but which had yet inherited enough of the firmness of a vigorous olden
time not to shrink with dismay from every strong and forcible
painting. We have lived to see tragedies of which the catastrophe
consists in the swoon of an enamored princess: if Shakespeare falls
occasionally into the opposite extreme, it is a noble error,
originating in the fulness of a gigantic strength. And this tragical
Titan, who storms the heavens and threatens to tear the world off its
hinges, who, more terrible than Æschylus, makes our hair stand on end
and congeals our blood with horror, possessed at the same time the
insinuating loveliness of the sweetest poesy; he toys with love like a
child, and his songs die away on the ear like melting sighs. He unites
in his soul the utmost elevation and the utmost depth; and the most
opposite and even apparently irreconcilable properties subsist in him
peaceably together. The world of spirits and nature have laid all
their treasures at his feet: in strength a demi-god, in profundity of
view a prophet, in all-seeing wisdom a guardian spirit of a higher
order, he lowers himself to mortals as if unconscious of his
superiority, and is as open and unassuming as a child.

If the delineation of all his characters, separately considered,
is inimitably bold and correct, he surpasses even himself in so
combining and contrasting them that they serve to bring out one
anothers' peculiarities. This is the very perfection of dramatic
characterization: for we can never estimate a man's true worth if we
consider him altogether abstractedly by himself; we must see him in
his relations with others; and it is here that most dramatic poets are
deficient. Shakespeare makes each of his principal characters the
glass in which the others are reflected, and by like means enables us
to discover what could not be immediately revealed to us. What in
others is most profound, is with him but surface. Ill-advised should