an astronomer can explain the movements of the solar system without
taking his stand in the sun. And let me remark, that this will not tend
to produce despotism, but, on the contrary, true tolerance, in the
critic. He will, indeed, require, as the spirit and substance of a work,
something true in human nature itself, and independent of all
circumstances; but in the mode of applying it, he will estimate genius
and judgment according to the felicity with which the imperishable soul
of intellect shall have adapted itself to the age, the place, and the
existing manners. The error he will expose, lies in reversing this, and
holding up the mere circumstances as perpetual to the utter neglect of
the power which can alone animate them. For art cannot exist without, or
apart from, nature; and what has man of his own to give to his
fellow-man, but his own thoughts and feelings, and his observations so
far as they are modified by his own thoughts or feelings?

Let me, then, once more submit this question to minds emancipated alike
from national, or party, or sectarian prejudice:--Are the plays of
Shakspeare works of rude uncultivated genius, in which the splendour of
the parts compensates, if aught can compensate, for the barbarous
shapelessness and irregularity of the whole?--Or is the form equally
admirable with the matter, and the judgment of the great poet, not less
deserving our wonder than his genius?--Or, again, to repeat the question
in other words:--Is Shakspeare a great dramatic poet on account only of
those beauties and excellencies which he possesses in common with the
ancients, but with diminished claims to our love and honour to the full
extent of his differences from them?--Or are these very differences
additional proofs of poetic wisdom, at once results and symbols of
living power as contrasted with lifeless mechanism--of free and rival
originality as contradistinguished from servile imitation, or, more
accurately, a blind copying of effects, instead of a true imitation of