magnified, the mind feeks a caufe for its grief

in imagined future events:

Bufby. Madam, your Majefty is much too fad :
You promis'd, when you parted with the King,
To lay afide felf-harming heaviness,
And entertain a chearful difpofition.

Queen. To please the King, I did; to please myself,

I cannot do it. Yet I know no cause

Why I should welcome fuch a guest as grief;
Save bidding farewell to fo sweet a guest
As my sweet Richard: yet again, methinks,
Some unborn forrow, ripe in Fortune's womb,
Is coming tow'rd me; and my inward foul
With fomething trembles, yet at nothing grieves,
More than with parting from my lord the King.
Richard II. At 11. Sc. 5.

Resentment at firft is vented on the relations of the offender, in order to punish him: but as refentment, when fo outrageous, is contrary to conscience, the mind, to justify its paffion, is difposed to paint these relations in the blackest colours; and it comes at laft to be convinced, that they ought to be punished for their own demerits.

Anger raised by an accidental stroke upon a tender part of the body, is fometimes vented upon the undefigning cause. 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 juftify as well as to gratify its paffion, deludes itself into a conviction of the action's

action's being voluntary. The conviction, however, is but momentary: the firft reflection fhows it to be erroneous; and the paffion vanisheth almost inftantaneously with the conviction. But anger, the moft violent of all pasfions, has still greater influence: it fometimes forces the mind to perfonify 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 juftified nor gratified: the imagination can give no aid; for a flock or a ftone imagined fenfible, cannot be an object of punishment, if the mind be confcious that it is an imagination merely without any reality. Of fuch perfonification, involving a conviction of reality, there is one illuftrious inftance: when the first bridge of boats over the Hellefpont was deftroyed by a ftorm, Xerxes fell into a transport of rage, fo exceffive, 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 mafter hath condemn"ed thee to this punishment for offending him "without caufe; and is refolved to pass over "thee in despite of thy infolence: with reafon

66

"all

"all men neglect to facrifice to thee, because "thou art both difagreeable and treacherous *."

Shakespeare exhibits beautiful examples of the irregular influence of paffion in making us believe things to be otherwife than they are. King Lear, in his diftrefs, perfonifies the rain, wind, and thunder; and, in order to juftify his refentment, believes them to be taking part with his daughters:

Lear. Rumble thy bellyful, spit fire, spout rain! Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters. I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; I never gave you kingdoms, call'd you children; You owe me no fubfcription. Then let fall Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand, your flave; A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man! But yet I call you fervile ministers, That have with two pernicious daughters join'd Your high-engender'd battles, 'gainst a head So old and white as this. Oh! oh! 'tis foul! A& 111. Sc. 2.

King Richard, full of indignation against his favourite horfe 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 so often hast bestrid,
That horse that I fo carefully have dressed.

* Herodotus, book 7.

K. Rich.

K. Rich. Rode he on Barbary? tell me, gentle friend, How went he under him.

Groom. So proudly as he had disdain'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 stumble? would he not fall down,
(Since pride must have a fall), and break the neck
Of that proud man that did ufurp his back?

Richard II. Act v. Sc. II.

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 fhould come to this!
But two months dead! nay, not fo much; not two;-
So excellent a king, that was, to this,

Hyperion to a fatyr: so loving to my mother,
That he permitted not the winds of heav'n
Vifit her face too roughly. Heav'n and earth!
Muft I remember-why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on; yet, within a month,-
Let me not think-Frailty, thy name is Woman!
A little month! or ere these shoes were old,
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears- -Why fhe, ev'n fhe

O heav'n! a beast that wants discourse of reason,

VOL. I.

L

Would

Would have mourn'd longer)—married with mine

uncle,

My father's brother; but no more like my father,
Than I to Hercules. Within a month!-

Ere yet the falt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flufhing in her gauled eyes,

She married—Oh, most wicked speed, to post
With fuch dexterity to inceftuous fheets!

It is not, nor it cannot come to good.

But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
A& 1. Sc. 3.

The power of paffion to falfify the computation of time is remarkable in this inftance; because time, which hath an accurate measure, is lefs obfequious to our defires and wishes, than objects which have no precife ftandard of lefs or

more.

Good news are greedily fwallowed upon very flender evidence: our wishes magnify the probability of the event, as well as the veracity of the relater; and we believe as certain, what at beft is doubtful:

Quel, che l'huom vede, amor li fa invisible

E l'invifibil fa veder amore

Questo creduto fu, che 'l mifer fuole

Dar facile credenza a' quel, che vuole.

Orland. Furiof. cant. 1. ft. 56.

For the fame reafon, bad news gain alfo credit upon the flightest evidence: fear, if once alarm

ed,