These are somewhat novel arguments for the study of one whom all the
world has so long reverenced as "the great poet of Nature." But they may
properly serve to introduce a consideration of the sense in which
that phrase should be understood,--an attempt, in short, to look
into Shakspeare's modes of creation, and define his relations, as an
_artist_, with Nature.

We shall perhaps be excused the suggestion, that a poet cannot be
natural in the same sense that a fool may be; he cannot be _a_
natural,--since, if he is, he is not a poet. For to be a poet implies
the ability to use ideas and forms of speech artistically, as well as to
have an eye in a fine frenzy rolling. This is a distinction which all
who write on poets or poetry should forever seek to keep clear by new
illustrations. The poet has poetic powers that are born with him; but he
must also have a power over language, skill in arrangement, a thousand,
yes, a myriad, of powers which he was born with only the ability to
acquire, and to use after their acquirement. In ranking Shakspeare the
great poet of Nature, it is meant that he had the purpose and the power
to think what was natural, and to select and follow it,--that, among his
thick-coming fancies, he could perceive what was too fine, what tinged
with personal vanity, what incongruous, unsuitable, feeble, strained, in
short, unnatural, and reject it. His vision was so strong that he saw
his characters and identified himself with them, yet preserving his cool
judgment above them, and subjecting all he felt through them to its
test, and developing it through this artificial process of writing. This
vision and high state of being he could assume and keep up and work out
through days and weeks, foreseeing the end from the beginning, retaining
himself, and determining long before how many acts his work should be,
what should be its plot, what the order of its scenes, what personages