ewell admonitions of a parent,
have an end beyond the parental relation. Thus the Countess's beautiful
precepts to Bertram, by elevating her character, raise that of Helena her
favourite, and soften down the point in her which Shakespeare does not
mean us not to see, but to see and to forgive, and at length to justify.
And so it is in Polonius, who is the personified memory of wisdom no
longer actually possessed. This admirable character is always
misrepresented on the stage. Shakespeare never intended to exhibit him as
a buffoon; for although it was natural that Hamlet--a young man of fire and
genius, detesting formality, and disliking Polonius on political grounds,
as imagining that he had assisted his uncle in his usurpation--should
express himself satirically, yet this must not be taken as exactly the
poet's conception of him. In Polonius a certain induration of character
had arisen from long habits of business; but take his advice to Laertes,
and Ophelia's reverence for his memory, and we shall see that he was meant
to be represented as a statesman somewhat past his faculties,--his
recollections of life all full of wisdom, and showing a knowledge of human
nature, whilst what immediately takes place before him, and escapes from
him, is indicative of weakness.

But as in Homer all the deities are in armour, even Venus; so in
Shakespeare all the characters are strong. Hence real folly and dulness
are made by him the vehicles of wisdom. There is no difficulty for one
being a fool to imitate a fool; but to be, remain, and speak like a wise
man and a great wit, and yet so as to give a vivid representation of a
veritable fool,--_hic labor, hoc opus est_. A drunken constable is not
uncommon, nor hard to draw; but see and examine what goes to make up a
Dogberry.

3. Keeping at all times in the high road of life. Shakespeare has no
innocent adulteries, no interesting incests, no virtuous vice;--he never
renders that amiable which religion and reason alike teach us to detest,
or clothes impurity in the garb of virtue, like Beaumont and Fletcher, the
Kotzebues of the day. Shakespeare's fathers are roused by ingratitude, his
husbands stung by unfaithfulness; in him, in short, the affections are
wounded in those points in which all may, nay, must, feel. Let the
morality of Shakespeare be contrasted with that of the writers of his own,
or the succeeding age, or of those of the present day, who boast their
superiority in this res