'
'And it was a shame,' said Ensign Maccombich, who usually followed his
Colonel everywhere, 'for that Tibbert, or Taggart, or whatever was his
name, to stick him under the other gentleman's arm while he was redding
the fray.'
The ladies, of course, declared loudly in favour of Romeo, but this
opinion did not go undisputed. The mistress of the house and several
other ladies severely reprobated the levity with which the hero transfers
his affections from Rosalind to Juliet. Flora remained silent until her
opinion was repeatedly requested, and then answered, she thought the
circumstance objected to not only reconcilable to nature, but such as in
the highest degree evinced the art of the poet. '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.
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