se parts, in a manner equal to that which
their intrinsic value demands, or to the perfection he is able to give
to his work in those places which are best suited to his powers. There
are points in which the wisest man that ever existed is no stronger than
a child. In this sense the sublimest genius will be found infelix operas
summa, nam ponere totum nescit. And, if he properly knows himself, and
is aware where lies his strength, and where his weakness, he will look
for nothing more in the particulars which fall under the last of these
heads, than to escape as he can, and to pass speedily to things in which
he finds himself at home and at his ease.

Shakespear we are accustomed to call the most universal genius that ever
existed. He has a truly wonderful variety. It is almost impossible
to pronounce in which he has done best, his Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear,
or Othello. He is equally excellent in his comic vein as his tragic.
Falstaff is in his degree to the full as admirable and astonishing, as
what he achieved that is noblest under the auspices of the graver
muse. His poetry and the fruits of his imagination are unrivalled. His
language, in all that comes from him when his genius is most alive, has
a richness, an unction, and all those signs of a character which admits
not of mortality and decay, for ever fresh as when it was first uttered,
which we recognise, while we can hardly persuade ourselves that we
are not in a delusion. As Anthony Wood says(4), "By the writings of
Shakespear and others of his time, the English tongue was exceedingly
enriched, and made quite another thing than what it was before." His
versification on these occasions has a melody, a ripeness and variety
that no other pen has reached.

(4) Athenae Oxonienses, vol. i. p. 592.

Yet there were things that Shakespear could not do. He could not make
a hero. Familiar as he was with the evanescent touches of mind en
dishabille, and in its innermost feelings, he could not sustain the
tone of a character, penetrated with a divine enthusiasm, or fervently
devoted to a generous cause, though this is truly within the compass of
our nature, and is more than any other worthy to be delineated. He could
conceive such sentiments, for there are such in his personage of Brutus;
but he could not fill out and perfect what he has thus sketched. He
seems even to have had a propensity to bring the mountain and the
hill to a level with the plain. Caesar is spiritle