In comparing these four writers together, it might be said that Chaucer excels as the poet of manners, or of real life; Spenser, as the poet of romance; Shakspeare as the poet of nature (in the largest use of the term); and Milton, as the poet of morality.  Chaucer most frequently describes things as they are; Spenser, as we wish them to be; Shakspeare, as they would be; and Milton as they ought to be.  As poets, and as great poets, imagination, that is, the power of feigning things according to nature, was common to them all:  but the principle or moving power, to which this faculty was most subservient in Chaucer, was habit, or inveterate prejudice; in Spenser, novelty, and the love of the marvellous; in Shakspeare, it was the force of passion, combined with every variety of possible circumstances; and in Milton, only with the highest.  The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser, remoteness; of Milton, elevation; of Shakspeare, every thing.—­It has been said by some critic, that Shakspeare was distinguished from the other dramatic writers of his day only by his wit; that they had all his other qualities but that; that one writer had as much sense, another as much fancy, another as much knowledge of character, another the same depth of passion, and another as great a power of language.  This statement is not true; nor is the inference from it well-founded, even if it were.  This person does not seem to have been aware that, upon his own shewing, the great distinction of Shakspeare’s genius was its virtually including the genius of all the great men of his age, and not his differing from them in one accidental particular.  But to have done with such minute and literal trifling.

The striking peculiarity of Shakspeare’s mind was its generic quality, its power of communication with all other minds—­so that it contained a universe of thought and feeling within itself, and had no one peculiar bias, or exclusive excellence more than another.  He was just like any other man, but that he was like all other men.  He was the least of an egotist that it was possible to be.  He was nothing in himself; but he was all that others were, or that they could become.  He not only had in himself the germs of every faculty and feeling, but he could follow them by anticipation, intuitively, into all their conceivable ramifications, through every change of fortune or conflict of passion, or turn of thought.  He had “a mind reflecting ages past,” and present:—­all the people that ever lived are there.  There was no respect of persons with him.  His genius shone equally on the evil and on the good, on the wise and the foolish, the monarch and the beggar:  “All corners of the earth, kings, queens, and states, maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave,” are hardly hid from his searching glance.  He was like the genius of humanity, changing places with all of us at pleasure, and playing with our purposes as with his own.  He turned the globe round for