especially confirmed in this latter branch of the subject, where the
phenomena presented are exclusively of the Possible. Indeed, we cannot
conceive how without it there could ever be such a thing as true Art;
for what might be received as such in one age might also be overruled
in the next: as we know to be the case with most things depending on
opinion. But, happily for Art, if once established on this immutable
base, there it must rest: and rest unchanged, amidst the endless
fluctuations of manners, habits, and opinions; for its truth of
a thousand years is as the truth of yesterday. Hence the beings
described by Homer, Shakspeare, and Milton are as true to us now, as
the recent characters of Scott. Nor is it the least characteristic
of this important Truth, that the only thing needed for its full
reception is simply its presence,--being its own evidence.

How otherwise could such a being as Caliban ever be true to us? We have
never seen his race; nay, we knew not that such a creature _could_
exist, until he started upon us from the mind of Shakspeare. Yet who
ever stopped to ask if he were a real being? His existence to the mind
is instantly felt;--not as a matter of faith, but of fact, and a fact,
too, which the imagination cannot get rid of if it would, but which must
ever remain there, verifying itself, from the first to the last moment
of consciousness. From whatever point we view this singular creature,
his reality is felt. His very language, his habits, his feelings,
whenever they recur to us, are all issues from a living thing, acting
upon us, nay, forcing the mind, in some instances, even to speculate on
his nature, till it finds itself classing him in the chain of being as
the intermediate link between man and the brute. And this we do, not by
an ingenious effort, but almost by involuntary induction; for we
perceive speech and intellect, and yet without a soul. What but an
intellectual brute could have uttered the imprecations of Caliban? They
would not be natural in man, whether savage or civilized. Hear him, in
his wrath against Prospero and Miranda:--

"A wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed
With raven's feather from unwholesome fen,
Light on you both!"

The wild malignity of this curse, fierce as it is, yet wants the moral
venom, the devilish leaven, of a consenting spirit: it is all but
human.

To this we may add a similar example, from our own art, in the Puck,
or Robin Goodfellow, of Sir