SIDE-WIND SALLIES OF SPLEEN.

A Cue from Shakspeare.

INFINITELY reluctant is the gentle Lady married to the Moor to believe his love departing from her, his wrath kindled against her. Fondly ingenious is she in devising excuses and suggesting palliations for his angry outburst.

-Something, sure, of state,

Either from Venice; or some unhatch'd practice
Made demonstrable here in Cyprus to him

Hath puddled his clear spirit: and, in such cases,
Men's natures wrangle with inferior things,

Though great ones are their object.

Iago, in a subsequent scene, suggests the like consolatory explanation, to one of his victims, Desdemona, of the resentment of the other, Othello.

I pray you, be content; 'tis but his humour;
The business of the state does him offence,
And he does chide with you.

The same tendency in exasperated human nature is glanced at by Benedick when he finds Claudio

out of humour at supposing Hero wooed by the Prince:

Claud. I wish him joy of her.

Bened. Why, that's spoken like an honest drover; so they sell bullocks. But did you think the Prince would have served you thus ?

Claud. I pray you, leave me.

Bened. Ho! now you strike like the blind man; 'twas the boy that stole your meat, and you'll beat the post.

Molière illustrates this vicarious sort of vindictiveness again and again. In one comedy, it is proposed by Lélie that angry old Anselme, enraged by the étourderies of that Marplot, Mascarille, should be put in the way of expending his fury on pots and pans:

Il nous le faut mener en quelque hôtellerie,
Et faire sur les pots décharger sa furie.

In another, Arnolphe, wroth at the too successful scheming of Horace and Agnes, fires away at the furniture and a puppy dog:

Poussant de temps en temps des soupirs pitoyables,

Et donnant quelquefois de grands coups sur les tables,
Frappant un petit chien qui pour lui s'émouvait,

Et jetant brusquement les hardes qu'il trouvait.

Il a même cassé, d'une main mutinée,

Des vases dont la belle [Agnes] ornait sa cheminée, &c.

In yet another, we have fractious old Madame Pernelle cuffing her own maid, Flipote, because her temper is tried by Elmire and Cléante :

(à Elmire)

Et sans-Adieu, ma bru ; je ne veux plus rien dire . .
(donnant un soufflet à Flipote)

Allons, vous, vous rêvez et bayez aux corneilles.
Jour de Dieu! je saurai vous frotter les oreilles.
Marchons, gaupe, marchons.

Montaigne tells of a gentleman of his country who, being subject to the gout, was importuned by his physicians to practise total abstinence from all manner of salt meats, and who "was wont pleasantly to reply, that he must needs have something to quarrel with in the extremity of his pain, and that he fancied that railing at and cursing now the Bologna sausages, and now the dried tongues and the hams, was some mitigation to his torments." Montaigne takes it that the discomposed mind turns its violence upon itself, if not supplied with something to oppose it. What is there, he asks, that we do not lay the fault to, right or wrong, that we may have something to quarrel with? Who has not seen peevish gamesters tear the cards with their teeth, and swallow the dice in revenge for the loss of their money?" The conclusion of the Sieur Michel's essay is, that we can never enough condemn the senseless and ridiculous sallies of our passions.

That very fractious as well as Holy Father, Pope Julius the Second, was once storming away at Michael Angelo, for declining to come at once and at any time at his Holiness's bidding. The pontiff leaned on his stick, as Michelet describes the scene, and frowned furiously and scolded savagely at the

self-respecting artist. Must the triple-crowned pontiff dance attendance, forsooth, upon this painter fellow, instead of painter upon pope? Now there stood by, at this scene, a well-meaning but illadvised ecclesiastic, who presumed to interpose with the pope in the painter's behalf. "Forgive him, your Holiness. These sort of people are but louts, who know nothing but just their trade." The Holy Father was thankful for a new object whereon to discharge his wrath. So he fell on the intercessor with a will and with his stick. "Lout yourself!" he screamed, and drave the meddler from hi presence with a downpour of whacks.

When the rumour spread over Ireland, in 1689, of a wholesale massacre of the Englishry in active preparation, Tyrconnel, "lying Dick Talbot," sent for the chief Protestants of Dublin to the Castle, as we read in Macaulay; and, with his usual energy of diction, invoked on himself all the vengeance of Heaven if the report was not a (three bad participles) lie. And it is said that, "in his rage at finding his oaths ineffectual, he pulled off his hat and wig, and flung them into the fire." This appears to have been a favourite trick of his, and the habit is a favourite jest of the historian's. Farther on again, for instance, Macaulay remarks, that Tyrconnel's savage and imperious temper was at first inflamed almost to madness by the news of Londonderry's resistance. "But, after wreaking his rage, as usual, on his wig, he became somewhat calmer." And in

a later volume the noble historian supplies us with an edifying illustration of our text in the demeanour of the Grand Monarque himself, after the siege of Namur. When Lewis heard of the poltroonery of his son [the duke of Maine], he showed. the extreme of dudgeon and chagrin. Never during his long reign had he been so moved. During some hours his gloomy irritability kept his servants, his courtiers, even his priests, in terror. He so far forgot the grace and dignity for which he was renowned throughout the world, that, in the sight of all the splendid crowd of gentlemen and ladies who came to see him dine at Marli, he broke a cane on the shoulders of a lacquey, and pursued the poor man with the handle."

Mr. Froude seeks to explain the splenetic tone of Queen Elizabeth's letter against Sidney's tactics in Ireland (1566), by pleading in her behalf that it was written at the crisis of the succession quarrel in Parliament, and that her not unprovoked ill humour was merely venting itself upon the first object which came across her. No wonder, however, after such services and such a return, that the Deputy's patience was exhausted, and that he wrote (to Cecil) angrily for his recal. Sir Henry Sidney had no mind to become a mere vent-peg for her Majesty's too effervescent spleen.

Sydney Smith, in his well-known description of the Island of Ceylon and its king, records how his Majesty one day so exasperated a little French am