obscur'd;"--

the mixture of beauty, of grandeur, and pathos, from the sense of
irreparable loss, of never-ending, unavailing regret, is perfect.

The great fault of a modern school of poetry is, that it is an experiment
to reduce poetry to a mere effusion of natural sensibility; or what is
worse, to divest it both of imaginary splendour and human passion, to
surround the meanest objects with the morbid feelings and devouring
egotism of the writers' own minds. Milton and Shakspeare did not so
understand poetry. They gave a more liberal interpretation both to nature
and art. They did not do all they could to get rid of the one and the
other, to fill up the dreary void with the Moods of their own Minds. They
owe their power over the human mind to their having had a deeper sense
than others of what was grand in the objects of nature, or affecting in
the events of human life. But to the men I speak of there is nothing
interesting, nothing heroical, but themselves. To them the fall of gods or
of great men is the same. They do not enter into the feeling. They cannot
understand the terms. They are even debarred from the last poor, paltry
consolation of an unmanly triumph over fallen greatness; for their minds
reject, with a convulsive effort and intolerable loathing, the very idea
that there ever was, or was thought to be, any thing superior to
themselves. All that has ever excited the attention or admiration of the
world they look upon with the most perfect indifference; and they are
surprised to find that the world repays their indifference with scorn.
"With what measure they mete, it has been meted to them again."

Shakspeare's imagination is of the same plastic kind as his conception of
character or passion. "It glances from heaven to earth, from earth to
heaven." Its movement is rapid and devious. It unites the most opposite
extremes; or, as Puck says, in boasting of his own feats, "puts a girdle
round about the earth in forty minutes." He seems always hurrying from his
subject, even while describing it; but the stroke, like the lightning's,
is sure as it is sudden. He takes the widest possible range, but from that
very range he has his choice of the greatest variety and aptitude of
materials. He brings together images the most alike, but placed at the
greatest distance from each other; that is, found in circumstances of the
greatest dissimilitude. From the remoteness of his combinations, and the
celerity with which the