It seems to me that his plays are distinguished from those of all other
dramatic poets by the following characteristics:

1. Expectation in preference to surprise. It is like the true reading of
the passage;--'God said, Let there be light, and there was
_light_;'--not there _was_ light. As the feeling with which we startle
at a shooting star, compared with that of watching the sunrise at the
pre-established moment, such and so low is surprise compared with
expectation.

2. Signal adherence to the great law of nature, that all opposites tend
to attract and temper each other. Passion in Shakspeare generally
displays libertinism, but involves morality; and if there are exceptions
to this, they are, independently of their intrinsic value, all of them
indicative of individual character, and, like the farewell admonitions
of a parent, have an end beyond the parental relation. Thus the
Countess's beautiful precepts to Bertram, by elevating her character,
raise that of Helena her favorite, and soften down the point in her
which Shakspeare does not mean us not to see, but to see and to forgive,
and at length to justify. And so it is in Polonius, who is the
personified memory of wisdom no longer actually possessed. This
admirable character is always misrepresented on the stage. Shakspeare
never intended to exhibit him as a buffoon; for although it was natural
that Hamlet,--a young man of fire and genius, detesting formality, and
disliking Polonius on political grounds, as imagining that he had
assisted his uncle in his usurpation,--should express himself
satirically,--yet this must not be taken as exactly the poet's
conception of him. In Polonius a certain induration of character had
arisen from long habits of business; but take his advice to Laertes, and