the insolent condescension of patronizing
benevolence,--if there is anything which makes the vicious more vicious,
it is the "I-am-better-than-thou" expression on the face of conscious
virtue. Now Shakespeare had none of this pride of superiority, either in
its noble or ignoble form. Consider that, if his gigantic powers had
been directed by antipathies instead of sympathies, he would have left
few classes of human character untouched by his terrible scorn. Even if
his antipathies had been those of taste and morals, he would have done
so much to make men hate and misunderstand each other,--so much to
destroy the very sentiment of humanity,--that he would have earned the
distinction of being the greatest satirist and the worst man that ever
lived. But instead, how humanely he clings to the most unpromising forms
of human nature, insists on their right to speak for themselves as much
as if they were passionate Romeos and high-aspiring Buckinghams, and
does for them what he might have desired should be done for himself had
he been Dogberry, or Bottom, or Abhorson, or Bardolph, or any of the
rest! The low characters, the clowns and vagabonds, of Ben Jonson's
plays, excite only contempt or disgust. Shakespeare takes the same
materials as Ben, passes them through the medium of his imaginative
humor, and changes them into subjects of the most soul-enriching mirth.
Their actual prototypes would not be tolerated; but when his genius
shines on them, they "lie in light" before our humorous vision. It must
be admitted that in his explorations of the lower levels of human nature
he sometimes touches the mud deposits; still he never hisses or jeers at
the poor relations through Adam he there discovers, but magnanimously
gives them the wink of recognition!

This is one extreme of his genius, the poetic comprehension and
embodiment of the low. What was the other extreme? How high did he mount
in the ideal region, and what class of his characters represent his
loftiest flight? It is commonly asserted that his supernatural beings,
his ghosts, spectres, witches, fairies, and the like, exhibiting his
command of the dark side and the bright side, the terror and the grace,
of the supernatural world, indicate his rarest quality; for in these, it
is said, he went out of human nature itself, and created beings that
never existed. Wonderful as these are, we must recollect that in them he
worked on a basis of popular superstitions, on a mythology