to them all: but the principle, or moving power, to which this faculty was most subservient in Chaucer, was habit, or inveterate prejudice; in Spenser, novelty, and the love of the marvellous; in Shakspeare, it was the force of passion, combined with every variety of possible circumstances; and in Milton, only with the highest. The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity, of Spenser, remote-> ness; of Milton, elevation; of Shakspeare, every thing. It has been said by some critic, that Shakspeare was distinguished from the other dramatic writers of his day only by his wit; that they had all his other qualities but that; that one writer had as much sense, another as much fancy, another as much knowledge of character, another the same depth of passion, and another as great a power of language. This statement is not true; nor is the inference from it well-founded, even if it were. This person does not seem to have been aware that, upon his own shewing, the great distinction of Shakspeare's genius was its virtually including the genius of all the great men of his

age, and not its differing from them in one accidental particular. But to have done with such minute and literal trifling.

The striking peculiarity of Shakspeare's mind was its generic quality, its power of communication with all other minds-so that it con

tained a universe of thought and feeling within itself, and had no one peculiar bias, or exclusive excellence more than another. He was just like any other man, but that he was like all other men. He was the least of an

egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing in himself; but he was all that others were, or that they could become. He not only had in himself the germs of every faculty and feeling, but he could follow them by anticipation, intuitively, into all their conceivable ramifications, through every change of fortune, or conflict of passion, or turn of thought. He had "a mind reflecting ages past," and present:-all the people that ever lived are there. There was no respect of persons with him. His genius shone equally on the evil and on the good, on the wise and the foolish, the monarch and the beggar: "All corners of the earth, kings, queens, and states, maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave," are hardly hid from his searching glance. He was like the genius of humanity, changing places with all of us at pleasure, and playing with our purposes as with his own. He turned the globe round for his amusement, and surveyed the generations of men, and the individuals as they passed, with their different concerns, passions, follies, vices, virtues, actions, and motives-as well those that they knew, as those which they did not know, or acknow

How do y

ledge to themselves. The dreams of childhood,
the ravings of despair, were the toys of his fancy.
Airy beings waited at his call, and came at his
bidding. Harmless fairies "nodded to him, and
did him curtesies:" and the night-hag bestrode
the blast at the command of "his so potent art.”
The world of spirits lay open to him, like the 4
world of real men and women: and there is the
same truth in his delineations of the one as of the
other; for if the preternatural characters he de-
scribes could be supposed to exist, they would
speak, and feel, and act, as he makes them. He
had only to think of any thing in order to become
that thing, with all the circumstances belonging
to it. When he conceived of a character, whether
real or imaginary, he not only entered into all its
thoughts and feelings, but seemed instantly, and
as if by touching a secret spring, to be surrounded
with all the same objects, "subject to the same
skyey influences," the same local, outward, and
unforeseen accidents which would occur in reality.
Thus the character of Caliban not only stands
before us with a language and manners of his own,
but the scenery and situation of the enchanted
island he inhabits, the traditions of the place, its
strange noises, its hidden recesses,
"his frequent
haunts and ancient neighbourhood," are given
with a miraculous truth of nature, and with all
the familiarity of an old recollection. The whole

"coheres semblably together" in time, place, and circumstance. In reading this author, you do not merely learn what his characters say, you see their persons. By something expressed or understood, you are at no loss to decypher their peculiar physiognomy, the meaning of a look, the grouping, the bye-play, as we might see it on the stage. A word, an epithet paints a whole scene, or throws us back whole years in the history of the person represented. So (as it has been ingeniously remarked) when Prospero describes himself as left alone in the boat with his daughter, the epithet which he applies to her, "Me and thy crying self," flings the imagination instantly back from the grown woman to the helpless condition of infancy, and places the first and most trying scene of his misfortunes before us, with all that he must have suffered in the interval. How well the silent anguish of Macduff is conveyed to the reader, by the friendly expostulation of Malcolm-" What! man, ne'er pull your hat upon your brows!" Again, Hamlet, in the scene with Rosencraus and Guildenstern, somewhat abruptly concludes his fine soliloquy on life by saying, "Man delights not me, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so." Which is explained by their answer-" My lord, we had no such stuff in our thoughts. But we smiled to think, if you delight not in man, what lenten

entertainment the players shall receive from you, whom we met on the way:"-as if while Hamlet was making this speech, his two old schoolfellows from Wittenberg had been really standing by, and he had seen them smiling by stealth, at the idea of the players crossing their minds. It is not "a combination and a form" of words, a set speech or two, a preconcerted theory of a character, that will do this but all the persons concerned must have been present in the poet's imagination, as at a kind of rehearsal; and whatever would have passed through their minds on the occasion, and have been observed by others, passed through his, and is made known to the reader.-I may add in passing, that Shakspeare always gives the best directions for the costume and carriage of his heroes. Thus to take one example, Ophelia gives the following account of Hamlet; and as Ophelia had seen Hamlet, I should think her word ought to be taken against that of any modern authority.

Ophelia. My lord, as I was reading in my closet, Prince Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac'd,

No hat upon his head, his stockings loose,

Ungartred, and down-gyved to his ancle,

Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a look so piteous,

As if he had been sent from hell

To speak of horrors, thus he comes before me.