Between the history of Lear and that of Gloster, in the same play, there is a curious and significant parallel maintained throughout. And it is observable that when Gloster too, another duped and outcast father, is wandering in his turn on the same heath, and is accosted by “poor mad Tom,”—the sightless, miserable father thus addresses the “naked fellow” whose identity he so little suspects: “Here, take this purse, thou whom the heaven’s plagues Have humbled to all strokes: that I am wretched, Makes thee the happier:—Heavens, deal so still! Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man, That slaves your ordinance, that will not see Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly; So distribution should undo the excess, And each man have enough.” Strictly a parallel passage to the one just cited from the lips of Lear, even as the disastrous personal experiences of King of Britain and Duke of Gloster were along parallel lines, as we have said. The words of Amos, the herdman of Tekoa, include a denunciation of woe to them that lie upon beds of ivory, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall, and drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with costly ointments, and chant to the sound of the viol,—but are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. As the minor prophet with his woe to them that are thus at ease in Zion, so a major prophet declares this to have been the iniquity of a doomed race—pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness, with disregard of all means to strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. Lazarus the beggar was, as some scholars interpret the passage, “content to be fed” on the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table; in which case he would not appear to have been refused the crumbs: indeed, had this been the case, it would scarcely, they contend, have been omitted in the rebuke of Abraham. “The rich man’s sins were ravenousness and negligence rather than inhumanity.”[3] He took too little care of this—that beggary lay in helpless prostration before his doorway, the while he clothed himself in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day.