[Sidenote: Beaumont and Fletcher's plots depend more on surprise and incident.] With Beaumont and Fletcher, hurry, surprise, and rapid and romantic revolution of incident are the main object, rather than tragic strength or even stage effect: their plays would furnish materials for extended novels, and are often borrowed from such without concentration or omission. Shakspeare's comparative poverty of plot is not approached by them even in their serious plays, and the lively stir of their comic adventures is the farthest from it imaginable. [Sidenote: B. Jonson's plots admirably constructed.] Jonson's plots are constructed most elaborately and admirably: one or two of them are without equal for skill of conduct and pertinency and connection of parts. This cautious and industrious poet never confided in his own capability of making up for feebleness of plan by the force of individual pa.s.sages; and his distrust was well judged, for the abstract coldness of his mind betrays itself in every page of his dialogue, and his scenes need all their beauty of outline to conceal the frigidity of their filling up. Ford and Ma.s.singer agree much in their choice of plots, both preferring incidents of a powerfully tragic nature: but their modes of management are widely different. [Sidenote: Ford's gloomy plots softened by tenderness and regret.] Ford, on the gloom of whose stories glimpses [74:1]of pathos fall like moonlight, delights, when he comes to work up the details of his tragic plan, in softening it down into the most dissolving tenderness; at his bidding tears flow in situations where we listen rather to hear Agony shriek, or look to behold Terror freezing into stone; his emotion is not the rising vehemence of present pa.s.sion, but the anguish, subsiding into regret, which lingers when suffering is past, and suggests ideas of eventual resignation and repose;--his verse is like the voice of a child weeping itself to sleep. [Sidenote: Ma.s.singer's stage effect by situations, and tragic design.] [Sidenote: His coldness of expression.] Ma.s.singer crowds adventure upon adventure, and his situations are wound up to the height of unmixed horror; for stage effect and tragic intensity, some of them, as for example the last scene in 'The Unnatural Combat', and the celebrated one in 'The Duke of Milan', are unequalled in the modern drama, and worthy of the sternness of the antique; but it is in the design alone that the tragic spirit works; the colouring of the details is cold as monumental marble; the pomp of lofty eloquence apes the simplicity of grief, or silence is left to interpret alike for sorrow or despair. To the carefulness in outlining the plan and devising situations, thus shewn in different ways, Shakspeare's manner is perfectly alien. [Sidenote: Shakspere's great aim to bring out character and feeling.] He never exhausts himself in framing his plots, but reserves his strength for the great aim which he had before him, the evolution of human character and pa.s.sion, a result which he relied on his own power to produce from any plot however naked. He does not want variety of adventure in many of his plays; but he has it only where his novel or chronicle gave it to him: he does not reject it when it is offered, but does not make the smallest exertion to search for it. [Sidenote: Shakspere's plays with no plot:] Some of his plays, especially his comedies, have actually no plot, and those, too, the very dramas in which his genius has gained some of its most mighty victories. [Sidenote: _The Tempest._] 'The Tempest' is an instance: what is there in it? A ship's company are driven by wreck upon an island; they find an old man there who had been injured by certain of them, and a reconciliation takes place. [Sidenote: _As You Like It._] The only action of 'As You Like It' is pedestrian; if the characters had been placed in the forest in the first scene, the drama would have been then as ripe for its catastrophe as it is in the last. [Sidenote: _Midsummer Night's Dream_ has no plot.] 'The Midsummer Night's Dream' relates a midnight stroll in a wood; and the unreal na[75:1]ture of the incidents is playfully indicated in its name. It is from no stronger materials than those three frail threads of narrative that our poet has spun unrivalled tissues of novel thought and divine fancy. And, as in his lighter works he is careless of variety of adventure, so in his tragic plays he does not seek to heap horrors or griefs one upon another in devising the arrangement of his plots. [Sidenote: In the plots of Shakspere's Tragedies, details and character are the main things.] In this latter cla.s.s of his works, the skill and force with which the interest is woven out of the details of story and elements of character, make it difficult for us to see how far it is that we are indebted to these for the power which the scene exerts over us. But with a little reflection we are able to discover, that there is scarcely one drama of his, in which, from the same materials, situations could not have been formed, which should have possessed in their mere outline a tenfold amount of interest and tragic effect to those which Shakspeare has presented to us. [Sidenote: He could have made more striking effect out of _Hamlet_, Acts IV. & V. 4.] 'Hamlet' offers, especially in the two last acts, some remarkable proofs of his indifference to the means which he held in his hands for increasing the tragic interest of his situations, and of the boldness with which he threw himself on his own resources for the creation of the most intense effect out of the slenderest outline. [Sidenote: _Oth.e.l.lo_, Act III.] But no example can shew more strikingly his independence of tragic situation, and his power of concocting dramatic power out of the most meagre elements of story, than the third act of the Oth.e.l.lo. It contains no more than the development and triumph of the devilish design which was afterwards to issue in murder and remorse; and other writers would have treated it in no other style than as necessary to prepare the way for the harrowing conclusion. In the Moor's dialogues with Iago, the act of vengeance, ever and anon sternly contemplated, and darkening all with its horror, is yet but one ingredient in the misery of the tale. [Sidenote: So in the end of _Lear_,] These scenes are a tragedy in themselves, the story of the most hideous revolution in a n.o.ble nature; and their catastrophe of wretchedness is complete when the tumult of doubt sinks into resolved and desolate conviction,--when the Moor dashes Desdemona from him, and rushes out in uncontrollable agony.--Read also the conclusion of Lear, and learn the same lesson from the economy of that most touching scene. [Sidenote: all is left clear for the one group, the father and his dead child.] The horrors which have gathered so thickly [76:1]throughout the last act, are carefully removed to the background, and free room is left for the sorrowful groupe on which every eye is turned. The situation is simple in the extreme; but how tragically moving are the internal convulsions for the representation of which the poet has worthily husbanded his force! Lear enters with frantic cries, bearing the body of his dead daughter in his arms; he alternates between agitating doubts and wishing unbelief of her death, and piteously experiments on the lifeless corpse; he bends over her with the dotage of an old man's affection, and calls to mind the soft lowness of her voice, till he fancies he can hear its murmurs. Then succeeds the dreadful torpor of despairing insanity, during which he receives the most cruel tidings with apathy, or replies to them with wild incoherence; and the heart flows forth at the close with its last burst of love, only to break in the vehemence of its emotion,--commencing with the tenderness of regret, swelling into choking grief, and at last, when the eye catches the tokens of mortality in the dead, snapping the chords of life in a paroxysm of agonised horror.

