its harmony and elegance, have, in the course of two centuries,
undergone a much greater change than is the case with the rhymeless
iambic or blank verse. In the former, Dryden and Pope have become
models; these writers have communicated the utmost smoothness to
rhyme, but they have also tied it down to a harmonious uniformity. A
foreigner, to whom antiquated and new are the same, may perhaps feel
with greater freedom the advantages of the more ancient manner.
Certain it is, the rhyme of the present day, from the too great
confinement of the couplet, is unfit for the drama. We must not
estimate the rhyme of Shakespeare by the mode of subsequent times, but
by a comparison with his contemporaries or with Spenser. The
comparison will, without doubt, turn out to his advantage. Spenser is
often diffuse; Shakespeare, though sometimes hard, is always brief and
vigorous. He has more frequently been induced by the rhyme to leave
out something necessary than to insert anything superfluous. Many of
his rhymes, however, are faultless: ingenious with attractive ease,
and rich without false brilliancy. The songs interspersed (those, I
mean, of the poet himself) are generally sweetly playful and
altogether musical; in imagination, while we merely read them, we hear
their melody.

The whole of Shakespeare's productions bear the certain stamp of his
original genius, but yet no writer was ever further removed from
everything like a mannerism derived from habit or personal
peculiarities. Rather is he, such is the diversity of tone and color
which vary according to the quality of his subjects he assumes, a very
Proteus. Each of his compositions is like a world of its own, moving
in its own sphere. They are works of art, finished in one pervading
style, which revealed the freedom and judicious choice of their
author. If the formation of a work throughout, even in its minutest