For Shakespeare
too, like Landor, had watched his "sweet Octavius" smilingly and
frowningly "draw under nose the knuckle of forefinger" as he looked out
upon the trail of innocent blood after the bright receding figure of his
brave young kinsman. The fair-faced false "present God" of his poetic
parasites, the smooth triumphant patron and preserver with the heart of
ice and iron, smiles before us to the very life. It is of no account now
to remember that
he at Philippi kept
His sword even like a dancer:
for the sword of Antony that struck for him is in the renegade hand of
Dercetas.
I have said nothing of Enobarbus or of Eros, the fugitive once ruined by
his flight and again redeemed by the death-agony of his dark and doomed
repentance, or the freedman transfigured by a death more fair than
freedom through the glory of the greatness of his faith: for who can
speak of all things or of half that are in Shakespeare? And who can
speak worthily of any?
I am come now to that strange part of a task too high for me, where I
must needs speak not only (as may indeed well be) unworthily, but also
(as may well seem) unlovingly, of some certain portions in the mature and
authentic work of Shakespeare.
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