“I’ll hold thee any wager,
    When we are both accoutred like young men,
    I’ll prove the prettier fellow of the two,
    And wear my dagger with the braver grace;
    And speak between the change of man and boy
    With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps
    Into a manly stride; and speak of frays,
    Like a fine-bragging youth; and tell quaint lies,
    How honourable ladies sought my love,
    Which I denying, they fell sick and died,—­
    I could not do withal;—­then I’ll repent,
    And wish, for all that, that I had not kill’d them: 
    And twenty of these puny lies I’ll tell;
    That men shall swear I’ve discontinu’d school
    Above a twelvemonth.  I’ve within my mind
    A thousand raw tricks of these bragging Jacks,
    Which I will practise.”

Partly from condition, partly from culture, Portia has grown to live more in the understanding than in the affections; for which cause she is a little more self-conscious than I exactly like:  yet her character is hardly the less lovely on that account:  she talks considerably of herself indeed, but always so becomingly, that we hardly wish her to choose any other subject; for we are pleasantly surprised that one so well aware of her gifts should still bear them so meekly.  Mrs. Jameson, with Portia in her eye, intimates Shakespeare to have been about the only artist, except Nature, who could make women wise without turning them into men.  And it is well worth the noting that, honourable as the issue of her course at the trial would be to a man, Portia shows no unwomanly craving to be in the scene of her triumph:  as she goes there prompted by the feelings and duties of a wife, and for the saving of her husband’s honour and peace of mind,—­being resolved that “never shall he lie by Portia’s side with an unquiet soul”; so she gladly leaves when these causes no longer bear in that direction.  Then too, exquisitely cultivated as she is, humanity has not been so refined out of her, but that in such a service she can stoop from her elevation, and hazard a brief departure from the sanctuary of her sex.

Being to act for once the part of a man, it would seem hardly possible for her to go through the undertaking without more of self-confidence than were becoming in a woman:  and the student may find plenty of matter for thought in the Poet’s so managing as to prevent such an impression.  For there is nothing like ostentation or conceit of intellect in Portia.  Though knowing enough for any station, still it never once enters her head that she is too wise for the station which Providence or the settled order of society has assigned her.  She would therefore neither hide her light under a bushel, that others may not see by it, nor perch it aloft in public, that others may see it; but would simply set it on a candlestick, that it may give light to all in her house.  With her noble intellect she has gathered in the sweets of poetry and the solidities of philosophy, all for use, nothing for show; she has fairly domesticated them, has naturalized them in her sphere, and tamed them to her fireside, so that they seem as much at home there as if they had been made for no other place.  And to all this mental enrichment she adds the skill