grieve that every late voluminous edition of his works would enable me
to substantiate the present charge with a variety of facts one tenth of
which would of themselves exhaust the time allotted to me. Every critic,
who has or has not made a collection of black letter books--in itself a
useful and respectable amusement,--puts on the seven-league boots of
self-opinion, and strides at once from an illustrator into a supreme
judge, and blind and deaf, fills his three-ounce phial at the waters of
Niagara; and determines positively the greatness of the cataract to be
neither more nor less than his three-ounce phial has been able to
receive.

I think this a very serious subject. It is my earnest desire--my
passionate endeavour,--to enforce at various times and by various
arguments and instances the close and reciprocal connexion of just taste
with pure morality. Without that acquaintance with the heart of man, or
that docility and childlike gladness to be made acquainted with it,
which those only can have, who dare look at their own hearts--and that
with a steadiness which religion only has the power of reconciling with
sincere humility;--without this, and the modesty produced by it, I am
deeply convinced that no man, however wide his erudition, however
patient his antiquarian researches, can possibly understand, or be
worthy of understanding, the writings of Shakspeare.

Assuredly that criticism of Shakspeare will alone be genial which is
reverential. The Englishman, who without reverence, a proud and
affectionate reverence, can utter the name of William Shakspeare, stands
disqualified for the office of critic. He wants one at least of the very
senses, the language of which he is to employ, and will discourse at
best, but as a blind man, while the whole harmonious creation of light
and shade with all its subtle interchange of deepening and dissolving