wealth as if he had done a guilty thing; and the sound of his feet dying away in the distance is all the tidings he has given of himself.

Indeed, so deep still are the uncertainties surrounding the history of Shakspeare, that I sometimes wonder that the process applied by Strauss to the Life of our Saviour has not been extended to his. A Life of Shakspeare, on this worthy model, would be a capital exercise for some aspiring sprig of Straussism!

I pass to speak of the qualities of his genius. First of these, I name a quality to which I have already alluded-his universality. He belongs to all ages, all lands, all ranks, all faiths, all professions, all characters, and all intellects. And why? because his eye pierced through all that was conventional, and fastened on all that was eternal in man. He knew that in humanity there was one heart, one nature, and that "God had made of one blood all nations who dwell on the face of the earth." He saw the same heart palpitating through a myriad faces-the same nature shining amid all varieties of customs, manners, languages, and laws-the same blood rolling red and warm below innumerable bodies, dresses and forms. It was not, mark you, the universality of indifference-it was not that he loved all beings alike—it was not that he liked Iago as well as Imogen, Bottom or Bardolph as well as Hamlet or Othello; but that he saw, and showed, and loved, in proportion to its degree, so much of humanity as all possessed. Nature, too, he had watched with a wide yet keen eye. Alike the spur of the rooted pine-tree and the "grey" gleam of the willow leaf drooping over the death-stream of Ophelia (he was the first in poetry, says Hazlitt, to notice that the leaf is grey only on the side which bends down)—the nest of the temple-haunting martlet with his "loved mansionry," and the eagle eyrie which "buildeth on the cedar's top, and dallies with the wind and scorn's the sun"-the forest of Arden, and the "blasted heath of Forres"-the "still vexed Bermoothes, and the woods of Crete"-" the paved fountains," "rushing brooks," "pelting rivers," "the beached margents of the sea, 27 66 sweet summer buds," "hoary headed-frosts," childing autumn," "angry winter," the "sun robbing the vast sea," and the "moon her pale fire snatching from the suu!"

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The Crown, Imperial--lilies of all kinds”—

such are a few of the natural objects which the genius of Shakspeare has transplanted into his own garden, and covered with the dew of immortality. He sometimes lingers beside such lovely things, but more frequently he touches them as he is hurrying on to an object. He paints as does the lightning, which while rushing to its aim, shows in fiery relief all intermediate objects. Like an arrowy river, his mark is the sea, but every cloud, tree, and tower is reflected on its way, and serves to beautify and to dignify the waters. Frank, all-embracing, and unselecting is the motion of his genius. Like the sun-rays, which, secure in their own purity and directness, pass fearlessly through all deep, dark, intricate, or unholy placesequally illustrate the crest of a serpent and the wing of a bird, pause on the summit of an ant-hillock as well as on the brow of Mont Blanc-take up as a little thing alike the crater of the volcano and the shed cone of the pine, and after they have, in one wide charity, embraced all shaped and sentient things, expend their waste strength and beauty upon the inane space beyond thus does the imagination of Shakspeare count no subject or object too low, and none too high, for its comprehensive and incontrollable sweep.

I have named impersonality, as his next quality. The term seems strange and rare-the thing is scarcer still: I mean by it that Shakspeare, when writing, thought of nothing but his subject, never of himself. Snatching from an Italian novel, or an ill-translated Plutarch's lives, the facts of his play, his only question was, Can these dry bones live? How shall I impregnate them with force, and make them fully express the meaning and beauty which they contain? Many writers set to work in a very different style: one in all his writings wishes

to magnify his own powers, and his solitary bravo is heard resounding at the close of every paragraph. Another wishes to imitate another writer-a base ambition, pardonable only in children. A third, scorning slavish imitation, wishes to emulate some one school or class of authors. A fourth writes deliberately and professedly ad captandum vulgus. A fifth, worn to dregs, is perpetually wishing to imitate his former doings, like a child crying to get yesterday back again. Shakspeare, when writing, thought no more of himself, or other authors, than the Sun when shining thinks of Sirius, of the stars composing the Great Bear, or of his own proud array of beams.

