There certainly needs no scruple that the delineation is one of extraordinary power:  perhaps, indeed, it may stand as Shakespeare’s masterpiece in the conquest of inherent difficulties.  And it is observable that here, for once, he does not carry his point without evident tokens of exertion.  He does not outwrestle the resistance of the matter without letting us see that he is wrestling.  Of course the hardness of the task was to represent the heroine as doing what were scarce pardonable in another; yet as acting on such grounds, from such motives, and to such issues, that the undertaking not only is, but is felt to be, commendable in her.  Lamb puts it just right:  “With such exquisite address is the dangerous subject handled, that Helena’s forwardness loses her no honour:  delicacy dispenses with its laws in her favour; and nature, in her single case, seems content to suffer a sweet violation.”  And the Poet seems to have felt that something like a mysterious, supernatural impulse, together with all the reverence and authority of the old Countess, and also the concurring voice of all the wise and good about her in hearty approval of her course and eloquent admiration of her virtue,—­that all these were needful to bring her through with dignity and honour.  Nor, perhaps, after all, could any thing but success fully vindicate her undertaking; for such a thing, to be proper, must be practicable:  and who could so enter into her mind as to see its practicability till it is done?  At the last we accept it as a sort of inspiration,—­authenticated to us as such in the result,—­when she frames her intent in the meditation,—­

    “Impossible be strange attempts to those
    That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose
    What hath not been can’t be.”

Before leaving the subject, I am moved to add that, though Helena is herself all dignity and delicacy, some of her talk with Monsieur Words the puppy in the first scene is neither delicate nor dignified:  it is simply a foul blot, and I can but regret the Poet did not throw it out in the revisal; sure I am that he did not retain it to please himself.

* * * * *

Almost everybody falls in love with the Countess.  And, truly, one so meek and sweet and venerable, who can help loving her? or who, if he can resist her, will dare to own it?  I can almost find it in my heart to adore the beauty of youth; yet this blessed old creature is enough to persuade me that age may be more beautiful still.  Her generous sensibility to native worth amply atones for her son’s mean pride of birth:  all her honours of rank and place she would gladly resign, to have been the mother of the poor orphan left in her charge.  Feeling as she does the riches of that orphan’s soul,—­a feeling that bespeaks like riches in herself,—­all the factitious distinctions of life sink to nothing in her regard; and the only distinction worth having is that which grows by building honour out of one’s