t the greatest freedom of style and treatment
was reached, the prevailing genius of architecture still enforced a
certain calmness and continence in the statue. As soon as the statue was
begun for itself, and with no reference to the temple or palace, the art
began to decline: freak, extravagance, and exhibition took the place of
the old temperance. This balance-wheel, which the sculptor found in
architecture, the perilous irritability of poetic talent found in the
accumulated dramatic materials to which the people were already wonted,
and which had a certain excellence which no single genius, however
extraordinary, could hope to create.

In point of fact it appears that Shakspeare did owe debts in all
directions, and was able to use whatever he found, and the amount of
indebtedness may be inferred from Malone's laborious computations in
regard to the First, Second, and Third parts of Henry VI., in which,
"out of 6,043 lines, 1,771 were written by some author preceding
Shakspeare, 2,373 by him, on the foundations laid by his predecessors,
and 1,899 were entirely his own." And the proceeding investigation
hardly leaves a single drama of his absolute invention. Malone's
sentence is an important piece of external history. In Henry VIII. I
think I see plainly the cropping out of the original rock on which his
own finer stratum was laid. The first play was written by a superior,
thoughtful man, with a vicious ear. I can mark his lines, and know well
their cadence. See Wolsey's soliloquy, and the following scene with
Cromwell, where, instead of the metre of Shakspeare, whose secret is
that the thought constructs the tune, so that reading for the sense will
best bring out the rhythm,--here the lines are constructed on a given
tune, and the verse has even a trace of pulpit eloquence. But the play
contains through all its length unmistakable traits of Shakspeare's
hand, and some passages, as the account of the coronation, are like
autographs. What is odd, the compliment to Queen Elizabeth is in the
bad rhythm.

Shakespeare knew that tradition supplies a better fable than any
invention can. If he lost any credit of design, he augmented his
resources; and, at that day, our petulant demand for originality was not
so much pressed. There was no literature for the million. The universal
reading, the cheap press, were unknown. A great poet who appears in
illiterate times, absorbs into his sphere all the light which is
anywhere radiat