Oh, thou wilt come no more; Never, never, never, never, never!

--Pray you, undo this b.u.t.ton: Thank you, Sir.-- Do you see this?--_Look on her--look_--HER LIPS!

_Look there! Look there!_

The application here of the differences thus pointed out is easy enough.

Fletcher either would not have chosen so bare a story, or he would have treated it in another guise. [Sidenote: Incidents of _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_ story] The incidents which const.i.tute the story are neither many nor highly wrought: they are only the capture of the two knights,--their becoming enamoured of the lady,--the combat which was to decide their t.i.tle to her,--and the death of Arcite after it. And no complexity of minor adventures is inserted to disturb the simplicity so presented. [Sidenote: wouldn't have suited Fletcher.] In all this there is nothing which Fletcher could have found sufficient to maintain that continuity and stretch of interest which he always thought necessary.

[Sidenote: He'd have added to 'em.] He would have invented accessory circ.u.mstances, he would have produced new characters, or thrust the less important person[77:1]ages who now fill the stage, further into the foreground, and more constantly into action: the one simple and inartificial story which we have, possessing none of his mercurial activity of motion, and scarcely exciting a feeling of curiosity, would have been transformed into a complication of intrigues, amidst which the figures who occupy the centre of the piece as it stands, would have been only individuals sharing their importance with others, and scarcely allowed room enough to make their features at all distinguishable.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's handling seen in certain scenes of _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_.]

In the management of particular scenes of this play, likewise, certain circ.u.mstances are observable, which, separately, seem to go a certain length in establishing Shakspeare's claim to the arrangement, and have considerable force when taken together. [Sidenote: Act I. scene ii.

design'd by Shakspere.] The second scene of the first act would appear to have been sketched by him rather than Fletcher, from its containing no activity of incident, and serving no obvious purpose but the development of the character and situation of the two princes; a mode of preparation not at all practised by Fletcher. [Sidenote: Act I. scene iii. also. And] Neither does any consequence flow from the beautiful scene immediately following; a circ.u.mstance which points out Shakspeare as having arranged the scene, and would strengthen the evidence of his having written the dialogue, if that required any corroboration.

[Sidenote: Act V. scenes i. ii. iii. [? Emilia with the pictures.]] The bareness and undiversified iteration of situation in the first three scenes of the last act form one presumption against the devising of those scenes by Fletcher. [Sidenote: Act V. scene v. also designd by Shakspere.] The economy of the fifth scene of that act, in which Emilia, left alone on the stage, listens to the noise of the combat, is also, to me, strongly indicative of Shakspeare. The contrivance is unusual, but extremely well imagined. I do not recollect an instance in Fletcher bearing the smallest likeness to it, or founded on any principles at all a.n.a.logous to that which is here called into operation. In Shakspeare, I think we may, in more than one drama, discover something which might have given the germ of it. [Sidenote: Shakspere's expedients for avoiding spectacles; in] He has not only in his historical plays again and again regretted the insufficiency of the means possessed by his stage, or any other, for the representation of such spectacles; but in several of those plays he has devised expedients for avoiding them. In 'Henry V.' we have the battle of Azincour; but the only encounter of [78:1]the opposite parties is that of Pistol and the luckless Signor Dew. [Sidenote: _1 Henry IV._,] In 'the first part of Henry IV.' he has shewn an unwillingness to risk the effect even of a single combat; for in the last scene of that play, where prince Henry engages Hotspur, the spectator's attention is distracted from the fight between them, by the entrance of Douglas, and his attack on the prudent Falstaff. [Sidenote: _Richard II._,] In 'Richard II.' the lists are exhibited for the duel of Bolingbroke and Norfolk, which is inartificially broken off at the very last instant by the mandate of the king. [Sidenote: Emilia in _Two N.

K._ I. v., like Lady Macbeth in II. ii. of _Macbeth_.] But a more deeply marked likeness to the spirit in which the scene in 'The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen' is arranged, meets us in Lady Macbeth watching and listening while her husband perpetrates the murder, like a bad angel which delays its flight only till it be a.s.sured that the whispered temptation has done its work. And in this combat scene, even the ancient and artless expedient used, of relating important events by messengers brought in for that sole end, and having no part in the action, may be noticed as belonging to an older form of the drama than Fletcher's, and as being very frequently practised by Shakspeare himself.

[Sidenote: The motives of the play of _The Two N. K._]

In quitting our cursory examination of the qualities which distinguish the mechanical arrangement of the play, we may advert to the mode in which those influences are conceived which give motion to the incidents of the story, and regulate its progress. [Sidenote: Dramatic art defin'd.] The dramatic art is a representation of human character in action; and action in human life is prompted by pa.s.sion, which the other powers of the mind serve only to guide, to modify, or to quell. In the conception of the pa.s.sions which are chiefly operative in this drama, there seems to be much that is characteristic of a greater poet than Fletcher. [Sidenote: In _The Two N. K._ the moving pa.s.sions are Love and Jealousy.] In the first place, the pa.s.sions which primarily originate the action of the piece are simple; they are Love and Jealousy; the purest and most disinterested form of the one, and the n.o.blest and most generous which could be chosen for the other. [Sidenote: This conception is Shakspere's.] The conception is Shakspeare's in its loftiness and magnanimity; and it is his also as being a direct appeal to common sympathies, modified but slightly by partial or fugitive views of nature. [Sidenote: The keeping close to the leading motives, is Shakspere's doing.] But it also resembles him in the singleness and coherence of design with [79:1]which the idea is seized and followed out. It cannot be necessary that I should specifically exemplify the closeness with which those ruling pa.s.sions are brought to bear on the leading circ.u.mstances of the story from first to last. And it is almost equally superfluous to remind you, how far any such adherence to that unity of impulse, operates as evidence in a question between the two poets whom we have here to compare. [Sidenote: Fletcher's inability to work a character out, to keep one pa.s.sion always in the front.]

Fletcher, in common with other poets of all ranks inferior to the highest, is unable to preserve any one form of pa.s.sion or of character skilfully in the foreground: he may seem occasionally to have proposed to himself the prosecution of such an end, but he either degenerates into the exhibition of a few over-wrought dramatic contrasts, or loses his way altogether amidst the complicated adventures with which he inc.u.mbers his stories. [Sidenote: Shakspere's definite purpose and keeping to it.] This inability to keep sight of an uniform design, is in truth one striking argument of inferiority; and the clearness with which Shakspeare conceives a definite purpose, and the fixedness with which he pursues it, go very far to unravel the great secret of his power.

