y brain."

"One vial full of Edward's blood is cracked,
And all the precious liquor spilt."

In such quest as this, one is enticed as if he followed the windings of
a stream under the shadows of the trees. Past waterfall and banks of
flowers and choiring of the birds, he goes on forever, except he force
himself to pause. Shakespeare is always an enticement, whose turns of
poetic thought and verbiage are a pure delight. Note this quality in
the quotations--a word naturally expresses a thought. Shakespeare's
figures express a series of thoughts as varied landscapes seen in
pictures; in consequence, to read him is to see resemblances in things,
because we have sharpened vision and can not, after reading him, be
blind as we were before, but feel the plethora of our world with the
poetic. After he has spoken for us and to us, the world's capacity is
enlarged; we are, in truth, not so much as those who have read poetry
as we are like those who have seen the world pass before our eyes. We
thought the world a stream run dry; but lo! the bed is full of waters,
flooded from remote hills, where snowdrifts melt and make perpetual
rivers. After hearing him, we expect things of our world; its
fertility seems so exhaustless.

Shakespeare has no hint of invalidism about him, but is the person, not
the picture, of perfect health. Not an intimation of the hypochondriac
nor of the convalescent do I find in him. He is healthy, and his voice
rings out like a bell on a frosty night. Take his hand, and you feel
shaking hands, not with Aesculapius, but with Health. To be ailing
when Shakespeare is about is an impertinence for which you feel
compelled to offer apology. Does not this express our feeling about
this poet? He is well, always well, and laughs at the notion of
sickness. He starts a-walking, and unconsciously runs, as a schoolboy
after school. His smile breaks into ringing laughter; and he, not you,
knows why he either smiles or laughs. He and sunlight seem close of
kin. A mountain is a challenge he never refuses, but scales it by
bounds, like a deer when pursued by the hunter and the hound. He is
not tonic, but bracing air and perfect health and youth, which makes
labor a holiday and care a jest. Shakespeare is never morose. Dante
is the picture of melancholy, Shakespeare the picture of resilient joy.
Tennyson beheld "three spirits, mad with joy, dash down upon a wayside
flower;" and our dramatist is lik