a few simple principles of character, and
raised them to the utmost conceivable grandeur, and refined them from
every base alloy. His Imagination, "nigh sphered in Heaven," claimed
kindred only with what he saw from that height, and could raise to the
same elevation with itself. He sat retired, and kept his state alone,
"playing with wisdom;" while Shakspeare mingled with the crowd, and played
the host, "to make society the sweeter welcome."

The passion in Shakspeare is of the same nature as his delineation of
character. It is not some one habitual feeling or sentiment preying upon
itself, growing out of itself, and moulding every thing to itself; it is
passion modified by passion, by all the other feelings to which the
individual is liable, and to which others are liable with him; subject to
all the fluctuations of caprice and accident; calling into play all the
resources of the understanding and all the energies of the will;
irritated by obstacles or yielding to them; rising from small beginnings
to its utmost height; now drunk with hope, now stung to madness, now sunk
in despair, now blown to air with a breath, now raging like a torrent. The
human soul is made the sport of fortune, the prey of adversity: it is
stretched on the wheel of destiny, in restless ecstacy. The passions are
in a state of projection. Years are melted down to moments, and every
instant teems with fate. We know the results, we see the process. Thus
after Iago has been boasting to himself of the effect of his poisonous
suggestions on the mind of Othello, "which, with a little act upon the
blood, will work like mines of sulphur," he adds--

"Look where he comes! not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the East,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou ow'dst yesterday."----

And he enters at this moment, like the crested serpent, crowned with his
wrongs and raging for revenge! The whole depends upon the turn of a
thought. A word, a look, blows the spark of jealousy into a flame; and the
explosion is immediate and terrible as a volcano. The dialogues in Lear,
in Macbeth, that between Brutus and Cassius, and nearly all those in
Shakspeare, where the interest is wrought up to its highest pitch, afford
examples of this dramatic fluctuation of passion. The interest in Chaucer
is quite different: it is like the course of a river, strong, and full,
and increasing. In Shakspeare, on the contrary, it is like the se