This intuitive perception of the exact kind and degree of passion and character that are suited to each other; this quick and sure insight of the internal workings of a given mind, and of the why, the when, and the how far it should be moved; and this accurate letting-out and curbing-in of a passion precisely as the law of its individuality requires; in a word, this thorough mastery of the inmost springs and principles of human transpiration;—­all this is so extraordinary, that I am not surprised to find even grave and temperate thinkers applying to the Poet such bold expressions as the instrument, the rival, the co-worker, the completer of Nature.

Nor is this the only direction in which he maintains the fitness of things:  he keeps the matter right towards us as well as towards his characters.  It is true, he often lays on us burdens of passion that would not be borne in any other writer.  But, whether he wrings the heart with pity, or freezes the blood with terror, or fires the soul with indignation, the genial reader still rises from his pages refreshed.  The reason of which is, instruction keeps pace with excitement:  he strengthens the mind in proportion as he loads it.  Shakespeare has been called the great master of passion:  doubtless he is so; yet he is not more that than he is every thing else:  for he makes us think as intensely as he requires us to feel; while opening the deepest fountains of the heart, he at the same time kindles the highest energies of the head.  Nay, with such consummate art does he manage the fiercest tempests of our being, that in a healthy mind the witnessing of them is always attended by an overbalance of pleasure.  With the very whirlwinds of passion he so blends the softening and assuaging influences of poetry, that they relish of nothing but sweetness and health; as in case of “the gentle Desdemona,” where pathos is indeed carried to the extreme limit of endurance, so that “all for pity I could die,” yet there is no breach of the rule in question.  For while, as a philosopher, he surpassed all other philosophers in power to discern the passions of men; as an artist, he also surpassed all other artists in skill

         “so to temper passion, that our ears
    Take pleasure in their pain, and eyes in tears
    Both weep and smile.”

Another point well worth the noting is the perfect evenhandedness of Shakespeare’s representations.  For, among all his characters, with the single exception, perhaps, of “Prince Hal,” we cannot discover from the delineation itself that he preferred any one to another; though of course we cannot conceive it possible for any man to regard, for example, Edmund and Edgar, or Iago and Desdemona, with the same feelings.  It is as if the scenes of his dramas were forced on his observation against his will, himself being under a solemn oath to report the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  He thus leaves the characters to make their own impression upon us.