The last sentence is true; but Mr. Rowe really means to say that he was as great an artist as natural poet,—­that his creative and executive powers wrought in almost perfect spontaneity and harmony,—­the work of the making part of him being generally at once approved by the shaping part, and each and both being admirable.  When a man creates an Othello, feigns his story and his passion, assumes to be him and to observe him at the same time, figures him so exactly that all the world may realize him also, brings in Desdemona and Iago and the rest, everything kept in propriety and with the minutest perfection of detail, which does most, Art or Nature?  How shall we distinguish?  Where does one leave off and the other begin?  The truth of the passion, that is Nature; but can we not perceive that the Art goes along with it?  Do we not at once acknowledge the Art when we say, “How natural!”?  In such as Iago, for example, it would seem as if the least reflective spectator must derive a little critical satisfaction,—­if he can only bring himself to fancy that Iago is not alive, but that the great master painted him and wrote every word he utters.  As we read his words, can we not see how boldly he is drawn, and how highly colored?  There he is, right in the foreground, prominent, strong, a most miraculous villain.  Did Nature put the words into his mouth, or Art?  The question involves a consideration of how far natural it is for men to make Iagos, and to make them speaking naturally.  Though it be natural, it is not common; and if its naturalness is what must be most insisted on, it may be conceded, and we may say, with Polixenes, “The Art itself is Nature.”

There is a strong rapture that always attends the full exercise of our highest faculties.  The whole spirit is raised and quickened into a secondary life.  This was felt by Shakspeare,—­felt, and at the same time controlled and guided with the same strictness over all thoughts, feelings, passions, fancies, that thronged his mind at such moments, as he had over those in his dull every-day hours.  When we are writing, how difficult it is to avoid pleasing our own vanity! how hard not to step aside a little, now and then, for a brilliant thought or a poetic fancy, or any of the thousand illusions that throng upon us!  Even for the sake of a well-sounding phrase we are often tempted to turn.  The language of passion,—­how hard it is to feign, to write it! how harder than all, to keep the tone, serious, or whatever it may be, with which we begin, so that no expressions occur to break it,—­lapses of thought or speech, that are like sudden stumbles or uneasy jolts!  And if this is so in ordinarily elevated prose, how much more must it be so in high dramatic poetry, where the poet rides on the whirlwind and tempest of passion and “directs the storm.”  There must go to the conception and execution of this sort of work a resolved mind, strong fancies, thoughts high and deep, in fine, a multitude of powers, all under the grand creative, sustaining imagination.  When completed, the work stands forth to all time, a great work of Art, and bulwark of all that is high against all that is low.  It is a great poetic work, the work of a maker who gives form and direction to the minds of men.