[Sidenote: His relying on the emotion he puts into his characters.] I have already pointed out to you, perhaps without necessity, wherein it is that his strength of pa.s.sion consists; that it is not in the incidents of his fable, but in his mode of treating the incidents; that he will not rely on mere vigour or skill of outline in his stage-grouping, for that influence which he is conscious of being always able to acquire more worthily, by the beauty and emotion which he breathes into the organic formation of the living statuary of the scene; that he refuses to sacrifice to the meretricious attraction of strained situations or entangled incidents, the internal and self-supporting strength of his historical pictures of the heart, or the unflinching accuracy of his demonstrations of the intellectual anatomy. [Sidenote: Shakspere's unity of purpose, seen in his conception, and his carrying this out.] In a similar way you will look for his unity of purpose, not in the mechanical economy of his plots, but in the elementary conception of his characters, and in his developement of the principles of pa.s.sion under whose suggestions those characters act. [Sidenote: Shakspere's conception of character, and method of developing it.] He chooses as the subject of his delineation some mightily and truly conceived impersonation of human attributes, inconsistent it may be in itself, but faithful to its prototype as being inconsistent according to the rules which guide inconsistency in our enigmati[80:1]cal mental const.i.tution; for the exhibition of the character so imagined he devises some chain of events by which its internal springs of action may be brought into play; and he traces the motion and results of those spiritual impulses with an undeviating steadiness of design, which turns aside neither to raise curiosity nor to gratify a craving for any other mean excitement. Some singular instances of Shakspeare's fine judgment in clinging to one great design, are furnished by the 'Oth.e.l.lo.'

[Sidenote: Desdemona's murder compard with Annabella's (by Ford).] The death of Desdemona has been compared with the murder of Annabella, a scene (evidently drawn from it) in a drama of Ford's on a story which makes the flesh creep. [Sidenote: Ford's above Shakspere's in pathos.]

Some have p.r.o.nounced Ford's scene superior in pathos to Shakspeare's: I think it is decidedly so. The tender mournfulness of the language and few images is exquisite, and the sweet sad monotonous melody of the versification is indescribably affecting. Is it from weakness that Shakspeare has not given to the death of his gentle lady an equally strong impress of pathos? No. He was not indeed susceptible of the feminine abandonment of Ford; but he was equal to a manly tone of feeling, fitted to excite a truer sympathy. [Sidenote: Why? Because of Shakspere's self-restraint.] He has refused to stretch the chords of feeling to the utmost in favour of Desdemona; and his refusal has a design and meaning in it. [Sidenote: The mind of Oth.e.l.lo is the centre of Shakspere's play,] There is anguish in the scene, and the most utter yielding to overpowering sorrow; but it is the Moor who feels those emotions, and it is the exhibition of his mind which is the leading end of this scene, as of the rest of the drama. [Sidenote: and the pathos of Desdemona's death must be kept down.] The suffering lady is but an inferior actor in the scene; her situation is brought out with perfect skill and genuine tenderness, so far as it is consistent with the first object and ill.u.s.trative of it; but its expression is arrested at the point where its further developement would have marred the effect of the scene as a whole, and broken in on its pervading spirit. Ford had no such aim in view; and the very scene of his which is so beautiful in itself, loses almost all its force when regarded as a part of the play in which it is inserted.

These principles of Shakspeare's could be traced as influencing the drama of the 'Two n.o.ble Kinsmen,' even if there were nothing farther to shew their effect than what has been already [81:1]noticed. But their power is displayed still more admirably in a second quality in the mode of conception, less open to notice, but breathing actively through all.

There is skill in the mental machinery which gives motion to the story; but there is even greater art in the application of a hidden influence, which controls the action of the moving power, and equalizes its effects. [Sidenote: Shakspere's art in subduing all _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_ to one Friendship.] That secret principle is Friendship, the operation of which is shewn most distinctly in the Kinsmen, guiding every part of their behaviour except where their mutual claim to Emilia's love comes into operation, never extinct even there, though its effect be sometimes suspended, and awakening on the approach of Arcite's death, with a warmth which is natural as well as touching. [Sidenote: Love of Friends the leading idea of _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_.] But this feeling has a farther working: Love of Friends is in truth the leading idea of the piece: the whole drama is one sacrifice on the altar of one of the holiest influences which affect the mind of man. Palamon and Arcite are the first who bow down before the shrine, but Theseus and Perithous follow, and Emilia and her sister do homage likewise.

[Sidenote: The harmony of its parts, an idea beyond Fletcher.] This singular harmony of parts was an idea perfectly beyond Fletcher's reach; and the execution of it was equally unfit for his attempting. The discrimination, the delicate relief, with which the different shades of the affection are elaborated, is inimitable. The love of the Princesses does not issue in action; it is a placid feeling, which gladly contemplates its own likeness in others, or turns back with memory to the vanished hours of childhood: with Theseus and his friend, the pa.s.sion is exhibited dimly, as longing for exertion, but not gifted with opportunity; and in the Kinsmen, it bursts out into full activity, quelling all but the one omnipotent pa.s.sion, and tempering and purifying even it. With this exception, you will not look for much of Shakspeare's skill in delineating character. [Sidenote: Not much of Shakspere's characterization in _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_.] The features of the two Princes are aptly enough distinguished; but neither in them, nor in any of the others, is there an approach to his higher efforts. You will recollect that in his acknowledged works those finer and deeper pryings into character have place only in few instances; and that the greater number of his dramas depend for their effect chiefly on other causes, some of which are energetic in this very play.

