In this connection also should be noticed his powers of grouping and composition; which, in the words of one of his biographers, “present to us pictures from the realms of spirits and from fairyland, which in deep reflection and in useful maxims, yield nothing to the pages of the philosophers, and which glow with all the poetic beauty that an exhaustless fancy could shower upon them.”

IMAGINATION AND FANCY.—­And this brings us to notice, in the third place, his rare gifts of imagination and of fancy; those instruments of the representative faculty by which objects of sense and of mind are held up to view in new, varied, and vivid lights.  Many of his tragedies abound in imaginative pictures, while there are not in the realm of Fancy’s fairy frostwork more exquisite representations than those found in the Tempest and the Midsummer Night’s Dream.

POWER OF EXPRESSION.—­Fourth, Shakspeare is remarkable for the power and felicity of his expression.  He adapts his language to the persons who use it, and thus we pass from the pompous grandiloquence of king and herald to the common English and coarse conceits of clown and nurse and grave-digger; from the bombastic speech of Glendower and the rhapsodies of Hotspur to the slang and jests of Falstaff.

But something more is meant by felicity of expression than this.  It applies to the apt words which present pithy bits of household philosophy, and to the beautiful words which convey the higher sentiments and flights of fancy; to the simple words couching grand thoughts with such exquisite aptness that they seem made for each other, so that no other words would do as well, and to the dainty songs, like those of birds, which fill his forests and gardens with melody.  Thus it is that orators and essayists give dignity and point to their own periods by quoting Shakspeare.

Such are a few of Shakspeare’s high merits, which constitute him the greatest poet who has ever used the English tongue—­poet, moralist, and philosopher in one.

HIS FAULTS.—­If it be necessary to point out his faults, it should be observed that most of them are those of the age and of his profession.  To both may be charged the vulgarity and lewdness of some of his representations; which, however, err in this respect far less than the writings of his contemporaries.

Again:  in the short time allowed for the presentation of a play, before a restless audience, as soon as the plot was fairly shadowed, the hearers were anxious for the denouement.  And so Shakspeare, careless of future fame, frequently displays a singular disparity between the parts.  He has so much of detail in the first two acts, that in order to preserve the symmetry, five or six more would be necessary.  Thus conclusions are hurried, when, as works of art, they should be the most elaborated.