In a certain sense, it is not an extravagance to say that all who are now living and speak English have views of life and Nature modified by the influence of Shakspeare.  We see the world through his eyes; he has taught us how to think; the freedom of soul, the strong sense, the grasp of thought,—­above all, the honor, the faith, the love,—­who has imparted such noble ideas of these things as he?  Not any one, though there were giants in those days as well as he.  Hence he has grown to seem even more “natural” than he did in his own day, his judges being mediately or immediately educated by him.  The works are admired, but the nobleness of soul in him that made them is not perceived, and his genius and power are degraded into a blind faculty by unthinking minds, and by vain ones that flatter themselves they have discovered the royal road to poetry.  What they seem to require for poetry is the flash of thought or fancy that starts the sympathetic thrill,—­the little jots,—­the striking, often-quoted lines or “gems.”  The rest is merely introduced to build up a piece; these are the “pure Nature,” and all that.

And it is not to be denied that they are pure Nature; for they are true to Nature, and are spontaneous, beautiful, exquisite, deserving to be called gems, and even diamonds.

       “The sweet South,
  That breathes upon a bank of violets,
  Stealing and giving odor":—­

thousands of such lines we keep in our memories’ choicest cells; yet they are but the exterior adornments of a great work of Art.  They are the delightful finishes and lesser beauties which the great work admits, and, indeed, is never without, but which are not to be classed among its essentials.  Their beauty and fitness are not those of the grand columns of the temple; they are the sculptures upon the frieze, the caryatides, or the graceful interlacings of vines.  They catch the fancy of those whose field of vision is not large enough to take in the whole, and upon whom all excellences that are not little are lost.  Beautiful in themselves, their own beauty is frequently all that is seen; the beauty of their propriety, the grace and charm with which they come in, are overlooked.  Many people will have it that nothing is poetry or poetic but these gems of poetry; and because the apparent spontaneousness of them is what makes them so striking, these admirers are unwilling to see that it is through an art that they are brought in so beautifully in their spontaneousness and give such finish to larger effects.  And we have no end of writers who are forever trying to imitate them, forgetting that the essence of their beauty is in their coming unsought and in their proper places as unexpected felicities and fine touches growing out of and contributing to some higher purpose.  They are natural in this way:—­when the poet is engaged upon his work, these delicate fancies and choice expressions throng into his mind; he instantly, by his Art-sense, accepts