ness in it, differing from the mild kind of melancholy called pensiveness. JAQUES, IN "AS YOU LIKE IT." I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; nor the soldier's, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these; but it is a melancholy of my own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed, the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness. JAQUES, MORALIZING ON THE STAG. The melancholy Jaques grieves at that, Duke. But what said Jaques ? Did he not moralize on the spectacle? Lord. O yes, into a thousand similes; First, for his weeping in the needless stream; To that which hath too much. Then being alone, And never stays to greet him; aye, quoth Jaques, MACBETH, ON THE FLIGHT OF TIME. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, FEAR. FEAR, (violent and sudden) opens very wide the eyes and mouth; shortens the nose; draws down the eyebrows: gives the countenance an air of wildness; covers it with deadly paleness; draws back the elbows parallel with the sides; lifts up the open hands and fingers together to the height of the breast; so that the palms face the dreadful object, like shields opposed to it; one foot is drawn back behind the other, so that the body seems shrinking from the danger, and putting itself in a posture for flight. The heart beats violently; the breath is quick and short; the whole body is thrown into a general tremor. The voice is weak and trembling; the sentences are short, and the meaning confused and incoherent. Collins, thus describes Fear in his Ode on the Passions. First Fear, her hand its skill to try, Fear of imminent danger, real or fancied, produces in timorous persons, as women and children, violent shrieks without any articulate sound of words; and sometimes irrovocably confounds the understanding, producing a silent and motionless torpidity, which is followed by faintings, and oftentimes by death. Fear is but active grief, avoiding pain, Yet flies too faintly, and avoids in vain; While stagnant spirits thick'ning as they spread, O'er the cold heart, crawl slow like living lead, What though the eye's prompt ray, keen light'ning dart, 'Tis fruitless,-loos'ning fibres lame the heart. DESCRIPTIVE FEAR. THE SCHOOL-BOY CROSSING A CHURCH YARD AT NIGHT. N Oft in the lone church yard at night I've seen, By glimpse of moonshine checkering thro' the trees, The school-boy with his satchel at his back, -Sudden he starts! and hears, or thinks he hears, Of horrid apparation,-tall and ghastly, Who stalks at dead of night, or takes his silent stand APPREHENSION. APPREHENSION, or dread of an approaching evil is, next to describing fear in others, the lowest degree of the passion we can feel ourselves. The following examples will show the different degrees of this emotion, which must be expressed similarly to fear, but with greater moderation of voice and gesture: HUBERT AND KING JOHN. Hub. My lord, they say five moons were seen to night, The other four in wond'rous motion. K. John. Five moons! Hub. Old men and beldams, in the streets, Young Arthur's death is common in their mouths, And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist ; Cuts off his tale, and talks of Arthur's death. CHAMONT APPREHENSIVE OF MONIMIA. And to my tortur'd fancy there appear'd -What follow'd was the riddle that confounds me, I spied a wrinkled hag, with age grown double, HECTOR ON PARTING WITH ANDROMACHE. Yet come it will! the day decreed by fates, Aye, but to die, to go we know not where ; To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, The weariest and most loathed worldly life, To what we fear of death. BARNWELL'S UNCLE BEFORE HIS MURDER. SCENE. A close walk in a wood,-enter Uncle. IF I were superstitious, I should fear some danger lurked unseen, or death were nigh, a heavy melancholy clouds my spirits. My imagination is filled with ghastly forms of dreary graves, and bodies changed by death, when the pale lengthened visage attracts each weeping eye, and fills the musing soul at once with grief and horror, pity and aversion. I will indulge the thought. The wise man prepares himself for death, by making it familiar to his mind. When strong recollections hold the mirror near, and the living in the dead behold their future self, how does every inordinate passion and desire cease, or sicken at the view! The mind scarce moves; the blood, curdling and chilled, creeps slowly through the veins, fixed, still and motionless we stand; so like the solemn object of our thoughts, we are almost at present what we must be hereafter; 'till curiosity awakes the soul, and sets it on enquiry. Enter BARNWELL at a distance with a pistol. OH, death! thou strange, mysterious power, seen every day, yet never understood, but by the incommunicative dead, what art thou? The extensive mind of man, that with a thought circles the earth's vast globe, sinks to the centre, or ascends above the stars; that world's exotic finds, or thinks it finds, thy thick clouds attempt to pierce in vain; lost and bewildered in the horrid gloom, defeated, he returns more doubtful than before, of nothing certain but of labour lost. FEAR OR TERROR, SUDDEN, BUT MODERATED. BRUTUS AND CÆSAR'S GHOST. How ill this taper burns!-ha! who comes here? That shapes this monstrous apparition, It comes upon me: art thou anything ?— Art thou some God, some Angel, or some Devil, ELIPHAZ'S VISION OF A SPIRIT. IN thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon man; fear came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face, the hair of my flesh stood up,—it stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof; an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice saying, shall mortal man be more just than God?-Shall a man be more pure than his maker? |