It is said of Shakspere and his companions, that "they gathered the humours of men wherever they came." This is very likely, and part of the business of a dramatic poet; but too much importance should not be attributed to it, lest the higher demands of art suffer prejudice and neglect. These humours are merely the "shapes" to which the poet "turns the forms of things unknown," previously "bodied forth by imagination"-the "local habitations and the names given to airy nothings." The individuals which the poet encounters in society, and presents in his works, are mere exponents of these preconceptions, of which he gladly avails himself for the purpose of incorporating them under the conditions of experience, in order to their representation as intelligible objects. The reader will perceive, therefore, that in Shakspere, as in every good poet, it is not so much the portrait of an individual that is represented as an idea of which the individual is only an expositor. The poet from first to last is the life and soul of the character, and speaks in every word that is uttered. At any rate, the imitation is enlarged beyond the dimensions of reality, and excels it in every qualification. This is particularly observable in Shakspere's manner of representing the "bad characters" in his plays. Upon these, and with considerable judgement, he expends an unusual portion of his genius. Compare his Iagos and Edmunds with Ford's D'Avolos and Vasques. The latter are but petty every-day villains, as intellectually feeble as they are odiously wicked. Not so with Shakspere; they are "bold bad men." Without interesting us in favour of their crimes, he engages our admiration for the energy of their minds, and the force of their characters. Power is the great charm by which he renders them attractive. Their spirits are as gigantic as his own, and we absolve them of their guilt because of their greatness. They are as gods in knowledge and resolution, though devils in act and intention. Yet certain it is, that the villains of Ford are much nearer copies of the actual villains in society than those of Shakspere. The reason of this is, that Ford endeavours to portray them as they really exist; Shakspere presents them only as they essentially are, or may possibly be, and thus only as subordinated to an attribute of his own mindintellectual power; with which, in the exercise of a creative imagination, he has elected to invest them. The distinctive characteristic of Shakspere's genius will be found, upon accurate examination, to consist in the harmonious blending of the ideal with the real; and his peculiar power lay in his transfusing the former in such a manner into the latter as to identify it therewith in inseparable unity. Philosophically speaking, therefore, it is improper to say, that his characters are either species or individuals. In so far as they are symbolical of a class of men, they are assuredly something more than the latter; but as they have a definite existence, it is equally certain that they are something less than the former. Hence it is in the union and happy balance of these contrary elements, that we are to look for the proper excellence of our dramatic poet; and in this way his mind, though it was divided amongst all it contemplated, and became whatever it beheld, yet," remaining in itself, made all things new." What has been written may, perhaps, not only serve to correct some errors touching the nature and office of dramatic writing, which have too generally obtained for the interests both of poetry and criticism, but to suggest a genial affinity between our dramatic bard and our epic poet not hitherto suspected or sufficiently observed. It has been more usual for our critics to contrast than to compare the merits of Shakspere and Milton; they have rather attended to what was distinctive of either than what was common to both. We propose to perform each of these requirements. The spirit of contrast and opposition, however, has been carried too far. A curious instance occurs in Pye's "Commentary on Aristotle." Pye, it would appear, almost conceived Milton to be wanting in a taste even for the peculiar merits of his predecessor. In spite of Milton's poetical tribute to the memory of Shakspere, he imagines that in the two exquisite lines,* "Or sweetest Shakspere, fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild," it was the intention of the poet of "L'Allegro" to disparage our dramatic prodigy, "somewhat in the same way a Cramer or a Haydn might be supposed to speak of a wonderful musical rustic, who, without musical education, was able to bring some wild sounds out of a violin." He however prefers (to adopt his own words) "heavier charge against him with regard to Shakspere. In his "Eiconoclastes there is a passage 'That sullies e'en his brightest lays, And blasts the vernal bloom of half his bays.' 66 a "Like all other censure of the same kind," the commentator on the Poetics of Aristotle proceeds to say, "it misses the intended mark, "and recoils on the author; and we are not inclined to think the 66 worse of the unfortunate and misguided Charles because we are "told that Mr. William Shakspere was the closet companion of his "solitudes." He afterwards adds, "I cannot think, even, that Mil"ton could easily have imagined, that among a people well versed "in polite and classic literature, the stuff of Mr. William Shakspere "would be preferred to Comus and the Samson Agonistes." This is severe language, and ought not to have gone so long unanswered, involving, as it does, an evident misapprehension. Let the reader judge for himself. Here is the passage. Milton had before observed, "that the deepest policy of a tyrant hath ever been to counterfeit religious." After producing examples, he proceeds: "From stories of this nature, both ancient and modern, which abound, the poets also, and some English, have been in this point This is also Schlegel's opinion, but we think that the grounds are entirely fanciful, and incapable of being put in opposition to his lines on Shakspere, beginning, "What needs my Shakspere for his honoured bones ?" so mindful of decorum, as to put never more pious words in the I do not know that Englishman alive, Other stuff of this sort may be read throughout the whole tragedy, wherein the poet used not much license in departing from the truth of history, which delivers him a deep dissembler, not of his affections only, but of his religion." Now we are well acquainted with Milton's esteem for "gorgeous tragedy," and how well affected he was to the dramatic art in general, his preface to Samson Agonistes might be adduced in proof; we therefore could not willingly believe, unless the author had expressly stated it, that he intended to censure Charles I. for making William Shakspere his closet companion. We rather esteem it an honour done to the excellence of the poet that he should be cited for such a purpose by such a rival. But we suspect it was the word "stuff" that led the commentator astray. First, then, the word "stuff" is not necessarily a term of contempt. Shakspere writes, "the perilous stuff That preys upon the heart." "We are such stuff As dreams are made of." Had Milton written, "other matter of this sort may be read throughout the tragedy," the objection would have been avoided. Yet stuff is only a synonyme for the material of which the play was composed. Suppose, however, the word to have been used contemptuously, of which use there are instances in Milton's prose writings; it follows not that it was of the poet he so spake. The term might have had reference to the character of Richard III. only, and particularly as it applied to the argument in hand-the political hypocrisy of a tyrant. His counterfeit piety was mere "stuff" (in the worst signification of the word) in the mouth of Richard; but, as it was appropriate to the character, affected not the merits of the poet, to whom Milton gives credit for having been 66 mindful of decorum." The term, however, told bitterly against the unfortunate monarch, whose memory it was designed to darken; and whose piety was thus stigmatised as, like Richard's, being only "stuff" and "counterfeit." Whatever may be the • Eiconoclaste, p. 384, vol. i. Burnett's edition. N. S.