CORDELIA.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—I have read with deep interest and sympathy the article on "King Lear at the Haymarket" in your issue of Septem- ber 18th. But when you speak of Cordelia's attitude in the opening scene as "strangely unsympathetic" I am reminded of a criticism in Miss Yonge's "Christian Names" on the character of Cordelia. After commenting on the marvellous skill that makes a silent woman live before us in the few words that she utters, Miss Yonge goes on to say that the bribe offered by King Lear- " What can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters ? "—
is enough to close the lips of a delicate and high-minded woman. I quote from memory, but am sure that this is substantially correct. And nowhere are the nobility and sweetness of Cordelia's character, I think, more beautifully shown than in that passage :— " Mine enemy's dog, Though he had bit me, should have stood that night Against my fire."
This, by the way, is almost the only passage in which Shake- speare speaks with any sympathy of a dog.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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