In England the manner of handling rhyming verse, and the opinion as to its harmony and elegance, have, in the course of two centuries, undergone a much greater change than is the case with the rhymeless iambic or blank verse.  In the former, Dryden and Pope have become models; these writers have communicated the utmost smoothness to rhyme, but they have also tied it down to a harmonious uniformity.  A foreigner, to whom antiquated and new are the same, may perhaps feel with greater freedom the advantages of the more ancient manner.  Certain it is, the rhyme of the present day, from the too great confinement of the couplet, is unfit for the drama.  We must not estimate the rhyme of Shakespeare by the mode of subsequent times, but by a comparison with his contemporaries or with Spenser.  The comparison will, without doubt, turn out to his advantage.  Spenser is often diffuse; Shakespeare, though sometimes hard, is always brief and vigorous.  He has more frequently been induced by the rhyme to leave out something necessary than to insert anything superfluous.  Many of his rhymes, however, are faultless:  ingenious with attractive ease, and rich without false brilliancy.  The songs interspersed (those, I mean, of the poet himself) are generally sweetly playful and altogether musical; in imagination, while we merely read them, we hear their melody.

The whole of Shakespeare’s productions bear the certain stamp of his original genius, but yet no writer was ever further removed from everything like a mannerism derived from habit or personal peculiarities.  Rather is he, such is the diversity of tone and color which vary according to the quality of his subjects he assumes, a very Proteus.  Each of his compositions is like a world of its own, moving in its own sphere.  They are works of art, finished in one pervading style, which revealed the freedom and judicious choice of their author.  If the formation of a work throughout, even in its minutest parts, in conformity with a leading idea; if the domination of one animating spirit over all the means of execution, deserves the name of correctness (and this, excepting in matters of grammar, is the only proper sense of the term); we shall then, after allowing to Shakespeare all the higher qualities which demand our admiration, be also compelled, in most cases, to concede to him the title of a correct poet.

It would be in the highest degree instructive to follow, if we could, in his career step by step, an author who at once founded and carried his art to perfection, and to go through his works in the order of time.  But, with the exception of a few fixed points, which at length have been obtained, all the necessary materials for this are still wanting.  The diligent Malone has, indeed, made an attempt to arrange the plays of Shakespeare in chronological order; but he himself gives out only the result of his labors as hypothetical, and it could not possibly be attended with complete success, since he excluded from his inquiry a considerable number of pieces which have been ascribed to the poet, though rejected as spurious by all the editors since Rowe, but which, in my opinion, must, if not wholly, at least in great measure be attributed to him.