[82:1]While you successively inspected particular pa.s.sages in this play, your attention was necessarily called both to the character of its imaginative portions, and to the tone of reflection which is so frequently a.s.sumed in it. [Sidenote: Whose is the ruling temper of _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_?] The drama having been now put entirely before you, I shall wish you to ponder its ruling temper as a whole, and to determine whether that temper is Fletcher's, or belongs to a more thoughtful, inquisitive, and solemn mind. [Sidenote: Seek in it the mind of its author.] When you inst.i.tute such a reconsideration, I shall be desirous that you contemplate the internal spirit of the work from a loftier and more commanding station than that which you formerly occupied; and I shall crave you to view its elements of thought and feeling less as the qualities of a literary work, than as the signs and results of the mental const.i.tution of its author. [Sidenote: The duty of our reverence for Shakspere, the Star of Poets, being intelligent.] I cannot regard as altogether foreign to our leading purpose any inquiry which may hold out the promise of ill.u.s.trating the characteristics of Shakspeare even slightly, and of teaching us to mingle a more active discernment in the reverence with which we look up to the Star of Poets from the common level of our unendowed humanity. You will therefore have the patience to accompany me in the suggestion of some queries as to the character of his mode of thinking, and the way in which his reflective spirit and his poetical qualities of mind are combined and influence each other. We may be able to perceive the more distinctly the real character both of his intellect and his poetical faculty, if you will consent that our investigation shall set out from a point which you may be inclined to consider somewhat more remote than is altogether necessary. [Sidenote: We'll treat 1. the true functions of Poetry, 2.

its true province.] It is to be desired that we should have clearly in our view, first, the true functions of the poetical faculty, and, secondly, the province in poetical invention which legitimately belongs to the imagination, properly so called. Sound conclusions on both these points are indispensable to sound criticism on individual specimens of the poetical art; and when we attempt to reason on particular cases, without having those conclusions placed prominently in view at the outset, the vagueness of ordinary language makes us constantly liable to lose sight of their true grounds and distinctions. The laying down of such principles at the inst.i.tution of an inquiry into the poetical character of a great [82:2]poet, is therefore in no degree less useful, than the inculcating of familiar truths is in the instructions of religious and moral teachers; the end in each of the cases being, not the establishing of new principles, but the placing of known and admitted ones in an aspect which shall render them influential; and the necessity in each, arising from the danger which exists lest the principles, acknowledged in the abstract, should in practice be wholly disregarded.

[Sidenote: Contrast of the Arts of Poetry and Design, in Lessing's _Laoc.o.o.n_.]

We can in no way discover the real character and objects of the Poetical Art so easily as by contrasting it with the Arts of Design; and the materials for such a comparison are afforded by the Laoc.o.o.n of Lessing.

[Sidenote: The Greeks subordinated Expression to Beauty.] The principles established in that admirable essay will scarcely be now disputed, and may be fairly enough summed up in the following manner.[83:1]--A study of the Grecian works of art convinces us, that "among the ancients Beauty was the presiding law of those arts which are occupied with Form;" that, to that supreme object, the Greek artists sacrificed every collateral end which might be inconsistent with it; and that, in particular, they expressed the external signs of mental commotion and bodily suffering, to no farther extent than that which allowed Beauty to be completely preserved. [Sidenote: And all Design must do the same, because] Now, that this subordination of Expression to Beauty is a fundamental principle of art, and not a mere accidental quality of Grecian art individually, is proved by considering the peculiar const.i.tution and mechanical necessities of art. Its representations are confined to a single instant of time; and that one circ.u.mstance imposes on it two limitations, which necessarily produce the characteristic quality of the Grecian works. [Sidenote: 1. the expression must be caught before the highest pa.s.sion is attaind;] First, "the expression must never be selected from what may be called the _acme_ or transcendent point of the action;" and that because, the power of the arts of design being confined to the arresting of a single point in the developement of an action, it is indispensable that they should select a point which is in the highest degree significant, and most fully excites the imagination; a condition [83:2]which is fulfilled only by those points in an action in which the action moves onward, and the pa.s.sion which prompts it increases; and which is not fulfilled in any degree by the highest stage of the pa.s.sion and the completion of the action.

[Sidenote: 2. because the expression must not be that of a momentary feeling.] [Sidenote: But Poetry is not bound by the limits of the Fine Arts.] [Sidenote: It can seize pa.s.sion at its height.] Secondly, a limitation is imposed as to the choice of the proper point in the onward progress of the action: for art invests with a motionless and unchanging permanence the point of action which it selects; and consequently any appearance which essentially possesses the character of suddenness and evanescence is unfit to be its subject, since the mind cannot readily conceive such transitory appearances as stiffened into that monumental stability.--Since it is by the limitation of the Fine Arts to the representation of a single instant of time that the two limitations in point of expression are imposed, and since Poetry is not subject to that mechanical limitation, but can describe successively every stage of an action, and every phasis of a pa.s.sion, it follows that this latter art is not fettered by the limitation in expression, which is consequent on the physical limitation of the other; and hence the exhibition of pa.s.sion in its height is as allowable in poetry as it is inadmissible in the arts of design. [Sidenote: Beauty is but one of its many resources.]

And since the whole range and the whole strength of human thought, action, and pa.s.sion, are thus left open to the poet as subjects of his representation, it follows likewise, that Beauty "can never be more than one amongst many resources, (and those the slightest,) by which he has it in his power to engage our interest for his characters."

It will be remarked, that the purport of Lessing's reasoning, so far as he has in express terms carried it, is no more than to demonstrate the important truth, that the Fine Arts are confined by certain limits to which Poetry is not subject. His elucidation of the principles of poetry is purely incidental and negative. His reasoning seems however necessarily to infer certain further consequences, the examination of which has a tendency to cast additional light on the true end and character of the poetical art: and it is for this reason rather than from any difficulty lying in the way of those implied results, that I wish now to direct your notice to their nature, and the grounds on which [84:1]their soundness rests. [Sidenote: Design must represent Form of permanent feelings.] Lessing's second canon does not a.s.sume the arts of design as pursuing any further end than their original and obvious one, the Representation of Form: it simply directs that only those appearances of form shall be represented which admit of being conceived as permanent. [Sidenote: The object of Art, a true representation of the Beautiful.] And as the feelings which art desires to awaken are pleasurable, and as forms, considered merely _as_ forms, give pleasure only when they are beautiful, art would thus be regarded as proposing for its object nothing beyond a Representation of the Beautiful, and Verisimilitude in that representation. The first rule of limitation however implies a great deal more: it looks to forms, not as such, but as tokens significant of certain qualities not inherent in their own nature: for the quality which it requires to be possessed by works of art, is a capability of exciting the imagination to frame for itself representations of human action and pa.s.sion; and in this view, those feelings which the qualities of form considered as such are calculated to arouse, are no more than an accidental part of the impression which the representation makes. It appears, therefore, that art _may_ pursue two different ends,--the excitement of the feeling which Beauty inspires, and the excitement of the feeling which has its root in human Sympathy; and the question at once occurs,--Is each of these purposes of art equally a part of its original and proper province? [Sidenote: May it also try to excite feelings inconsistent with the Beautiful, as Poetry does?] Or, since it is sufficiently clear that the effects which the last-mentioned canon contemplates as produced by the fine arts, are effects which are also produced by poetry, (whether its sole effects or not, it is immaterial to this question to settle,) the question may be put in another form:--Is it to be believed, that the arts of design, which have admittedly for one purpose the reproduction of the Beautiful in form, have also as an equally proper and original purpose the framing of representations of form calculated to affect the mind with feelings different from the feeling of the Beautiful,--these feelings being identically the same with those which are at least the most obvious effects of poetry? [Sidenote: No.] Reasons crowd in upon the mind, evincing that the question must be answered by an unqualified negative.

