men who can write passages of deepest pathos and even sublimity on
circumstances personal to themselves and stimulative of their own
passions; but they are not, therefore, on this account poets. Read that
magnificent burst of woman's patriotism and exultation, Deborah's song
of victory; it is glorious, but nature is the poet there. It is quite
another matter to become all things and yet remain the same,--to make
the changeful god be felt in the river, the lion and the flame;--this it
is, that is the true imagination. Shakspeare writes in this poem, as if
he were of another planet, charming you to gaze on the movements of
Venus and Adonis, as you would on the twinkling dances of two vernal
butterflies.

Finally, in this poem and the Rape of Lucrece, Shakspeare gave ample
proof of his possession of a most profound, energetic, and philosophical
mind, without which he might have pleased, but could not have been a
great dramatic poet. Chance and the necessity of his genius combined to
lead him to the drama his proper province; in his conquest of which we
should consider both the difficulties which opposed him, and the
advantages by which he was assisted.





SHAKSPEARE'S JUDGMENT EQUAL TO HIS GENIUS.

Thus then Shakspeare appears, from his Venus and Adonis and Rape of
Lucrece alone, apart from all his great works, to have possessed all the
conditions of the true poet. Let me now proceed to destroy, as far as
may be in my power, the popular notion that he was a great dramatist by