Chaucer’s characters are sufficiently distinct from one another, but they are too little varied in themselves, too much like identical propositions.  They are consistent, but uniform; we get no new idea of them from first to last; they are not placed in different lights, nor are their subordinate traits brought out in new situations; they are like portraits or physiognomical studies, with the distinguishing features marked with inconceivable truth and precision, but that preserve the same unaltered air and attitude.  Shakspeare’s are historical figures, equally true and correct, but put into action, where every nerve and muscle is displayed in the struggle with others, with all the effect of collision and contrast, with every variety of light and shade.  Chaucer’s characters are narrative, Shakspeare’s dramatic, Milton’s epic.  That is, Chaucer told only as much of his story as he pleased, as was required for a particular purpose.  He answered for his characters himself.  In Shakspeare they are introduced upon the stage, are liable to be asked all sorts of questions, and are forced to answer for themselves.  In Chaucer we perceive a fixed essence of character.  In Shakspeare there is a continual composition and decomposition of its elements, a fermentation of every particle in the whole mass, by its alternate affinity or antipathy to other principles which are brought in contact with it.  Till the experiment is tried, we do not know the result, the turn which the character will take in its new circumstances.  Milton took only a few simple principles of character, and raised them to the utmost conceivable grandeur, and refined them from every base alloy.  His imagination, “nigh sphered in Heaven,” claimed kindred only with what he saw from that height, and could raise to the same elevation with itself.  He sat retired and kept his state alone, “playing with wisdom”; while Shakspeare mingled with the crowd, and played the host, “to make society the sweeter welcome.”

The passion in Shakspeare is of the same nature as his delineation of character.  It is not some one habitual feeling or sentiment preying upon itself, growing out of itself, and moulding every thing to itself; it is passion modified by passion, by all the other feelings to which the individual is liable, and to which others are liable with him; subject to all the fluctuations of caprice and accident; calling into play all the resources of the understanding and all the energies of the will; irritated by obstacles or yielding to them; rising from small beginnings to its utmost height; now drunk with hope, now stung to madness, now sunk in despair, now blown to air with a breath, now raging like a torrent.  The human soul is made the sport of fortune, the prey of adversity:  it is stretched on the wheel of destiny, in restless ecstacy.  The passions are in a state of projection.  Years are melted down to moments, and every instant teems with fate.  We know the results, we see the process.  Thus after Iago has been boasting to himself of the effect of his poisonous suggestions on the mind of Othello, “which, with a little act upon the blood, will work like mines of sulphur,” he adds—­