This unconsciousness, or impersonality, I have always held to be the highest style of genius. I am aware, indeed, of a subtle objection. It has been said by a high authority--John Sterling that men of genius are conscious, not of what is peculiar in the individual, but of what is universal in the race; of what characterises, not a man, but man; not of their own individual genius, but of the Great Spirit moving within their minds. Yet what in reality is this but the unconsciousness for which the author, to whom Sterling is replying, contends. When we say that men of genius, in their highest moods, are unconscious, we mean, not that these men become the mere tubes through which a foreign influence descends, but that certain emotions or ideas so fill and possess them, as to produce temporary forgetfulness of themselves, save as the passive though intelligent instruments of the feeling or the thought. It is true that afterwards self may suggest the reflection—the fact that we have been selected to receive and convey such melodies proves our breadth and fitness-it is from the oak, not the reed, that the wind elicits its deepest music; but, in the first place, this thought never takes place at the same time with the true afflatus, and is almost inconsistent with its presence it is a mere after inference;-an inference, secondly, which is not always made;-nay, thirdly, an inference which is often rejected, when the prophet, off the stool, feels tempted to regard with suspicion or shuddering disgust the result of his raptured hour of inspiration. Milton seems to have shrunk back at the retrospect of the height he had reached in the "Paradise Lost," and preferred his "Paradise Regained."

Shakspeare, having written his tragic miracles under a more entire self-abandonment, became in his sonnets, owing to a reflex act of sagacity, aware of what feats he had done. Bunyan is carried on, through all the stages of his immortal pilgrimage, like a child in the leading-strings of her nurse, but, after looking back upon its contemplated course, begins, with all the harmless vanity of a child (see the prefatory poem to the second part), to crow over the achievement. Burns, while composing "Tam o' Shanter," felt little else than the animal rapture of the excitement; it dawned on him afterwards that he had produced his finest poem. Thus all gifted spirits do best when they know not what they do. The boy Tell was great,

"Nor knew how great he was."

I mention next his humanity. It was said of Burns, that if you had touched his hand it would have burned yours. And although Shakspeare, being a far broader and greater, was, consequently, a calmer man, yet I would not have advised any very timid person to have made the same experiment with him. Poor Hartley Coleridge wrote a clever paper, in "Blackwood," entitled "Shakspeare a Tory and a Gentleman;" I wish some one had answered it, under the title, "Shakspeare a Radical and a Man." A man's heart beats in his every line. He loves, pities, feels for, as well as with, the meanest of his fellow "human mortals." He addresses men as brothers, and as brothers have they responded to his voice.

I need scarcely speak of his simplicity. He was a child as well as a man. His poetry, in the language of Pitt, comes "sweetly from nature." It is a "gum" oozing out without effort or consciousness: occasionally, indeed (for I do not, like the Germans, believe in the infallibility of Shakspeare,) he condescends to indite a certain swelling, rumbling bombast, especially when he is speaking through the mouth of kings; but even his bombast comes rolling out with an ease and a gusto, a pomp and prodigality, which are quite delightful. Shakspeare's nonsense is like no other body's nonsense. always the nonsence of a great genius. A dignitary of the Church of England went once to hear Robert Hall. After listening with delight to that great preacher, he called at his

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house. He found him lying on the floor, with his children performing somersets over him. He lifted up his hands in wonder, and exclaimed, "Is that the great Robert Hall?"— "Oh," replied Hall, "I have all my nonsense out of the pulpit, you have all yours in it." So Shakspeare, after having done a giant's work, could take a giant's recreation; and were he returning to earth, would nearly laugh himself dead again, at the portentous attempts of some of his critics to prove his nonsense sense, his blemishes beauties, and his worst puns fine wit!

The subtlety of Shakspeare is one of his most wonderful qualities. Coleridge used to say, that he was more of a philosopher than a poet. His penetration into motives, his discernment of the most secret thoughts and intents of the heart, his discrimination of the delicate shades of character, the manner in which he makes little traits tell large tales, the complete grasp he has of all his characters, whom he lifts up and down like ninepins, the innumerable paths by which he reaches similar results, the broad, comprehensive maxims on life, manners, and morals, which he has scattered in such profusion over his writings, the fact, that he never repeats a thought, figure, or allusion, the wonderful art he has of identifying himself with all varieties of humanity-all proclaim the inexhausti ble and infinite subtlety of his genius, and when taken in connection with its power and loftiness, render him the prodigy of poets and of men. I once, when a student, projected a series of essays, entitled "Sermons on Shakspeare," taking for my texts some of those profound and far-reaching sentences, which abound in him, where you have the fine gold, which is the staple of his works, collected in little knots, or nuggets of thick gnarled magnificence. It was this quality in him which made a French author say, that, were she condemned to select three volumes for her whole library, the three would be Bacon's Essays, the Bible, and Shakspeare. You can never open a page of his dramas without being startled at the multitude of sentences which have been, and are perpetually being, quoted. The proverbs of Shakspeare, were they selected, would be only inferior to the proverbs of Solomon.

When I name purity as another quality of this poet, I may be thought paradoxical. And yet, when I remember his peri