I am bound to own, that a different estimate from mine, of the modern novelists, has been formed by him among critics upon whose judgment-if I may venture to say so of a modern -I have the greatest reliance :—

"The name of Shakspeare is the greatest in our literature-it is the greatest in all literature. No man ever came near to him in the creative powers of the mind; no man had ever such strength, at once, and such variety of imagination. Coleridge has most felicitously applied to him a Greek epithet, given before to I know not whom, certainly none so deserving of it, μvgiovovs, the thousand-souled Shakspeare.* The number of characters in his plays is astonishingly great, without reckoning those who, although transient, have often their individuality, all distinct-all types of human life in well-defined differences. Yet he never takes an abstract quality to embody it, scarcely, perhaps, a definite condition of manners, as Jonson does; nor did he draw much, as I conceive, from living models; there is no manifest appearance of personal caricature in his comedies, though in some slight traits of character this may not improbably have been the case."

Observing, that if he had constructed (as is practised in modern times) particular parts for particular performers,

*Table Talk, ii. 301.

he never would have poured forth, with such inexhaustible prodigality, the vast diversity of characters that we find in some of his plays. This it is in which he leaves far behind, not the dramatists alone, but all writers of fiction. Compare with him Homer, the tragedians of Greece, the poets of Italy, Plautus, Cervantes, Molière, Addison, Le Sage, Fielding, Richardson, Scott, the romances of the elder or later schools. One man has far more than surpassed them all. Others may have been as sublime-others may have been more pathetic-others may have excelled him in grace and purity of language, and have shunned some of its faults; but the philosophy of Shakspeare-this intimate searching-out of the human heart, whether in the gnomic form of sentence, or in the dramatic exhibition of character, is a gift peculiarly his own. It is, if not entirely wanting, very little manifested, in comparison with him, by the English dramatists of his own and the subsequent period, whom we are about to approach.*

• Hallam, iii. 574.—I will put what Hallam says per contra in a note. "The idolatry of Shakspeare has been carried so far of late years, that Drake, and perhaps greater authorities, have been unwilling to acknowledge any faults in his plays. This, however, is an extravagance rather derogatory to the critic than honourable to the poet. Besides the blemishes of construction in some of his plots, which are pardonable, but still blemishes, there are too many in his style. His conceits and quibbles

The mention of Scott, and the later romances, compels me to confess that Hallam's decision is against me; yet his concluding passage shows, and indeed many of his expressions show, that he had dramatists and poets in his mind, rather than the writers of tales in prose.

Of Shakspeare we must assuredly say, in his own words

"Take him for all in all,

We ne'er shall look upon his like again."

I do not pretend to set up against him any one of the writers whom Hallam has enumerated; but for the particular excellence of which we now speak, I do claim equal credit for many of them, and for many of the writers of the nineteenth century.

often spoil the effect of his scenes, and take off from the passion he would excite."

"It is certain, that throughout the seventeenth century, and even in the writings of Addison and his contemporaries, we seldom or never meet with that complete recognition of his supremacy, that unhesitating preference of him to all the world, which has become the guilt of the last and the present century. And it is remarkable, that this apotheosis, so to speak of Shakspeare, was originally the work of what has been styled a frigid and tasteless generation-the age of George II."-iii. 576. Yet Dryden is very strong in his commendation.-Works, XV. 350.

I now insert what Hallam says of the historical plays.

Many attempts had been made to dramatize the English Chronicles, but, with the single exception of Marlowe's Edward II., so unsuccessfully, that Shakspeare may be considered as almost an original occupant of the field. He followed historical truth with considerable exactness; and in some of his plays, as in that of Richard II., and generally in Richard III. and Henry VIII., admitted no imaginary personages, nor any scenes of amusement. The historical plays have had a considerable effect upon Shakspeare's popularity. They have identified him with English feelings in English hearts, and are very frequently read more in childhood, and consequently better remembered than some of his superior dramas. And these dramatic chronicles borrowed surprising liveliness and probability from the national character and form of government. A prince, and a courtier, and a slave, are the stuff upon which an historical dramatist would have to work in some countries; out every class of freemen in the just subordination, without which neither human society, nor the stage, which should be its mirror, can be more than a chaos of huddled units, lay open to the selection of Shakspeare. What he invented is as truly English, as truly historical, in the large sense of moral history, as what he read."

This appears to me somewhat fanciful; un

questionably, the periods of English history which preceded Shakspeare's, and those indeed which he dramatized, are memorable for the struggles between different classes of freemen; Hallam himself has made this struggle familiar to us all; but Shakspeare has not told of it, nor, indeed, is it a very poetical subject.

I have had occasion to speak in high praise of Shakspeare's rhythm; which appears to me generally to unite strength and beauty so as to produce an effect highly pleasing and impressive. The place that William Gifford filled in the history of criticism induces me,-who nevertheless always thought him an unfair and unpleasing critic, to mention that he, I believe he only, denies that rhythmical modulation is among Shakspeare's excellences, and places Massinger before him, in this branch of art;* and he quotes, as "rhythmical and melodious almost beyond example," a speech which to me appears, in

* Gifford's Massinger, i. lxxix.

† Luke. ""Twas no fantastic object, but a truth, A real truth; nor dream; I did not slumber, And could wake ever with a boding eye To gaze upon't! It did endure the touch ; I saw and felt it! yet what I beheld And handled oft, did so transcend belief, (My wonder and astonishment pass'd o'er) I faintly could give credit to my senses.