-VOL. I. S reader's opinion of Milton's political sentiments, it is manifest that nothing could have been further from his intention than in this passage to prejudice the fame of Shakspere. "Like all other censure of the same kind, this of Mr. Pye's misses the intended mark, and recoils on the author." In estimating, however, the relative dramatic merits of Shakspere and Milton, it is necessary that what is accidental should be separated from what is essential to the genius of each. It is chiefly in what is accidental that they are to be contrasted, and in what is essential compared. In nothing are they more different than in the external forms of their dramatic efforts, and their choice of subjects. If Shakspere had written after the model of ancient tragedy, the resemblance between him and Milton would have been considerably closer. There might then have been a strong family likeness; now the resemblance is, perhaps, but as of one stranger to another. Had Shakspere subscribed to the unities and adopted the chorus, his productions would have wanted many characteristic traits by which they are now distinguished-they would have lost many of their faults, and some of their beauties would have been substituted by others of a different kind. Whether these restrictions would have been beneficial on the whole is another question. We think not. At any rate, he would not have been a poet so decidedly original. In their choice of subjects a more essential difference is observable. Milton's fable is always of the simplest kind, and the incidents few. Shakspere affects, on the other hand, a complexity of plot, and a variety of persons and events, and combines them with astonishing art and philosophical reference to the end proposed. He wishes to interest as much by the force of his story as by the vigour of his fancy. His poetry glances from one object to another, distributing its lights and shades with impartiality according to the merits of each, but leaving none entirely destitute of its visiting radiance. Milton dwells upon a single fact and upon a few objects, selected after painful search, "long chusing and beginning late," and encircles them with his own associations of thought and feeling, as with a magic girdle, until he makes them his own. Shakspere's mind goes abroad in search of emblems for the embodiment of his imaginings, and presents them in shapes similar to those in which nature and being are exhibited to the senses. Milton's mind never strays beyond "the spacious circuit of her musings;" what she hath liberty to propose to herself" within those limits, "though of highest hope and hardest attempting" is available to his "adventurous song;" but he never thinks of travelling out of the precincts of his understanding to reconcile the dim creations of his fancy with the actual representations of the material world. The shape in which he delineates his conception, is equally ideal with the conception itself-he gives it, not as it is found in nature or society, but as it is in his own mind, or as he has found it in books. But they agree in what all true poets must agree-in originating in their own intellect the conception of characters and circumstances-they differ only as to the manner in which it is manifested. Thus it is that the results are very distinct, while the essential elements remain the same. In a word, Milton dwells upon his subject until he identifies it with himself, while Shakspere identifies himself with his subject. The one unites all things into his own poetic personality-the other divides it among them. To which may be added, that of the one the fancy is of the schools, traditionary and theoretical; of the other it is of the world, experimental and practical. The occasion of this difference may be traced to the opposite circumstances attending their early life and nurture. Fostered by paternal protection, and regularly educated, the imagination of Milton was developed in the study of the models of antiquity. Whatever he knew of nature, whether material or human, except what he gathered from his own "bosom and business" was through the medium of his learning. Hence it is, as Johnson justly observes, that "his images and descriptions of the scenes or operations of nature do not seem to be always copied from original forms, or to have the freshness, raciness and energy of immediate observation:" which remark, however, must be qualified in the words of a recent critic, by the assertion that "Milton's learning has the effect of intuition. His imagination has the force of nature." The truth lies in the medium between the two, or rather in the harmony of both propositions. Whatever the object of his observation, it was immediately associated with the stores of thought already accumulated in the treasure-room of his fancy, compared or contrasted, frequently combined, and then re-presented to notice as a new creation. Milton's descriptions bear the stamp of reflection. They are never expressed as they may be supposed to have impressed his perception, but, having been remanded to the tribunal of a higher faculty, re-appear attired with intellectual beauty. So of scenes and objects of which he could only have read. Those which had actuated his senses were idealised by a reflective memory, these were realised by a similar process of the fancy. He had so long employed himself in identifying the real with the imaginary, that he found but little difficulty in amalgamating the ideal with the actual. He occupied the middle ground of imagination where the two extremes are reconciled. He speaks of the lucid streams of the Abana and Pharpar, with their fertile banks, and the delightful seat of fair Damascus, as if he were a denizen of the spot, and of the roving Tartar, as if his life had been passed in the society of the savage hordes, and all the local circumstances of their mode of existence were as familiar to him as the voice and countenance of his mother. He thinks it a sufficient illustration of the Garden of Eden, to compare it with the Vale of Enna; and he assists his reader's conception of Satan's passage over Chaos by reminding him of Argos's between the Cyanean rocks, or of Ulysses when he " on the larboard shunned Charybdis, and by the other whirlpool steered."as of scenes and stories familiar from earliest childhood. No notion is more erroneous than that the poet's business is limited to merely copying in idea the impressions of sense, or, in |