The production of poetical effects cannot have been an _original_ purpose of the fine arts, which certainly were brought into existence [85:1]by the love of Beauty; and the production of those effects is plainly also an exertion in which the fine arts overstep their limits, and wander into the region which belongs of right to the poetical art, and to it alone. [Sidenote: Expression in Painting and Sculpture is a borrowd quality.] That Expression in painting and sculpture is an extraneous and borrowed quality, is made almost undeniably evident by this one consideration, that it requires, as we have seen, to be always kept subdued, and allowed to enter only partially into the composition of the work. [Sidenote: That Fine Art is admired most when it has most expression, only shows that] And, again, it is no argument against that position, to say that the strongest and most general interest and admiration are excited by those works of art in which expression is permitted to go the utmost length which the physical limits of the art permit. [Sidenote: Poetry stirs men more than pure Art does.] For the universality of this preference only proves, that the feelings of our common humanity influence more minds than does the pure love of the beautiful; and the greater strength of the feeling produced by expression, only evinces that poetry, which works its effect by means of that quality, is a more powerful engine than the sister-art for stirring up the depths of our nature. And it may be quite true that those works of art which confine themselves to the attempt to move the calmer feeling due to Beauty, are the truest to their own nature and proper aim, although an endeavour to unite with that the attainment of higher purposes may be admissible, and in some instances highly successful. I apprehend that although an art should propose as its main end the production of one particular effect, it does not follow that its effects should be confined to the production of that alone, if its physical conditions permit the partial pursuit of others. [Sidenote: Fine Art _may_ borrow from its loftier sister, Poetry,] More especially, if an art should admit of uniting, to a certain extent, with its own peculiar and legitimate end, the prosecution of another loftier than the first, surely we might expect to find such an art occasionally taking advantage of the license; and yet its doing so would not compel us to say, that both these are its proper and original purposes. [Sidenote: but Cla.s.sic Art very rarely does, and rightly.] And the fact is, that the attempt is seldom made; for very few works of cla.s.sical art exist in which the union of the two principles is tried, the end sought being usually the representation of beauty, and that alone. In no way, however, can the radical difference and opposition between the two qualities be evinced so satisfactorily as by a comparison [86:1]of the effects which they severally produce on the mind. [Sidenote: Expression belongs to Poetry.

It excites.] [Sidenote: Poetry stirs men.] Expression, the poetical element, gives rise to a peculiar activity of the soul, a certain species of reflective emotion, which, it is true, is easily distinguishable from underived pa.s.sion, and does not necessarily produce like it a tendency to action, but which yet essentially partakes of the character of mental commotion, and is opposed to the idea of mental inactivity. [Sidenote: Beauty soothes them.] The feeling which Beauty awakens is of a character entirely opposite. The contemplation of the Beautiful begets an inclination to repose, a stillness and luxurious absorption of every mental faculty: thought is dormant, and even sensation is scarcely followed by the perception which is its usual consequence. [Sidenote: Look at the Venus de Medici.] It is with this softness and relaxation of mind that we are inspired when we look on such works as the Venus de Medici, in which beauty is sole and supreme, and expression is permitted to be no farther present than as it is necessary as an indication of the internal influence of soul, that so those sympathies may be awakened, without whose partial action even beauty itself possesses no power. [Sidenote: When ancient art stirs you, as in the] If we turn to those few works of ancient art, in which the opposite element is admitted, we are conscious that the soul is differently acted upon, and we may be able by reflection to disentangle the ravelled threads of feeling, and distinguish the mental changes which flow upon and through each other like the successive waves on the sea-beach. [Sidenote: Apollo and] In contemplating the Apollo, for instance, a feeling akin to the poetical, or rather identical with it, is awakened by the divine majesty of the statue; and upon the quiet and self-brooding luxury with which the heart is filled by the perfect beauty of the youthful outlines, there steals a more fervent emotion which makes us proud to look on the proud figure, which makes us stand more erect while we gaze, and imitate involuntarily that G.o.dlike att.i.tude and expression of calm and beautiful disdain. [Sidenote: Laoc.o.o.n,] [Sidenote: it is by their having left their own ground, and taken that of Poetry, Expression.] Or look to the wonderful Laoc.o.o.n, in which the abstract feeling of beauty is even more deeply merged in the human feeling of the pathetic,--that extraordinary groupe, in which continued meditation arouses more and more actively the emotion of sympathy, while we view the dark and swimming shadows of the eyes, the absorbed and motionless agony of the mouth, and the tense torture of the iron muscles of [87:1]the body. It is impossible to conceive that an art can propose to itself, as originally and properly its own, two ends so difficult of reconcilement and so different in the qualities by which they are brought about. [Sidenote: Lastly, Fine Art appeals to sight.]

[Sidenote: Poetry never does.] Finally, the Plastic Arts offer form directly to the sense of sight, whereas it is very doubtful whether poetry can convey, even indirectly, any visual image. [Sidenote: If Fine Art rightly includes Expression, then it has Beauty too; while Poetry, which can't express Beauty directly, has to give up part of its province, Expression, to Art, which can't use it fully.] Consequently, the result of admitting Expression as a primary and legitimate end of the arts of form, would be to ascribe to them an innate and underived capability of presenting directly to the senses both beauty and the wide circle of human action and feeling; while the genius of Poetry, by her nature shut out from direct representation of the beautiful, whose shadows she can evoke only through the agency of a.s.sociated ideas, would have even her own kingdom of thought and pa.s.sion, her power as the great interpreter of mind, shared with her by a rival, whom the decision would acknowledge indeed as possessing a right to the divided empire, but who is disqualified by the nature of her instruments from exercising that sovereignty to the full. [Sidenote: Poetry rather lends its help to its narrower ally, Art.] And, on the other hand, by the acknowledgment that the arts of form are not properly a representation of human action or human pa.s.sion, and that when they aim at becoming so, they attempt a task which is above and beyond their sphere, and in which their success can never be more than partial, Poetry is exhibited in an august and n.o.ble aspect, as stooping to lend a share in her broad and lofty dominion to another art of narrower scope, which is so enabled to gain over the mind an influence of transcending its own una.s.sisted capacities.

[Sidenote: The aims of Poetry:]

If you shall be able to think this excursive disquisition justifiable, it will be because it insensibly leads us to perceive what truly is the legitimate and sole end of the Poetical Art, and because it thus clears the way for one or two elementary propositions regarding the functions of the Poetical Faculty. [Sidenote: 1. not to represent Beauty to the eye, but only to the mind.] First, we perceive that poetry does not aim at the representation of visual beauty. I do not say that beauty may not form the subject of poetry: my meaning is, that the poet can depict it poetically in no way except by indicating its effects on the mind. When poetry mistakingly attempts to represent beauty by its external form, its failure to affect the mind is signal and complete, and must be [88:1]so, even supposing it to be possible that the picture should be so full and accurate that the painter might sketch from it. The reason of this is perhaps discoverable. [Sidenote: Contrast of the effects of Beauty and Expression, of Fine Art and Poetry, on the mind.] Such a description cannot affect the mind with the poetical sentiment, because it does not represent to the imagination those qualities by which it is that the poetical effect is produced; and if it were to move the mind at all, it must be with those feelings which beauty excites when it is seen corporeally present. It fails to operate even this effect, and why?

Beauty of form affects the mind through the intervention of sense; and the perception of the sensible qualities of form is followed instantaneously and necessarily by the pleasurable emotion. [Sidenote: Beauty gives pleasure, rest, absorption.] This mental process is involuntary, and the nature of the sentiment excited implies inactivity and absorption of the mind. [Sidenote: Poetry stirs the Imagination, the Will, disturbs the pa.s.siveness that Beauty produces.] When however the imagination is called on to combine into a connected whole the scattered features which words successively present, an effort of the will is necessary: and the failure in the pleasurable effect appears to be adequately accounted for (independently of any imperfection in the result of the combination) by the inconsistency of this degree of mental activity with the inert frame of mind which is requisite for the actual contemplation and enjoyment of the beautiful. [Sidenote: It can't produce an image by sight, but only by a.s.sociation.] When, again, the poet represents beauty in the method chalked out for him by the nature of his art, it is quite impossible that he can convey any distinct visual image; for he represents the poetical qualities by indicating them as the causes which produce some particular temper or frame of mind: and as every mind has its distinctive differences of a.s.sociation, a truly poetical picture is not realised by any two minds with precisely similar features. [Sidenote: Its effect is opposite to that of Beauty of Form.] And the mood of mind to which this representation gives birth, is radically opposite to the other; it is active, sympathetic, and even reflective: we seem, as it were, to share the feeling with others, to derive an added delight from witnessing the manner in which they are affected, or even to have the original pa.s.sive sentiment of pleasure entirely swallowed up in that energetic emotion.[89:1] [Sidenote: 2.

Poetry's true subject is Mind, and not external nature,] Secondly, the true subject of poetry is [90:1]Mind. Its most strictly original purpose is that of imaging mind _directly_, by the representation of humanity as acting, thinking, or suffering; it presents images of external nature only because the weakness of the mind compels it; and it is careful to represent sensible images solely as they are acted on by mind.

[Sidenote: except as tinged with thought and feeling.] When it makes the description of external nature its professed end, it in truth does not represent the sensible objects themselves, but only exhibits certain modes of thought and feeling, and characterises the sensible forms no farther than as the causes which produce them. [Sidenote: 3. Poetry is a.n.a.lytical; it perceives, discriminates.] Thirdly, The most characteristic function of the poetical faculty is _a.n.a.lytical_; it is essentially a _perception_, a power of discovery, a.n.a.lysis, and discrimination. An object having been presented to it by the imagination, it discovers, and separates from the ma.s.s of its qualities, those of them which are calculated to affect the mind with that emotion which is the instrumental end of poetry. [Sidenote: Its combinations depend on its first a.n.a.lysis.] Coincidently with the perception and discovery of the qualities, it perceives and experiences the peculiar effect which each particular quality produces; and, lastly, it sets forth and represents those resulting moods of mind, indicating at the same time what those qualities of the object are through which they are excited. Its task of combination is no more than consequent on this process, and supposes each step of it to have been previously gone through. [Sidenote: 4. Poetry depends on the power and accuracy of its perception of the poetical qualities in its materials.] Fourthly, It follows, (and this is the result which makes the inquiry important,) that the poetical faculty is measured by the strength and accuracy with which it perceives the poetical qualities of those objects which the imagination suggests as its materials, and not by the number of the ideas so presented. [Sidenote: Of imagination or Imagery.] A forgetfulness of this truth has occasioned more misapprehension and [90:2]false criticism than any other error whatever; and we are continually in danger of the mistake, from the extension of meaning which use has attached to the word imagination, that term being commonly employed to designate the poetical faculty. This extended application is perhaps unavoidable; but it is on that account the more necessary to guard against the misconception always likely to arise from the original signification of the word, which we can never discard entirely from the mind in using it in a secondary sense.--You do not need to be reminded how completely the history of the poetical art evinces, that these positions, whether expressly acquiesced in or not, have been invariably acted on in the judgments which the world has p.r.o.nounced in particular cases. [Sidenote: Describing forms by their outsides, is not Poetry.]

[Sidenote: They must be shown as exciting changes of Mind.] The inadequacy of a representation of forms by their external attributes to const.i.tute poetical pictures, could be instanced from every bad poem which has ever been written; and the great truth, that the external world is exhibited poetically only by being represented as the exciting cause of mental changes, has been ill.u.s.trated in no age so singularly as in our own. [Sidenote: Wordsworth declares that all outward objects can do this, and become sentient existences.] The writings of Wordsworth in particular have stretched the principle to the utmost extent which it can possibly sustain; demanding a belief that all external objects are poetical, because all can interest the human mind; establishing the reasonableness of the a.s.sumption by the boldest confidence in the strength and delicacy with which the poetical perception can trace the qualities which awaken that interest, and the progress of the feeling itself; and applying the poetical faculty to the transforming of every object of sense into an energetic, and as it were sentient, existence.

