'Romeo
is described,' said she, 'as a young man, peculiarly susceptible of
the softer passions; his love is at first fixed upon a woman who could
afford it no return; this he repeatedly tells you,--
From love's weak childish bow she lives unharmed;
and again,--
She hath forsworn to love.
Now, as it was impossible that Romeo's love, supposing him a reasonable
being, could continue to subsist without hope, the poet has, with great
art, seized the moment when he was reduced actually to despair, to throw
in his way an object more accomplished than her by whom he had been
rejected, and who is disposed to repay his attachment. I can scarce
conceive a situation more calculated to enhance the ardour of Romeo's
affection for Juliet, than his being at once raised by her from the
state of drooping melancholy in which he appears first upon the scene,
to the ecstatic state in which he exclaims--
--come what sorrow can,
It cannot countervail the exchange of joy
That one short moment gives me in her sight.'
'Good, now, Miss Mac-Ivor,' said a young lady of quality, 'do you mean
to cheat us out of our prerogative? will you persuade us love cannot
subsist-without hope, or that the lover must become fickle if the lady
is cruel? Oh, fie! I did not expect such an unsentimental conclusion.
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