Jaq.  I do not like her name.

    Orlan.  There was no thought of pleasing you when she was
    christened.

    Jaq.  What stature is she of?

    Orlan.  Just as high as my heart.

    Jaq.  You have a nimble wit:  I think it was made of Atalanta’s
    heels.  Will you sit down with me? and we two will rail against
    our mistress the world and all our misery.

    Orlan.  I will chide no breather in the world but myself,
    against whom I know most faults.”

The banished Duke exemplifies the best sense of nature as thoroughly informed and built up with Christian discipline and religious efficacy; so that the asperities of life do but make his thoughts run the smoother.  How sweet, yet how considerative and firm, is every thing about his temper and moral frame!  He sees all that is seen by the most keen-eyed satirist, yet is never moved to be satirical, because he looks with wiser and therefore kindlier eyes.  The enmity of Fortune is fairly disarmed by his patience; her shots are all wasted against his breast, garrisoned as it is with the forces of charity and peace:  his soul is made storm-proof by gentleness and truth:  exile, penury, the ingratitude of men, the malice of the elements, what are they to him? he has the grace to sweeten away their venom, and to smile the sting out of them.  He loves to stay himself upon the compensations of life, and to feed his gentler affections by dwelling upon the good which adversity opens to him, or the evil from which it withdraws him; and so he rejoices in finding “these woods more free from peril than the envious Court.”  In his philosophy, so bland, benignant, and contemplative, the mind tastes the very luxury of rest, and has an antepast of measureless content.

* * * * *

Touchstone, though he nowhere strikes so deep a chord within us as the poor Fool in King Lear, is, I think, the most entertaining of Shakespeare’s privileged characters.  And he is indeed a mighty delectable fellow! wise too, and full of the most insinuative counsel.  How choicely does his grave, acute nonsense moralize the scenes wherein he moves!  Professed clown though he be, and as such ever hammering away with artful awkwardness at a jest, a strange kind of humorous respect still waits upon him notwithstanding.  It is curious to observe how the Poet takes care to let us know from the first, that beneath the affectations of his calling some precious sentiments have been kept alive; that far within the Fool there is laid up a secret reserve of the man, ready to leap forth and combine with better influences as soon as the incrustations of art are thawed and broken up.  This is partly done in the scene where Rosalind and Celia arrange for their flight from the usurper’s Court.  Rosalind proposes,—­

    “But, cousin, what if we assay’d to steal
    The clownish Fool out of your father’s Court? 
    Would he not be a comfort to our travel?”