Highest among those who have exhibited human nature by means of dialogue, stands Shakespeare.  His variety is like the variety of nature, endless diversity, scarcely any monstrosity.  The characters of which he has given us an impression, as vivid as that which we receive from the characters of our own associates, are to be reckoned by scores.  Yet in all these scores hardly one character is to be found which deviates widely from the common standard, and which we should call very eccentric if we met it in real life.  The silly notion that every man has one ruling passion, and that this clue, once known, unravels all the mysteries of his conduct, finds no countenance in the plays of Shakespeare.  There man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions, which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn.  What is Hamlet’s ruling passion?  Or Othello’s?  Or Harry the Fifth’s?  Or Wolsey’s?  Or Lear’s?  Or Shylock’s?  Or Benedick’s?  Or Macbeth’s?  Or that of Cassius?  Or that of Falconbridge?  But we might go on for ever.  Take a single example—­Shylock.  Is he so eager for money as to be indifferent to revenge?  Or so eager for revenge as to be indifferent to money?  Or so bent on both together as to be indifferent to the honour of his nation and the law of Moses?  All his propensities are mingled with each other; so that, in trying to apportion to each its proper part, we find the same difficulty which constantly meets us in real life.  A superficial critic may say, that hatred is Shylock’s ruling passion.  But how many passions have amalgamated to form that hatred?  It is partly the result of wounded pride:  Antonio has called him dog.  It is partly the result of covetousness:  Antonio has hindered him of half a million; and, when Antonio is gone, there will be no limit to the gains of usury.  It is partly the result of national and religious feeling:  Antonio has spit on the Jewish gaberdine; and the oath of revenge has been sworn by the Jewish Sabbath.  We might go through all the characters which we have mentioned, and through fifty more in the same way; for it is the constant manner of Shakespeare to represent the human mind as lying, not under the absolute dominion of one despotic propensity, but under a mixed government, in which a hundred powers balance each other.  Admirable as he was in all parts of his art, we most admire him for this, that, while he has left us a greater number of striking portraits than all other dramatists put together, he has scarcely left us a single caricature.

Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second.  But among the writers who, in the point which we have noticed, have approached nearest to the manner of the great master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, a woman of whom England is justly proud.  She has given us a multitude of characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace, all such as we meet every day.  Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most eccentric