I must note one more point of the delineation.  When Leontes sends his messengers to Delphos, he avows this as his reason for doing so: 

“Though I am satisfied, and need no more
Than what I know, yet shall the Oracle
Give rest to th’ minds of others.”

Which means simply that he is not going to let the truth of the charge stand in issue, and that he holds the Divine authority to be a capital thing, provided he may use it, and need not obey it; that is, if he finds the god agreeing with him in opinion, then the god’s judgment is infallible; if not, then, in plain terms, he is no god.  And they who have closely observed the workings of jealousy, know right well that in all this Shakespeare does not one whit “overstep the modesty of Nature.”

The Poet manages with great art to bring Leontes off from the disgraces of his passion, and repeal him home to our sympathies, which had been freely drawn to him at first by his generosity of friendship.  To this end, jealousy is represented as his only fault, and this as a sudden freak, which passes on directly into a frenzy, and whips him quite out of himself, temporarily overriding his characteristic qualities, but not combining with them; the more violent for being unwonted, and the shorter-lived for being violent.  In his firm, compact energy of thought and speech, after his passion has cleared itself, and in his perennial flow of repentance after his bereavement, are displayed the real tone and texture of his character.  We feel that, if his sin has been great, his suffering is also great, and that if he were a greater sinner, his suffering would be less.  Quick, impulsive, headstrong, he admits no bounds to anger or to penitence; condemns himself as vehemently as he does others; and will spend his life in atoning for a wrong he has done in a moment of passion:  so that we are the more willing to forgive him, inasmuch as he never forgives himself.

* * * * *

The old poets seem to have contemplated a much wider range of female excellence than it has since grown customary to allow; taking for granted that whatsoever we feel to be most divine in man might be equally so in woman; and so pouring into their conceptions of womanhood a certain manliness of soul, wherein we recognize an union of what is lovely with what is honourable,—­such a combination as would naturally inspire any right-minded man at the same time with tenderness and with awe.  Their ideas of delicacy did not preclude strength:  in the female character they were rather pleased than otherwise to have the sweetness of the violet blended with the grandeur of the oak; probably because they saw and felt that woman might be big-hearted and brave-minded, and yet be none the less womanly; and that love might build all the higher and firmer for having its foundations laid deep in respect.  This largeness of heart and liberality of thought often comes out in their