laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the
lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing
of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III,
immediately after pitying himself because

There is no creature loves me
And if I die no soul will pity me,

adds, with a grin,

Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity for myself?

Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read
De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the
wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were
throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde
was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none
the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter
between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no
genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity
for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more
unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes
almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man
announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken
heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's
gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment
that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which
horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot,
can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that