But, whatever be the right mark to set upon these and some other instances, I find but few occasions of such revolt; and my only wonder is, how any mere human genius could be so gloriously audacious, and yet be so seldom chargeable with passing the just bounds of poetical privilege.

Metaphors are themselves the aptest and clearest mode of expressing much in little.  No other form of speech will convey so much thought in so few words.  They often compress into a few words what would else require as many sentences.  But even such condensations of meaning did not—­so it appears—­always answer Shakespeare’s purpose:  he sometimes does hardly more than suggest metaphors, throwing off several of them in quick succession.  We have an odd instance of this in one of Falstaff’s speeches, Second Part of King Henry the Fourth, i. 2:  “Well, he may sleep in security; for he hath the horn of abundance, and the lightness of his wife shines through it:  and yet cannot he see, though he have his own lantern to light him.”  Here we have a thick-coming series of punning metaphors, all merely suggested.  So Brutus, when hunting after reasons for killing Caesar:  “It is the bright day that brings forth the adder.”  Here the metaphor suggested is, that the sunshine of kingly power will develop a venomous serpent in the hitherto noble Julius.  So, again, Cleopatra, when Antony dies:  “O, see, my women, the crown o’ the earth doth melt";—­“O, wither’d is the garland of the war, the soldier’s pole is fall’n";—­“Look, our lamp is spent, it’s out.”  And so in Macbeth’s,—­“The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees is left this vault to brag of";—­“Better be with the dead than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy";—­“Come, seeling night, scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day.”  Also one of the Thanes, when they are about to make their ultimate set-to against Macbeth: 

    “Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal;
    And with him pour we in our country’s purge
    Each drop of us.”

Macbeth indeed has more of this character than any other of the Poet’s dramas; he having judged, apparently, that such a style of suggested images was the best way of symbolizing such a wild-rushing torrent of crimes, remorses, and retributions as that tragedy consists of.

Near akin to these is a number of passages like the following from one of Antony’s speeches: 

                                “The hearts
    That spaniel’d me at heels, to whom I gave
    Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets
    On blossoming Caesar; and this pine is bark’d,
    That overtopp’d them all.”

Here we have several distinct images merely suggested, and coming so thick withal, that our powers might be swamped but for the prodigious momentum or gale of thought that carries us through.  I am aware that several such passages have often been censured as mere jumbles of incongruous metaphors; but they do not so strike any reader who is so unconscientious of rhetorical formalities as to care only for the meaning of what he reads; though I admit that perhaps no mental current less deep and mighty than Shakespeare’s would waft us clean over such thought-foundering passages.