Your own passion must penetrate and mingle with that of the
artist that you may interpret him aright. You must, I say, be
prepossessed, for it is the mind which shapes and colors the reports of
the senses. Suppose you were expecting the bell to toll for the burial
of some beloved person and the church-clock should begin to strike. The
first lingering blow of the hammer would beat upon your very heart, and
thence the shock would run to all the senses at once; but after a few
strokes you would be undeceived, and the sound would become commonplace
again. On the other hand, suppose that at a certain hour you knew that a
criminal was to be executed; then the ordinary striking of the clock
would have the sullen clang of a funeral bell. So in Shakespeare's
instance of the lover, does he not suddenly find himself sensible of a
beauty in the world about him before undreamed of, because his passion
has somehow got into whatever he sees and hears? Will not the rustle of
silk across a counter stop his pulse because it brings back to his sense
the odorous whisper of Parthenissa's robe? Is not the beat of the
horse's hoofs as rapid to Angelica pursued as the throbs of her own
heart huddling upon one another in terror, while it is slow to Sister
Anne, as the pulse that pauses between hope and fear, as she listens on
the tower for rescue, and would have the rider "spur, though mounted on
the wind"?
Dr.
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