the work should be developed.  His fancy, which enabled him to see the stage and all its characters,—­almost to be them,—­was so under the control of his imagination, that it did not, through any interruptions while he was at his labor, beguile him with caprices.  The gradation or action of his work, opens and grows under his creative hand; twenty or more characters appear, (in some plays nearly forty, as in “Antony and Cleopatra” and the “First Part of Henry the Sixth,”) who are all distinguished, who are all more or less necessary to the plot or the underplots, and who preserve throughout an identity that is life itself; all this is done, and the imagined state, the great power by which this evolution of characters and scene and story be carried on, is always under the control of the poet’s will, and the direction of his taste or critical judgment.  He chooses to set his imagination upon a piece of work, he selects his plot, conceives the action, the variety of characters, and all their doings; as he goes on reflecting upon them, his imagination warms, and excites his fancy; he sees and identifies himself with his characters, lives a secondary life in his work, as one may in a dream which he directs and yet believes in; his whole soul becomes more active under this fervor of the imagination, the fancy, and all the powers of suggestion,—­yet, still, the presiding judgment remains calm above all, guiding the whole; and above or behind that, the will which elects to do all this, perchance for a very simple purpose,—­namely, for filthy lucre, the purchase-money of an estate in Stratford.

To say that he “followed Nature” is to mean that he permits his thoughts to flow out in the order in which thoughts naturally come,—­that he makes his characters think as we all fancy we should think under the circumstances in which he places them,—­that it is the truth of his thoughts which first impresses us.  It is in this respect that he is so universal; and it is by his universality that his naturalness is confirmed.  Not all his finer strokes of genius, but the general scope and progress of his mind, are within the path all other minds travel; his mind answers to all other men’s minds, and hence is like the voice of Nature, which, apart from particular association, addresses all alike.  The cataracts, the mountains, the sea, the landscapes, the changes of season and weather have each the same general meaning to all mankind.  So it is with Shakspeare, both in the conception and development of his characters, and in the play of his reflections and fancies.  All the world recognizes his sanity, and the health and beauty of his genius.