y is inconceivable, admirable, almost divine; yet no
less an operation is necessary for the production of any great work, for
by the definition of unity of membership above given, not only certain
couples or groups of parts, but _all_ the parts of a noble work must be
separately imperfect; each must imply and ask for all the rest; the
glory of every one of them must consist in its relation to the rest;
neither while so much as _one_ is wanting can _any_ be right. This
faculty is indeed something that looks as if its possessor were made in
the Divine image!

'The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity;
Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew;--
The conscious stone to beauty grew.'

EMERSON.

By the power of the combining imagination various ideas are chosen from
an infinite mass, ideas which are separately imperfect, but which shall
together be perfect, and of whose unity therefore the idea must be
formed at the very moment they are seized, as it is only in that unity
that their appropriateness consists, and therefore only the conception
of that unity can prompt the preference. Therefore he alone can conceive
and compose who sees the _whole_ at once before him.

Shakspeare is the great example of this marvellous power. Not only is
every word which falls from the lips of his various characters true to
his first conception of them, so true that we always know how they will
act under any given circumstances, and we could substitute no other
words than the words used by them without contradicting our first
impression of them; but every character with which they come in contact
is not only ever true to itself, but is precisely of the nature best
fitted to develop the traits, vices, or virtues of the main figure. So
perfect and complete is this lifelike unity, that we can scarcely think
of one of his leading characters without recalling all those with whom
it is associated. If we name Juliet, for instance, not only is her idea
inseparable from that of Romeo, but the whole train of Montagues and
Capulets, Mercutio, Tybalt, the garrulous nurse, the lean apothecary,
the lonely friar, sweep by. What an exquisite trait of the poetic
temperament, tenderness, and human sympathies of this same lonely friar
is given us in his exclamation:

'Here comes the lady: O, so light a foot
Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint.'