a living human form as a thing; in its pictured copies, as already
shown in a former discourse, it may be a thing, and a beautiful thing;
but the moment we conceive of it as living, if it show not a soul, we
give it one by a moral necessity; and according to the outward will be
the spirit with which we endow it. No poetic being, supposed of our
species, ever lived to the imagination without some indication of the
moral; it is the breath of its life: and this is also true in the
converse; if there be but a hint of it, it will instantly clothe
itself in a human shape; for the mind cannot separate them. In the
whole range of the poetic creations of the great master of truth,--we
need hardly say Shakspeare,--not an instance can be found where this
condition of life is ever wanting; his men and women all have souls.
So, too, when he peoples the air, though he describe no form, he never
leaves these creatures of the brain without a shape, for he will
sometimes, by a single touch of the moral, enable us to supply one.
Of this we have a striking instance in one of his most unsubstantial
creations, the "delicate Ariel." Not an allusion to its shape or
figure is made throughout the play; yet we assign it a form on its
very first entrance, as soon as Prospero speaks of its refusing to
comply with the" abhorred commands" of the witch, Sycorax. And again,
in the fifth act, when Ariel, after recounting the sufferings of the
wretched usurper and his followers, gently adds,--

"Your charm so strongly works them,
That, if you now beheld them, your affections
Would become tender."

On which Prospero remarks,--

"Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling