as definite
as that of Greece and Rome, and though he re-created instead of copying
his materials, though he Shakespearianized them, he followed no
different process of his genius in delineating Hecate and Titania than
in delineating Dame Quickly and Anne Page. All his characters, from the
rogue Autolycus to the heavenly Cordelia, are in a certain sense ideal;
but the question now relates to the rarity of the elements, and the
height of the mood, and not merely to the action of his mind; and we
think that the characters technically called supernatural which appear
in his works are much nearer the earth than others which, though they
lack the name, have more of the spiritual quality of the thing. The
highest supernatural is to be found in the purest, highest, most
beautiful souls.

Did it never strike you in reading "The Tempest," that Ariel is not so
supernatural as Miranda? We may be sure that Ferdinand so thought, in
that rapture of wonder when her soul first shone on him through her
innocent eyes; and afterwards when he asks,

"I do beseech you
(Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers)
What is your name?"

And doubtless there was a more marvellous melody in her voice than in
the mysterious magical music

"That crept by him upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and his passion
With its sweet air."

Shakespeare, indeed, in his transcendently beautiful embodiments of
feminine excellence, the most exquisite creations in literature, passed
into a region of sentiment and thought, of ideals and of ideas,
altogether higher and more supernatural than that region in which he
shaped his delicate Ariels and his fairy Titanias. The question has been
raised whether sex extends to soul. However this may be decided, here is
a soul, with its records in literature, who is at once the manliest of
men, and the most womanly of women; who can not only recognize the
feminine element in existing individuals, but discern the idea, the
pattern, the radiant genius of womanhood itself, as it hovers, unseen to
other eyes, over the living representatives of the sex. Literature
boasts many eminent female poets and novelists; but not one has ever
approached Shakespeare in the purity, the sweetness, the refinement, the
elevation, of his perceptions of feminine character,--much less
approached him in the power of embodying his perceptions in persons.
These characters are so thoroughly domesticated on