47.  And, lastly, in accepting for the order this name of Cytherides, you are to remember the names of Viola and Giulietta, its two limiting families, as those of Shakspeare’s two most loving maids—­the two who love simply, and to the death:  as distinguished from the greater natures in whom earthly Love has its due part, and no more; and farther still from the greatest, in whom the earthly love is quiescent, or subdued, beneath the thoughts of duty and immortality.

It may be well quickly to mark for you the levels of loving temper in Shakspeare’s maids and wives, from the greatest to the least.

48. 1.  Isabel.  All earthly love, and the possibilities of it, held in absolute subjection to the laws of God, and the judgments of His will.  She is Shakspeare’s only ‘Saint.’  Queen Catherine, whom you might next think of, is only an ordinary woman of trained religious temper:—­her maid of honour gives Wolsey a more Christian epitaph.

2.  Cordelia.  The earthly love consisting in diffused compassion of the universal spirit; not in any conquering, personally fixed, feeling.

                  “Mine enemy’s dog,
  Though he had bit me, should have stood that night
  Against my fire.”

These lines are spoken in her hour of openest direct expression; and are all Cordelia.

Shakspeare clearly does not mean her to have been supremely beautiful in person; it is only her true lover who calls her ‘fair’ and ’fairest’—­and even that, I believe, partly in courtesy, after having the instant before offered her to his subordinate duke; and it is only his scorn of her which makes France fully care for her.

  “Gods, Gods, ’tis strange that from their cold neglect
  My love should kindle to inflamed respect!”

Had she been entirely beautiful, he would have honoured her as a lover should, even before he saw her despised; nor would she ever have been so despised—­or by her father, misunderstood.  Shakspeare himself does not pretend to know where her girl-heart was,—­but I should like to hear how a great actress would say the “Peace be with Burgundy!”

3.  Portia.  The maidenly passion now becoming great, and chiefly divine in its humility, is still held absolutely subordinate to duty; no thought of disobedience to her dead father’s intention is entertained for an instant, though the temptation is marked as passing, for that instant, before her crystal strength.  Instantly, in her own peace, she thinks chiefly of her lover’s;—­she is a perfect Christian wife in a moment, coming to her husband with the gift of perfect Peace,—­

  “Never shall you lie by Portia’s side
  With an unquiet soul.”

She is highest in intellect of all Shakspeare’s women, and this is the root of her modesty; her ‘unlettered girl’ is like Newton’s simile of the child on the sea-shore.  Her perfect wit and stern judgment are never disturbed for an instant by her happiness:  and the final key to her character is given in her silent and slow return from Venice, where she stops at every wayside shrine to pray.