'You'll never trust his word after,' the soldier continues. 'Come, 'tis a foolish saying.'
'Your reproof is something _too round_,' is the king's reply. It is indeed round. It is one of those round replies that this poet is so fond of, and the king himself becomes 'the private' of it, when once the centre of this play is found, and the sweep of its circumference is taken. For the sovereignty of law, the kingship of the universal law _in whomsoever it speaks_, awful with God's power, armed with _his_ pains and penalties is the scientific sovereignty; and in the scientific diagrams the passions, 'the poor and private passions,' and the arbitrary will, in whomsoever they speak, no matter what symbols of sovereignty they have contrived to usurp, make no better figure in their struggles with that law, than that same which the poet's vivid imagination and intense perception of incompatibilities, has seized on here. The king struggles vainly against the might of the universal nature. It is but the shot out of an '_elder gun_;' he might as well 'go about to _turn the sun to ice_ with fanning in his face with a _peacock's_ feather.' 'I should be angry with you,' continues the king, after noticing the roundness of that reply, 'I should be angry with you, if _the time_ were convenient.'
But as to the poet who composes these dialogues, of course he does not know whether the time is convenient or not;--he has never reflected upon any of those grave questions which are here so seriously discussed. They are not questions in which he can be supposed to have taken any interest. Of course he does not know or care what it is that these men are talking about. It is only for the sake of an artistic effect, to pass away the night, and to deepen for his hero the gloom which was to serve as the foil and sullen ground of his great victory, that his interlocutors are permitted to go on in this manner.
It is easy to see, however, what extraordinary capabilities this particular form of writing offered to one who _had_ any purpose, or to an author, who wished on any account, to '_infold_' somewhat his meaning;--that was the term used then in reference to this style of writing. For certainly, many things dangerous in themselves could be shuffled in under cover of an artistic effect, which would not strike at the time, amid the agitations, and the skilful checks, and counteractions, of the scene, even the quick ear of despotism itself.