r we have had the
misfortune to see human nature through and through, and after no
choice remains but to adopt the melancholy truth that "no virtue or
greatness is altogether pure and genuine," or the dangerous error that
"the highest perfection is attainable." Here we therefore may perceive
in the poet himself, notwithstanding his power to excite the most
fervent emotions, a certain cool indifference, but still the
indifference of a superior mind, which has run through the whole
sphere of human existence and survived feeling.

The irony in Shakespeare has not merely a reference to the separate
characters, but frequently to the whole of the action. Most poets who
portray human events in a narrative or dramatic form themselves take a
part, and exact from their readers a blind approbation or condemnation
of whatever side they choose to support or oppose. The more zealous
this rhetoric is, the more certainly it fails of its effect. In every
case we are conscious that the subject itself is not brought
immediately before us, but that we view it through the medium of a
different way of thinking. When, however, by a dextrous manoeuvre, the
poet allows us an occasional glance at the less brilliant reverse of
the medal, then he makes, as it were, a sort of secret understanding
with the select circle of the more intelligent of his readers or
spectators; he shows them that he had previously seen and admitted the
validity of their tacit objections; that he himself is not tied down
to the represented subject, but soars freely above it; and that, if he
chose, he could unrelentingly annihilate the beautiful and
irresistibly attractive scenes which his magic pen has produced. No
doubt, wherever the proper tragic enters, everything like irony
immediately ceases; but from the avowed raillery of Comedy, to the
point where the subjection of mortal beings to an inevitable destiny
demands the highest degree of seriousness, there are a multitude of
human relations which unquestionably may be considered in an ironical
view, without confounding the eternal line of separation between good
and evil. This purpose is answered by the comic characters and scenes
which are interwoven with the serious parts in most of those pieces of
Shakespeare where romantic fables or historical events are made the
subject of a noble and elevating exhibition. Frequently an intentional
parody of the serious part is not to be mistaken in them; at other
times the conne