Dramatic Poetry, I, in half a score instances, referred my auditors
to the precious volume before me--Shakespeare--and spoke
enthusiastically, both in general and with detail of particular
beauties, of the plays of Shakespeare, as in all their kinds, and in
relation to the purposes of the writer, excellent. Would it have
been fair, or according to the common usage and understanding of men,
to have inferred an intention on my part to decide the question
respecting Titus Andronicus, or the larger portion of the three parts
of Henry VI.? Would not every genial mind understand by Shakespeare
that unity or total impression comprising and resulting from the
thousandfold several and particular emotions of delight, admiration,
gratitude excited by his works? But if it be answered, "Aye! but we
must not interpret St. Paul as we may and should interpret any other
honest and intelligent writer or speaker,"--then, I say, this is the
very petitio principii of which I complain.

Still less do the words of our Lord apply against my view. Have I
not declared--do I not begin by declaring--that whatever is referred
by the sacred penman to a direct communication from God, and wherever
it is recorded that the subject of the history had asserted himself
to have received this or that command, this or that information or
assurance, from a superhuman Intelligence, or where the writer in his
own person, and in the character of an historian, relates that the
WORD OF THE LORD CAME unto priest, prophet, chieftain, or other
individual--have I not declared that I receive the same with full
belief, and admit its inappellable authority? Who more convinced
than I am--who more anxious to impress that conviction on the minds
of others--that the Law and the Prophets speak throughout of Christ?
That all the intermediate applications and realisations of the words
are but types and repetitions--translations, as it were, from the