of extended observation, that variety is to
be communicated to conception, and freshness to incident; that the
particular is to be taken from character, and the general impressed upon
mind. But the novelist has this immense advantage over the painter--not
only the present but the past lie open to his study. The boundless events
of history present themselves to his choice: he can not only roam at will
over the present surface of the globe, with all its variety of character,
event, and incident, but penetrate backwards into the unsearchable depths
of time. When will fresh subjects for description be wanting with such a
field to the hand of genius? Never to the end of the world: for years as
they revolve, nations as they rise and fall, events as they thicken around
mankind, but add to the riches of the vast storehouse from which it is to
select its subjects, or cull its materials.

Look at Shakspeare--with what felicity has he selected on this
inexhaustible reserve, to vary his incidents, to invigorate his ideas, to
give raciness to his characters! He has not even confined himself to
English story, rich as it is in moving or terrible events, and strikingly
as its moving phantasmagoria come forth from his magic hand. The
tragedies, the comedies, the events, the ideas, of the most distant ages
of the world, of the most opposite states of society, of the most
discordant characters of mankind, seem depicted with equal felicity. He is
neither thoroughly chivalrous like Tasso and Ariosto, nor thoroughly
Grecian like Sophocles and Euripides, nor thoroughly French like Corneille
and Racine. He has neither portrayed exclusively the manners of Arthur and
the Round Table, nor of the courts of the Henrys or the Plantagenets. He
is as varied as the boundless variety of nature. Profoundly embued at one
time with the lofty spirit of Roman patriotism, he is not less deeply
penetrated at another with the tenderness of Italian love. If Julius Cesar
contains the finest picture that ever was drawn of the ideas of the
citizens of the ancient world, Juliet is the most perfect delineation of
the refined passions of the modern. The bursting heart, uncontrollable
grief, but yet generous spirit of the Moor--the dark ambition and
blood-stained career of the Scot, come as fresh from his pencil as the
dreamy contemplation of the Prince of Denmark, or the fascinating creation
of the Forest of Ardennes. It is hard to say whether he is greatest in
paintin