Ophelia's reverence for his memory, and we shall see that he was meant
to be represented as a statesman somewhat past his faculties,--his
recollections of life all full of wisdom, and showing a knowledge of
human nature, whilst what immediately takes place before him, and
escapes from him, is indicative of weakness.

But as in Homer all the deities are in armour, even Venus; so in
Shakspeare all the characters are strong. Hence real folly and dullness
are made by him the vehicles of wisdom. There is no difficulty for one
being a fool to imitate a fool; but to be, remain, and speak like a wise
man and a great wit, and yet so as to give a vivid representation of a
veritable fool,--'hic labor, hoc opus est'. A drunken constable is not
uncommon, nor hard to draw; but see and examine what goes to make up a
Dogberry.

3. Keeping at all times in the high road of life. Shakspeare has no
innocent adulteries, no interesting incests, no virtuous vice;--he never
renders that amiable which religion and reason alike teach us to detest,
or clothes impurity in the garb of virtue, like Beaumont and Fletcher,
the Kotzebues of the day. Shakspeare's fathers are roused by
ingratitude, his husbands stung by unfaithfulness; in him, in short, the
affections are wounded in those points in which all may, nay, must,
feel. Let the morality of Shakspeare be contrasted with that of the
writers of his own, or the succeeding, age, or of those of the present
day, who boast their superiority in this respect. No one can dispute
that the result of such a comparison is altogether in favour of
Shakspeare;--even the letters of women of high rank in his age were
often coarser than his writings. If he occasionally disgusts a keen
sense of delicacy, he never injures the mind; he neither excites, nor
flatters, passion, in order to degrade the subject of it; he does not