66 His 66 using all things at pleasure, and changing and playing with our purposes as with his own. None other hath so fully developed nor shown such a love of humanity. Our globe and all thereon and all therein he hath turned and played with for his amusement, surveying generations of men, and observing individuals as they passed, with all their acts of folly and wisdom, their vices and their virtues. The simplicity and innocence of childhood, the out-pourings of despair, the ravings of disordered fancy, have been by him most truthfully shown. Like his own Glendower, the "spirits" of the "vasty deep" he has evoked; the demonaic, the wondrous and the terrible, and by his 'ways of art" hath made them subservient to his purpose. deep experiments," "full of fiery shapes," and deeper knowledge made him familiar with all within the womb of nature. The gentle fays dancing their "ringlets to the whistling wind," paid him respect, so did the "black and midnight hags" who render darkness still darker. The outpourings of his fancy are wonderful, his creations still more so. He had but to think and all was resolved; all passed before him, as the kings passed before Macbeth. His descriptions are so terse; he condenses into a line, what others take pages to express. "He lays open to us in a single word, a whole series of preceding conditions." With him an epithet carries back the mind for years, the brain reverts to the past, as when Prospero in relating the tale to his daughter of the causes which produced his present sorrow, applies to her, "Me, and thy crying self." The imagination is here thrown back, and we pass from the grown woman to the helplessness of infancy, and immediately is placed before us the first and most trying scene of his misfortunes, and all that he must have suffered in the interval. Again, in Richard III. he displays the same power, though the example is of an opposite nature, looking forward instead of reverting back, 'Up with my tent there! here will I lie to-night : The imagination is again on wing, to-morrow awakens thoughts of the coming strife, of death and futurity, with all its calamities or pleasures. In his high impassioned speeches no word can be substituted for those which he uses; they must be rendered correct, or else the sound is not euphonious, it grates upon the ear, and the beauty of the sentence is marred. Take his description of the approach of night in Macbeth, and try to alter one word, and see if the beauty be not destroyed: "Light thickens, And the crow makes wing to the rooky wood, Where can a word be substituted? can one be altered without marring the beautiful expression of feeling? Shakspere must have been thoroughly observant of external nature, and have faithfully stored within the chambers of his wondrous brain the results of his observations, to have been so truthful in his descriptions. The account of Ophelia's death displays his closeness of observation, for no other author has marked the difference of the sides of the willow leaf, the upper being green, the underneath being white: "There is a willow grows aslant a brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.' In the Winter's Tale, how accurately he discriminates between the bandied terms of art and nature, when he observes, "Nature is made better by no mean, But Nature makes that mean: so, over that art Which you say adds to Nature, is an art That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentle scion to the wildest stock, And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race: this is an art Which does mend Nature, change it rather, but The art itself is Nature.-A. iv. s. 4. How thoroughly he displays his knowledge of humanity, the result of great observation, in Henry IV., when depicting the fickleness of the popular will, he says, "An habitation giddy and unsure Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart. O thou fond many, with what loud applause Part II. A. II. s. 3. In describing the power of imagination after the brain has resolved upon action, how wonderful is the knowledge he evinces, and how accurately he analyses the courses of human thought. In Julius Cæsar, he observes, "Between the acting of a dreadful thing, In the Tragedy of Othello, one of the grandest of all tragedies, how beautiful is his power of discrimination displayed, how excellently through the character of Iago is effected the jealousy of Othello; how gradually, yet certain, is the coil wound round the unsuspecting Moor; how every circumstance tends to work upon the impassioned black; and when Othello asks Iago, "If he dost not think Cassio honest," how the echo of Iago, "Honest my lord," serves still further to arouse the Moor, causing him to repeat the question, "Honest? ay honest," and when Iago again echoes the words of Othello, the chords are struck, the poison beginneth its work; for Othello immediately exclaims to himself, “Think, my lord, by heaven, he echoes me, As if there were some monster in his thought Throughout the whole of this scene the inuendoes of Iago have their weight and succeed in arousing the jealousy of Othello; and when Desdemona importunes the Moor for Cassio, how that passion becomes strengthened, and waxes still stronger through the loss of the handkerchief, so cleverly contrived by Iago, until Othello is completely carried away by his imaginary wrongs and slays his innocent wife. How wonderfully is the remorse of the Moor pourtrayed, when he discovers the treachery of Iago, and what a splendid conclusion the poet puts into the mouth of the Moor, fit compeer for the splendid opening, when addressing Ludovico, he says, "Soft you; a word or two, before you go. I have done the state some service, and they know't. When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Nor aught set down in malice: then must you speak Richer than all his tribe; of one, whose unsubdued eyes, Dropt tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinal gum. Set you down this; I took him by the throat the uncircumcised dog, Lud. O bloody period! Oth. I kiss'd thee, ere I kill'd thee:-no way but this, of In reviewing Shakspere and his works, innumerable are the forms, phases, and guises under which he appeareth. We behold in him the man learning, the poet, the statesman, the philosopher, and the man of the multitude. If we wish to learn a code of morals, we have only to cull his works, and Minerva like they spring up complete in every page. Do we wish to learn his politics, we shall find his works abound in political truisms, with a knowledge of peoples and governments that seem truly miraculous. Do we wish to view life and know its character, read his pages, and you cannot fail to discover and be bettered by your discovery. "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, |