means of acquiring knowledge than
through the inlets of the senses, and the subsequent operations of the
mind on this first mass of ideas. The most exalted of human
intelligences cannot form one mental phantasm uncompounded of this
visible world. Neither Shakspeare nor Milton could conceive a sixth
corporal sense, or a creature absolutely distinct from the inhabitants
of this world. A Caliban, or an Ariel; a devil, or an angel, are only
several compositions and modifications of our animal creation; and
heaven and hell can be built with nothing more than our terrestrial
elements newly arranged and variously combined. The distinction,
therefore, between one human intelligence and another must be occasioned
solely by the different degrees of clearness, force, and quickness, with
which it perceives, retains, and combines. On the superiority in these
mental faculties it would be difficult to decide between those
extraordinary men who are the immediate subjects of our remark: for, if
we are astonished at that power, which, from a single spot as it were,
could collect sufficient materials for the construction of a world of
its own, we cannot gaze without wonder at that proud magnificence of
intellect, which, rushing like some mighty river, through extended
lakes, and receiving into its bosom the contributary waters of a
thousand regions, preserves its course, its name, and its character,
entire. With Milton, from whatever mine the ore may originally be
derived, the coin issues from his own mint with his own image and
superscription, and passes into currency with a value peculiar to
itself. To speak accurately, the mind of Shakspeare could not create;
and that of Milton invented with equal, or nearly equal, power and
effect. If we admit, in the Tempest, or the Midsummer's Nights Dream,
a higher flight of the inventive faculty, we must allow a less
interrupted stretch of it in the Comus: in this poem there may be
something, which might have been corrected by the revising judgment of
its author; but its errors in thought and language, are so few and
trivial that they must be regarded as the inequality of the plumage, and
not the depression or unsteadiness of the wing. The most splendid
results of Shakspeare's poetry are still separated by some interposing
defect; but the poetry of Comus may be contemplated as a series of gems
strung on golden wire, where the sparkle shoots along the line with
scarcely the intervention of one opak