we be were we always to take men's declarations respecting themselves
and others for sterling coin. Ambiguity of design with much propriety
he makes to overflow with the most praiseworthy principles; and sage
maxims are not infrequently put in the mouth of stupidity, to show how
easily such commonplace truisms may be acquired. Nobody ever painted
so truthfully as he has done the facility of self-deception, the half
self-conscious hypocrisy toward ourselves, with which even noble minds
attempt to disguise the almost inevitable influence of selfish motives
in human nature. This secret irony of the characterization commands
admiration as the profound abyss of acuteness and sagacity; but it is
the grave of enthusiasm. We arrive at it only after we have had the
misfortune to see human nature through and through, and after no
choice remains but to adopt the melancholy truth that "no virtue or
greatness is altogether pure and genuine," or the dangerous error that
"the highest perfection is attainable." Here we therefore may perceive
in the poet himself, notwithstanding his power to excite the most
fervent emotions, a certain cool indifference, but still the
indifference of a superior mind, which has run through the whole
sphere of human existence and survived feeling.

The irony in Shakespeare has not merely a reference to the separate
characters, but frequently to the whole of the action. Most poets who
portray human events in a narrative or dramatic form themselves take a
part, and exact from their readers a blind approbation or condemnation
of whatever side they choose to support or oppose. The more zealous
this rhetoric is, the more certainly it fails of its effect. In every
case we are conscious that the subject itself is not brought
immediately before us, but that we view it through the medium of a
different way of thinking. When, however, by a dextrous manoeuvre, the
poet allows us an occasional glance at the less brilliant reverse of