existed between the thoughts expressed, strained allegories,
pedantic allusions, everything, in short, quaint and affected, in
matter and manner, made up what was then considered as fine
writing. The eloquence of the bar, the pulpit, and the council-
board, was deformed by conceits which would have disgraced the
rhyming shepherds of an Italian academy. The king quibbled on
the throne. We might, indeed, console ourselves by reflecting
that his majesty was a fool. But the chancellor quibbled in
concert from the wool-sack: and the chancellor was Francis
Bacon. It is needless to mention Sidney and the whole tribe of
Euphuists; for Shakspeare himself, the greatest poet that ever
lived, falls into the same fault whenever he means to be
particularly fine. While he abandons himself to the impulse of
his imagination, his compositions are not only the sweetest and
the most sublime, but also the most faultless, that the world has
ever seen. But, as soon as his critical powers come into play,
he sinks to the level of Cowley; or rather he does ill what
Cowley did well. All that is bad in his works is bad
elaborately, and of malice aforethought. The only thing wanting
to make them perfect was, that he should never have troubled
himself with thinking whether they were good or not. Like the
angels in Milton, he sinks "with compulsion and laborious
flight." His natural tendency is upwards. That he may soar, it
is only necessary that he should not struggle to fall. He
resembles an American Cacique, who, possessing in unmeasured
abundance the metals which in polished societies are esteemed the
most precious, was utterly unconscious of their value, and gave
up treasures more valuable than the imperial crowns of other
countries, to secure some gaudy and far-fetched but worthless
bauble, a plated button, or a necklace of coloured glass.