ven in the grave
cheerfulness of a circumspect hope, much, very much, might be done;
enough, assuredly, to furnish a kind and strenuous nature with ample
motives for the attempt to effect what may be effected.

Shakespeare, A Poet Generally.

Clothed in radiant armour, and authorized by titles sure and manifold, as
a poet, Shakespeare came forward to demand the throne of fame, as the
dramatic poet of England. His excellences compelled even his
contemporaries to seat him on that throne, although there were giants in
those days contending for the same honour. Hereafter I would fain
endeavour to make out the title of the English drama as created by, and
existing in, Shakespeare, and its right to the supremacy of dramatic
excellence in general. But he had shown himself a poet, previously to his
appearance as a dramatic poet; and had no _Lear_, no _Othello_, no _Henry
IV._, no _Twelfth Night_ ever appeared, we must have admitted that
Shakespeare possessed the chief, if not every, requisite of a poet,--deep
feeling and exquisite sense of beauty, both as exhibited to the eye in the
combinations of form, and to the ear in sweet and appropriate melody; that
these feelings were under the command of his own will; that in his very
first productions he projected his mind out of his own particular being,
and felt, and made others feel, on subjects no way connected with himself,
except by force of contemplation and that sublime faculty by which a great
mind becomes that on which it meditates. To this must be added that
affectionate love of nature and natural objects, without which no man
could have observed so steadily, or painted so truly and passionately, the
very minutest beauties of the external world:--

"And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,
Mark the poor wretch; to overshoot his troubles,
How he outruns the wind, and with what care,
He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles;
The many musits through the which he goes
Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.

"Sometimes he runs among the flock of sheep,
To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell;
And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,
To stop the loud pursuers in their yell;
And sometime sorteth with the herd of deer:
Danger deviseth shifts, wit waits on fear.

"For there his smell with others' being mingled,
The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt,
Ceasing their clamorous cry, till they have singled
With much ado, the cold fault c