the voice of a descended angel addressing an inferior nature: if not premeditated, it is at least part of a preconcerted scheme; while Isabella's pleadings are poured from the abundance of her heart in broken sentences, and with the artless vehemence of one who feels that life and death hang upon her appeal. This will be best understood by placing the corresponding passages in immediate comparison with each other.

PORTIA.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,

It droppeth as the gentle dew from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings:
But mercy is above this sceptred sway-
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings.

ISABELLA.

Well, believe this,

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,

Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword, The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe, VOL. I.

I

Become them with one half so good a grace

As mercy does.

PORTIA.

Consider this

That in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

ISABELLA.

Alas! alas!

Why all the souls that are, were forfeit once;
And He, that might the 'vantage best have took,
Found out the remedy. How would you be,
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
O think on that,

But judge you as you are?

And mercy then will breathe within your lips
Like man new made!

The beautiful things which Isabella is made to utter, have, like the sayings of Portia, become proverbial: but in spirit and character they are as distinct as are the two women. In all that Portia says, we confess the power of a rich poetical imagination, blended with a quick practical spirit of observation, familiar with the surfaces of things; while there is a profound yet simple morality, a depth of

religious feeling, a touch of melancholy, in Isabella's sentiments, and something earnest and authoritative in the manner and expression, as though they had grown up in her mind from long and deep meditation in the silence and solitude of her convent cell:

O it is excellent

To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous

To use it like a giant.

Could great men thunder

As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet :

For every pelting, petty officer

Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder.

Merciful Heaven!

Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt

Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak

Than the soft myrtle. O but man, proud man!

Drest in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd,

His glassy essence, like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven,

As make the angels weep.

Great men may jest with saints, 'tis wit in them;

But in the less, foul profanation.

That in the captain's but a choleric word,

Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

Authority, although it err like others,
Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself

That skins the vice o' the top. Go to your bosom;

Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know
That's like my brother's fault: if it confess

A natural guiltiness such as his is,

Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue
Against my brother's life.

Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good,
But graciously to know I am no better.

The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies!

"Tis not impossible

But one, the wicked'st caitiff on the ground

May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute

As Angelo; even so may Angelo,

In all his dressings, characts, titles, forms,
Be an arch villain.

Her fine powers of reasoning, and that natural uprightness and purity, which no sophistry can warp, and no allurement betray, are farther displayed in the second scene with Angelo.

ANGELO.

What would you do?

ISABELLA.

As much for my poor brother as myself;

That is, were I under the terms of death,

The impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies, And strip myself to death as to a bed

That, longing, I have been sick for, ere I'd yield My body up to shame.

ANGELO.

Then must your brother die.

ISABELLA.

And 'twere the cheaper way:

Better it were a brother died at once,

Than that a sister, by redeeming him,

Should die for ever.

ANGELO.

Were not you then as cruel as the sentence,

That you have slander'd so!

ISABELLA.

Ignominy in ransom, and free pardon,

Are of two houses: lawful mercy is
Nothing akin to foul redemption.

ANGELO.

You seem'd of late to make the law a tyrant;
And rather proved the sliding of your brother
A merriment than a vice.