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."--

Shakespeare'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 they are
effected, they coalesce the more indissolubly together. The more the
thoughts are strangers to each other, and the longer they have been kept
asunder, the more intimate does their union seem to become. Their
felicity is equal to their force. Their likeness is made more dazzling
by their novelty. They startle, and take the fancy prisoner in the same
instant. I will mention one or two which are very striking, and not much
known, out of Troilus and Cressida. AEneas says to Agamemnon,

"I ask that I may waken reverence,
And on the cheek be ready with a blush
Modest as morning, when she coldly eyes
The youthful Phoebus."

Ulysses urging Achilles to shew himself in the field, says--

"No man is the lord of any thing,
Till he communicate his parts to others:
Nor doth he of himself know them for aught,
Till he behold them formed in the applause,
Where they're extended! which like an arch reverberates
The voice again, or like a gate of steel,
Fronting the sun, receives and renders back
Its figure and its heat."

Patroclus gives the indolent warrior the same advice.

"Rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid
Shall