in a person merely for the sake of others.  A mixture of conceit and drollery, and hugely wrapped up in self, he is by no means a commonplace buffoon, but stands firm in his sufficiency of original stock.  His elaborate nonsense, his grasping at a pun without catching it, yet feeling just as grand as if he did, is both ludicrous and natural.  His jokes to be sure are mostly failures; nevertheless they are laughable, because he dreams not but they succeed.  The poverty of his wit is thus enriched by his complacency in dealing it out.  His part indeed amply pays its way, in showing how much of mirth may be caused by feebleness in a great attempt at a small matter.  Besides, in him the mother element of the whole piece runs out into broad humour and travesty; his reasons for breaking with his master the Jew being, as it were, a variation in drollery upon the fundamental air of the play.  Thus he exhibits under a comic form the general aspect of surrounding humanity; while at the same time his character is an integral part of that varied structure of human life which it belongs to the Gothic Drama to represent.  On several accounts indeed he might not be spared.

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In Portia Shakespeare seems to have aimed at a perfect scheme of an amiable, intelligent, and accomplished woman.  And the result is a fine specimen of beautiful nature enhanced by beautiful art.  Eminently practical in her tastes and turn of mind, full of native, homebred sense and virtue, Portia unites therewith something of the ripeness and dignity of a sage, a mellow eloquence, and a large, noble discourse; the whole being tempered with the best grace and sensibility of womanhood.  As intelligent as the strongest, she is at the same time as feminine as the weakest of her sex:  she talks like a poet and a philosopher, yet, strange to say, she talks, for all the world, just like a woman.  She is as full of pleasantry, too, and as merry “within the limit of becoming mirth,” as she is womanly and wise; and, which is more, her arch sportiveness always relishes as the free outcome of perfect moral health.  Nothing indeed can be more fitting and well-placed than her demeanour, now bracing her speech with grave maxims of practical wisdom, now unbending her mind in sallies of wit, or of innocent, roguish banter.  The sportive element of her composition has its happiest showing in her dialogue with Nerissa about the “parcel of wooers,” and in her humorous description of the part she imagines herself playing in her purposed disguise.  The latter is especially delightful from its harmonious contrast with the solid thoughtfulness which, after all, forms the staple and frame-work of her character.  How charmingly it sets off the divine rapture of eloquence with which she discourses to the Jew of mercy!