All Shakspeare's women, being essentially women, either love, or
have loved, or are capable of loving; but Juliet is love itself. The
passion is her state of being, and out of it she has no existence.
It is the soul within her soul; the pulse within her heart; the
life-blood along her veins, "blending with every atom of her frame."
The love that is so chaste and dignified in Portia--so airy-delicate,
and fearless in Miranda--so sweetly confiding in Perdita--so playfully
fond in Rosalind--so constant in Imogem--so devoted in Desdemona--so
fervent in Helen--so tender in Viola,--is each and all of these in
Juliet. All these remind us of her; but she reminds us of nothing but
her own sweet self: or if she does, it is of the Grismunda, or the
Lisetta, or the Fiamminetta of Boccaccio, to whom she is allied, not
in the character or circumstances, but in the truly Italian spirit,
the glowing, national complexion of the portrait.[6]

[6] Lord Byron has remarked of the Italian women, (and he could
speak _avec connaissance de fait_,) that they are the only women
in the world capable of impressions at once very sudden and very
durable; which, he adds, is to be found in no other nation. Mr.
Moore observes afterwards, how completely an Italian woman, either
from nature or her social position, is led to invert the usual
course of frailty among ourselves, and weak in resisting the
first impulses of passion, to reserve the whole strength
her character for a display of constancy and devotedness
afterwards.--Both these traits of national character are
exemplified in Juliet.--_Moore's Life of Byron_, vol. ii p. 303,
338, 4to edit.

There was an Italian painter who said that the secret of all effect