]
[Footnote 190: Our advantages give us a blind confidence in our
security. Cf. _Timon_, IV. iii. 76,
_Alc._ I have heard in some sort of thy miseries.
_Tim._ Thou saw'st them when I had prosperity.]
[Footnote 191: Biblical ideas seem to have been floating in
Shakespeare's mind. Cf. the words of Kent, when Lear enters with
Cordelia's body, 'Is this the promised end?' and Edgar's answer, 'Or
image of that horror?' The 'promised end' is certainly the end of the
world (cf. with 'image' 'the great doom's image,' _Macbeth_, II. iii.
83); and the next words, Albany's 'Fall and cease,' _may_ be addressed
to the heavens or stars, not to Lear. It seems probable that in writing
Gloster's speech about the predicted horrors to follow 'these late
eclipses' Shakespeare had a vague recollection of the passage in
_Matthew_ xxiv., or of that in _Mark_ xiii., about the tribulations
which were to be the sign of 'the end of the world.' (I do not mean, of
course, that the 'prediction' of I. ii. 119 is the prediction to be
found in one of these passages.)]
[Footnote 192: Cf. _Hamlet_, III. i. 181:
This something-settled matter in his heart,
Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus
From fashion of himself.]
[Footnote 193: I believe the criticism of _King Lear_ which has
influenced me most is that in Prof.
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