the power of seeing is to light, so is an idea in mind to a law in
nature. They are correlatives, which suppose each other.

The plays of Beaumont and Fletcher are mere aggregations without unity;
in the Shakspearian drama there is a vitality which grows and evolves
itself from within,--a key note which guides and controls the harmonies
throughout. What is Lear?--It is storm and tempest--the thunder at first
grumbling in the far horizon, then gathering around us, and at length
bursting in fury over our heads,--succeeded by a breaking of the clouds
for a while, a last flash of lightning, the closing in of night, and the
single hope of darkness! And Romeo and Juliet?--It is a spring day,
gusty and beautiful in the morn, and closing like an April evening with
the song of the nightingale;--whilst Macbeth is deep and
earthy,--composed to the subterranean music of a troubled conscience,
which converts every thing into the wild and fearful!

Doubtless from mere observation, or from the occasional similarity of
the writer's own character, more or less in Beaumont and Fletcher, and
other such writers will happen to be in correspondence with nature, and
still more in apparent compatibility with it. But yet the false source
is always discoverable, first by the gross contradictions to nature in
so many other parts, and secondly, by the want of the impression which
Shakspeare makes, that the thing said not only might have been said, but
that nothing else could be substituted, so as to excite the same sense
of its exquisite propriety. I have always thought the conduct and
expressions of Othello and Iago in the last scene, when Iago is brought
in prisoner, a wonderful instance of Shakspeare's consummate judgment:--


'Oth.' I look down towards his feet;--but that's a fable. If that thou