A song that did good sexton-service, for fancy's knell is rung indeed. The strain reminds Bassanio of notices in his experience: that error hides its grossness in ornament; vice assumes some mark of virtue; beauty is for sale by the weight, and is a show which cunning puts on to entrap wise men: in short, as the song says, fancies[18] come by gazing, have no life deeper than the eyes, and die where they are born. The strain wakes up his mind into its nobler attitude. "So may the outward shows be least themselves." This fortune-hunter, after all, is Portia's counterpart. The melody woven out of air glides into his hand and becomes a clew to bliss. Oh, the woman thrills! in touching the lead his hand has clutched her heart, and forces from her words that are outbreaks of that which is everlastingly the Woman. They assail, they challenge man to say what is so great as love. This polished, clear, sagacious, gifted, balanced woman dares man to say love is not greatest of all.
"How all the other passions fleet to air, As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac'd despair, And shudd'ring fear, and green-ey'd jealousy! O love, Be moderate, allay thy ecstasy; In measure rein thy joy, scant this excess. I feel too much thy blessing; make it less, For fear I surfeit."
Thus the lips which an oath had sealed melt apart in the first kiss, and her heart, like a fluid ruby, rushes through.
Shakspeare's women never trickle into tepid acceptances: their _Yes_ to love is not puckered in a mouth shaped by "prisms and propriety;" it is not a whisper through a closet key-hole, which the lover, overhearing, doubts may possibly be _No_. The Duke, in "Twelfth Night," steals rhetoric to utter Shakspeare's feeling about great-hearted and full-blooded women:--
"How will she love, when the rich, golden shaft Hath kill'd the flock of all affections else That live in her! when liver, brain, and heart, These sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and fill'd (Her sweet perfections) with one self king!"
Yet Portia, whom Nature made capable of this rapture, had wit enough to invent comedies of life and character, judgment enough to devise the best ways, acumen that astonished Venetian subtlety, as it baffled Shylock so neatly that the surprise of wit is imparted to us. No modern parson could speak with such sweet gravity of persuasion upon the quality of mercy; no bright schemer of novels could spice her conversations with such raillery, or construct them upon such instinct for character, as we notice in the scene where she amuses Nerissa with those sketches of her various lovers' foibles. What does such a woman want for tools,--pencil, brush, goose-quill, or tribune? She is made to have her choice of occupations. Does she have a call to utter the great truths of morals and religion? Undoubtedly, Nature has ordained her. Therefore, thou Reverend D.D., with all respect for dulness which is miraculous, that pulpit where you labor like a vessel water-logged is wanted: we people in the pews are faint with emptiness on board your craft, and despair of making any harbor. Persuade him, O Portia, to cede that domain to you: we would fain have the droppings of the sanctuary like the gentle dew from heaven upon the earth beneath.