nd the idea, ofIt is therefore incongruous to that tender that al- moft amorous concern, which the reft of the picture fo forcibly excites. I fpeak, however, with the utmoft deference to the genius of Shakespeare, and the public judgment, by which this paffage has been riot onl...« less