Less than archangel ruin'd, and th' excess
Of glory obscur'd;"--

the mixture of beauty, of grandeur, and pathos, from the sense of
irreparable loss, of never-ending, unavailing regret, is perfect.

The great fault of a modern school of poetry is, that it is an
experiment to reduce poetry to a mere effusion of natural sensibility;
or what is worse, to divest it both of imaginary splendour and human
passion, to surround the meanest objects with the morbid feelings and
devouring egotism of the writers' own minds. Milton and Shakspeare did
not so understand poetry. They gave a more liberal interpretation both
to nature and art. They did not do all they could to get rid of the one
and the other, to fill up the dreary void with the Moods of their own
Minds. They owe their power over the human mind to their having had a
deeper sense than others of what was grand in the objects of nature, or
affecting in the events of human life. But to the men I speak of there
is nothing interesting, nothing heroical, but themselves. To them the
fall of gods or of great men is the same. They do not enter into the
feeling. They cannot understand the terms. They are even debarred from
the last poor, paltry consolation of an unmanly triumph over fallen
greatness; for their minds reject, with a convulsive effort and
intolerable loathing, the very idea that there ever was, or was thought
to be, any thing superior to themselves. All that has ever excited the
attention or admiration of the world, they look upon with the most
perfect indifference; and they are surprised to find that the world
repays their indifference with scorn. "With what measure they mete, it
has been meted to them again."--

Shakespeare's imagination is of the same plastic kind as his