[Sidenote: Mere wealth of imagery is of little worth.] And attention is especially due to the decision which has always recognized, as the rule of poetical excellence, the operation of some power independent of mere wealth of imagination, ranking this latter quality as one of the lowest merits of poetry. [Sidenote: The greatest poets use the fewest images,]

We are apt to forget that those minds whose conceptions have been the most strongly and truly poetical, are by no means those whose poetical ideas have been the most abundant; that an overflow of poetical images has been coincident with an intense perception of their most efficient poetical relations only in a few rare instances; and that it is precisely where the highest elements of the poetical are most active that [91:1]the imagination is usually found to offer the fewest images as the materials on which the poetical faculty should work. [Sidenote: witness Dante, Alfieri.] It is enough to name Dante, or, a still more singular instance, Alfieri. [Sidenote: Their intensity is their secret.]

In both cases the poetical influence rests on the intensity of the one simple aspect of grandeur or pa.s.sion in which a character is presented, and in both that simplicity is unrelieved and undecorated by any fulness of imagery.[91:2]

[Sidenote: Application of these principles to the Drama.]

These fundamental principles of the poetical art possess a closer application to Dramatic Poetry than to any other species. [Sidenote: The Pa.s.sions are the chief subjects of Poetry.] All poetry being directly or indirectly a representation of human character; and human character admitting of appreciation only by an exhibition of its results in action; and action being prompted by the pa.s.sionate impulses of the mind, which its reflective faculties only modify or stay; it follows that the Pa.s.sions are the leading subjects of Poetry, which consequently must be examined in the first instance with a view to its strength and accuracy as a representation of the working and results of that department of the mind. The nature of the dramatic art allows this rule to be applied to it with the greatest strictness. [Sidenote: They work more alone in the Drama than elsewhere.] The drama is the species which presents the essential qualities of poetry less mingled with foreign adjuncts than they are in any other species; and there seems to be a cause, (independent of its mechanical necessities,) enabling it to dispense with those decorations which abound in other kinds of poetry.

The acted drama presents its picture of life directly to the senses, and permits the imagination, without any previous exertion, to proceed at once to its proper task of forming its own combinations from the sensible forms thus offered to it; and even when the drama is read, the office of the imagination in representing to itself the action and the characters of the piece, is an easy one, and performed without the necessity of great activity of mind. [Sidenote: In Epic and other poetry relying only on words, the effort to turn them into a picture hinders their prompt action.] On the other hand, in the epic, or any other species of poetry which represents action by [92:1]words, and not by an imitation of the action itself, the imagination has at first to form, from the successively presented features of the poetical description, a picture which shall be the exciting cause of the poetical impression: this supposes considerable energy of thought, and the necessity of relief from that exertion seems to have suggested the introduction of images of external nature and the like, on which the fancy may rest and disport itself. [Sidenote: Didactic poetry is not true poetry, but sermons in verse.] Those cla.s.ses of poetry which are either partially or wholly didactic, cannot receive a strict application of the principles of the pure art; because they are not properly poetry, but attempts to make poetical forms serve purposes which are not poetical.

[Sidenote: Shakspere again.]

Our journey has at length conducted us to Shakspeare, of many of whose peculiar qualities we have been gaining scattered glimpses in our progress. [Sidenote: He takes to Drama, because it's the n.o.blest and truest form of Poetry, the likest the mind of man.] We remark him adopting that species of poetry which, necessarily confined by its forms, is yet the n.o.blest offspring of the poetical faculty, and the truest to the purposes of the poetical art, because it is the most faithful and impressive image of the mind and state of man. [Sidenote: And there he sits enthrond.] We find him seated like an eastern sovereign amidst those who have adopted this highest form of poetry; and we cannot be contented that, in reverentially acknowledging his worthiness to fill the throne, we should render him only a hasty and undiscerning homage. [Sidenote: But why?] A discrimination of the particular qualities by which his sway is mainly supported, is rendered the more necessary by that extraordinary union of qualities, which has made him what he is, the unapproached and the unapproachable.--We are accustomed to lavish commendations on his vast Imagination. [Sidenote: What does his _Imagination_ mean?] Before we can perceive what rank this quality of his deserves to hold in an estimate of his character, we must understand precisely what the quality is which we mean to praise.

[Sidenote: his wealth of imagery?] If the term used denotes merely the abundance of his ill.u.s.trative conceptions, it expresses what is a singular quality, especially as co-existent with so many other endowments, but useful only as furnishing materials for the use of the poetical power. [Sidenote: of fancy, of conception?] If the word is meant to call attention to the strength and delicacy with which his mind grasps and embodies the poetical relations of those overflowing conceptions, (still considered simply as ill.u.s.trative or decorative,) [93:1]the quality indicated is a rare and valuable gift, and is especially to be noted in an attempt to trace a likeness to his manner.

[Sidenote: No.] Still however it is but a secondary ground of desert; it is even imperfectly suited for developement in dramatic dialogue, and it frequently tempts him to quit the genuine spirit and temper of his scene. [Sidenote: Does Shakspere's imagination mean the grandeur or loveliness he has given some of his characters?] If, again, in speaking of the great poet's imagination, we have regard to the poetical character of many of his leading conceptions, to the ideal grandeur or terror of some of his preternatural characters, or even to the romantic loveliness which he has thrown, like the golden curtains of the morning, over the youth and love of woman,--we point out a quality which is admirable in itself, and almost divine in its union with others so opposite, a quality to which we are glad to turn for repose from the more severe portions of his works,--but still an excellence which is not the most marked feature of his character, and which he could want without losing the essential portion of his ident.i.ty. [Sidenote: No.]

[Sidenote: We could give up Miranda, Ariel, Juliet, Romeo, and yet leave the true, the highest Shakspere behind, in Richard, Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet.] We could conceive, (although the idea is sacrilege to the genius and the altar of poetry,) we could conceive that 'The Tempest'

had remained unwritten, that Miranda had not made inexperience beautiful by the spell of innocence and youth, that the hideous slave Caliban had never scowled and cursed, nor Ariel alighted on the world like a shooting-star,--we could dismiss alike from our memories the moon-light forest in which the Fairy Court revel, and the lurid and spectre-peopled ghastliness of the cave of Hecate,--we could in fancy remove from the gallery of the poet's art the picture which exhibits the two self-destroyed lovers lying side by side in the tomb of the Capulets,--and we could discard from our minds, and hold as never having been invented by the poet, all which we find in his works possessing a character similar to these scenes and figures;--and yet we should leave behind that which would support Shakspeare as having pursued the highest ends of his art, and as having attained those ends more fully than any other who ever followed them: Richard would still be his; Macbeth would think and tremble, and Lear weep and be mad; and Hamlet would still pore over the riddle of life, and find in death the solution of its mystery.

