The presence of Trinculo and Stephano in the play has sometimes been regarded as a blemish.  I cannot think it so.  Their part is not only good in itself as comedy, but is in admirable keeping with the rest.  Their follies give a zest and relish to the high poetries amidst which they grow.  Such things go to make up the mysterious whole of human life; and they often help on our pleasure while seeming to hinder it:  we may think they were better left out, but, were they left out, we should somehow feel the want of them.  Besides, this part of the work, if it does not directly yield a grateful fragrance, is vitally connected with the parts that do.  For there is perhaps no one of the Poet’s dramas of which it can be more justly affirmed that all the parts draw together in organic unity, so that every thing helps every other thing.

* * * * *

Such are the strangely-assorted characters that make up this charming play.  This harmonious working together of diverse and opposite elements,—­this smooth concurrence of heterogeneous materials in one varied yet coherent impression,—­by what subtile process this is brought about, is perhaps too deep a problem for Criticism to solve.

I cannot leave the theme without remarking what an atmosphere of wonder and mystery overhangs and pervades this singular structure; and how the whole seems steeped in glories invisible to the natural eye, yet made visible by the Poet’s art:  so that the effect is to lead the thoughts insensibly upwards to other worlds and other forms of being.  It were difficult to name any thing else of human workmanship so thoroughly transfigured with

                               “the gleam,
    The light that never was on sea or land,
    The consecration and the poet’s dream.”

The celestial and the earthly are here so commingled,—­commingled, but not confounded,—­that we see not where the one begins or the other ends:  so that in the reading we seem transported to a region where we are strangers, yet old acquaintances; where all things are at once new and familiar; the unearthly visions of the spot hardly touching us with surprise, because, though wonderful indeed, there is nothing about them but what readily finds or creates some answering powers and sympathies within us.  In other words, they do not surprise us, because they at once kindle us into fellowship with them.  That our thoughts and feelings are thus at home with such things, and take pleasure in them,—­is not this because of some innate aptitudes and affinities of our nature for a supernatural and celestial life?

    “Point not these mysteries to an art
    Lodg’d above the starry pole?”

THE WINTER’S TALE.