And it is while he is still undergoing the last extreme of the suffering which the human wrong is capable of inflicting on the affections, that he comes in the Poet's hands to exhibit also the unexplored depth of that wrong,--that monstrous, inhuman social error, that perpetual outrage on nature in her _human_ law, which leaves the helpless human outcast to the rough discipline of nature, which casts him out from the family of man, from its common love and shelter, and leaves him in his vices, and helplessness, and ignorance, to contend alone with great nature and her unrelenting consequences. 'To wilful men The injuries that they themselves procure, Must be their school-masters,'-- is the point which the philosophic Regan makes, as she bids them shut the door in her father's face; but it is the common human relationship that the Poet is intent on clearing, while he notes the special relationship also; he does not limit his humanities to the ties of blood, or household sympathies, or social gradations. But Regan's views on this point are seconded and sustained, and there seems to be but one opinion on the subject among those who happen to have that castle in possession; at least the timid owner of it does not feel himself in a position to make any forcible resistance to the orders which his illustrious guests, who have 'taken from him the use of his own house,' have seen fit to issue in it. 'Shut up your doors, (says Cornwall), 'Shut up your doors, my lord: 'tis a wild night. _My_ REGAN COUNSELS _well_; COME OUT O' THE STORM.' And it is because this representation is artistic and dramatic, and not simply historical, and the Poet must seek to condense, and sum and exhibit in dramatic appreciable figures, the unreckonable, undefinable historical suffering of years, aad lifetimes of this vain human struggle,--because, too, the wildest threats which nature in her terrors makes to man, had to be incorporated in this great philosophic piece; and because, lastly, the Poet would have the madness of the human will and passion, presented in its true scientific relations, that this storm collects into itself such ideal sublimities, and borrows from the human passion so many images of cruelty. In all the mad anguish of that ruined greatness, and wronged natural affection, the Poet, relentless as fortune herself in her sternest moods, intent on his experiment only, will bring out his great victim, and consign him to the wind and the rain, and the lightning, and the thunder, and bid his _senses_ undergo _their_ 'horrible pleasure.'