He put himself in the place of "the poor naked wretches," and unexpectedly found healing and comfort.

He took poor Tim in his arms from a sheer desire for human contact and animal warmth, a primitive and genuine need, through which he suddenly had a view of the world which he had never had from his throne, and from this moment his heart began to turn toward Cordelia.
In reading the tragedy of King Lear, Cordelia receives a full share of our censure.

Her first words are cold, and we are shocked by her lack of tenderness.

Why should she ignore her father's need for indulgence, and be unwilling to give him what he so obviously craved?
We see in the old king "the over-mastering desire of being beloved, selfish, and yet characteristic of the selfishness of a loving and kindly nature alone." His eagerness produces in us a strange pity for him, and we are impatient that his youngest and best-beloved child cannot feel this, even in the midst of her search for truth and her newly acquired sense of a higher duty.

It seems to us a narrow conception that would break thus abruptly with the past and would assume that her father had no part in the new life.