[Sidenote: These show his Imagination, the force with which he throws himself into their characters.] If it is to such characters as these last that we refer when we speak of the poet's power of imagina[94:1]tion, and if we wish to designate by the word the force with which he throws himself into the conception of those characters, then we apprehend truly what the sphere is in which his greatness lies, although we either describe the whole of a most complicated mental process by naming a single step of it, or load the name of that one mental act with a weight of meaning which it is unfit to bear.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's supremacy lies in his characterization.]

It is here, in his mode of dealing with human character, that Shakspeare's supremacy confessedly lies; and the conclusions which we have reached as to the great purpose of poetry, allow us easily to perceive how excellence in this department justifies the universal decision, which places at the summit of poetical art the poet who is pre-eminently distinguished by it. [Sidenote: Why is his the best?] What is there in Shakspeare's view of human character which ent.i.tles him to this high praise? [Sidenote: How is he true to Nature and imagination?]

His truth of painting is usually specified as the source of his strength; in what sense is he true to nature? Is that faithfulness to nature consistent with any exercise of the imagination in the representation of character? And how? And again, how does his reflective temper of mind harmonize with or arise out of the view of human life which he takes?

[Sidenote: Poetry (or Drama) represent pa.s.sions.]

Poetry, as we have seen, and dramatic poetry more strictly than any other species, must be judged primarily as a representation of pa.s.sion and feeling; and when it is defective as such, it has failed in its proper end. Its prosecution of that end, however, is subject to two important limitations. [Sidenote: But 1. it must show human nature entirely, both its moving and hindering forces; man's mind as well as his pa.s.sions; 2. it must do this impressively, must have a high standard of character.] First, if it is to be in any sense a _true_ representation of human action, it must represent human nature not partially, but entirely; it must exhibit not only the moving influences which produce action, but also the counteracting forces which in real life always control it. It must be a mirror of the intellectual part of the human mind, as well as of the pa.s.sionate. Secondly, if, possessing the first requisite, truth, it is to be also an _impressive_ representation, (that is, such a representation as shall effect the ends of poetical art,) it must set up an ideal and elevated standard to regulate its choice of the cla.s.s of intellectual endowment which is to form the foundation of the characters which it portrays. [Sidenote: Ben Jonson faild in (2), the other Elizabethans in (1).] We discover the cause of Jonson's inferiority in his failure in obedience to the latter of these rules, though he scrupulously complied with [95:1]the first: we discover the prevailing defect of all the other dramatic writers of that period, to consist in their neglect even of the first and subsidiary rule, which involved a complete disregard to the other.--These latter have, as well as Shakspeare, been proposed as models, from their close imitation of nature. [Sidenote: Shakspere's contemporaries don't imitate Nature, they distort it, give Pa.s.sion, and no Reason.] The merit of truth to nature belongs to them only in a very confined sense. They seize one oblique and partial aspect of human character, and represent it as giving a true and direct view of the whole; they are the poets of the pa.s.sions, and no more; they have failed to shadow forth that control which the calmer principles of our nature always exert over the active propensities. Their excellence consequently is to be looked for only in scenes which properly admit the force of unchecked pa.s.sion, or of pa.s.sions conflicting with each other; and in those scenes where the more thoughtful spirit ought to work, we must be prepared to meet either exaggeration of feeling or feebleness of thought, either the operation of an evil principle, or, at best, a defect of the good one. [Sidenote: They like to show the mind in delirium.] Even in their pa.s.sionate scenes, the vigour of the drawing is the merit oftener than the faithfulness of the portrait; they delight to figure the human mind as in a state of delirium, with the restraining forces taken off, and the pa.s.sions and the imagination boiling, as if the brain were maddened by opiates or fever. Fierce and exciting visions come across the soul in such a paroxysm; and in the intensity of its stimulated perceptions, it gazes down into the abysses of nature, with a profound though transitory quickness of penetration. It is a high merit to have exhibited those partial views of nature, or even this exaggerated phasis of the mind; and the praise is shared by no dramatic school whatever; (for the qualities of the ancient are different;) but it must not be a.s.sumed that the drama fulfils its highest purposes, by representations so partial, so distorted, or so disproportioned. [Sidenote: They are poets of impulse.] As these poets of impulse bestowed no part of their attention on the intellect in any view, they produced their peculiar effect, such as it was, without any attempt at that higher task of selection and elevation in intellectual character for which the universality of views which they wanted must always serve as the foundation. [Sidenote: Ben Jonson as broad in aim as Shakspere.] They had accordingly little scope for the due introduction of reflection in their works; and their turn of mind inclined them little to [96:1]search for it when it did not naturally present itself.--Jonson resembled Shakspeare in wideness of aim: he is most unlike him in the method which he adopted in the pursuit of his end. [Sidenote: Ben Jonson tried at truth to nature,] The two stood alone in their age and cla.s.s, as alone aiming at truth to nature in any sense; both wished to read each of the opposite sides of the scroll of human character: but the one read correctly the difficult writing in which intellectual character is traced, while the other misapprehended and misinterpreted its meaning, and even allowed the eagerness with which he perused this perplexing page, to withdraw his attention from the more easy meaning of the other. [Sidenote: but drew individuals only, portraits of reality, but no types,] The fault of his characters as intellectual beings, is that they are individuals and no more; faithful or grotesque portraits of reality, they are not touched with that purple light which affords insight into universal relations and hidden causes. [Sidenote: not poetic creations.] His failure is shewn by its effect: his characters are not so conceived as to lead the mind to the comprehension of anything beyond their own individual peculiarities, or to elevate it into that region of active and conceptive contemplation into which it is raised by the finest cla.s.s of poetry: he exhibited reality as reality, and not in its relation to possibility; he even diverges into the investigation of causes, instead of seeing them at a glance, and indicating them by effects; he anatomised human life, and hung up its dry bones along the walls of his study.

In the close obedience which Shakspeare rendered to each of these two canons, borne in upon his mind by the instantaneous suggestions of his happy genius, we may discover the origin of his tremendous power.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's power lay in subordinating Fancy and Pa.s.sion to Intellect.] To commence at the point where his adherence to the first and subsidiary rule is most slightly manifested, it is to be noticed, that his works are marked throughout by a predominance of the qualities of the understanding over the fancy and the pa.s.sions. This is not true of the fundamental co