Lord. He did: and with an absolute ‘Sir, not I,’
The cloudy messenger turns me his back
And hums, as who should say ‘You’ll rue the time
That clogs me with this answer.’
Len. And that well might
Advise him to a caution, to hold what distance
His wisdom can provide. Some holy angel
Fly to the court of England, and unfold
His message ere he come, that a swift blessing
May soon return to this our suffering country
Under a hand accurs’d!
or this (IV. ii. 118 f.):
Child of integrity, hath from my soul
Wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts
To thy good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth
By many of these trains hath sought to win me
Into his power, and modest wisdom plucks me
From over-credulous haste: but God above
Deal between thee and me! for even now
I put myself to thy direction, and
Unspeak mine own detraction, here abjure
The taints and blames I laid upon myself,
For strangers to my nature.
I pass to another point. In the last illustration the reader will observe not only that ‘overflows’ abound, but that they follow one another in an unbroken series of nine lines. So long a series could not, probably, be found outside Macbeth and the last plays. A series of two or three is not uncommon; but a series of more than three is rare in the early plays, and far from common in the plays of the second period (König).
I thought it might be useful for our present purpose, to count the series of four and upwards in the four tragedies, in the parts of Timon attributed by Mr. Fleay to Shakespeare, and in Coriolanus, a play of the last period. I have not excluded rhymed lines in the two places where they occur, and perhaps I may say that my idea of an ‘overflow’ is more exacting than König’s. The reader will understand the following table at once if I say that, according to it, Othello contains three passages where a series of four successive overflowing
