e of fame. He wrote for the "great vulgar and the small,"
in his time, not for posterity. If Queen Elizabeth and the maids of honour
laughed heartily at his worst jokes, and the catcalls in the gallery were
silent at his best passages, he went home satisfied, and slept the next
night well. He did not trouble himself about Voltaire's criticisms. He was
willing to take advantage of the ignorance of the age in many things; and
if his plays pleased others, not to quarrel with them himself. His very
facility of production would make him set less value on his own
excellences, and not care to distinguish nicely between what he did well
or ill. His blunders in chronology and geography do not amount to above
half a dozen, and they are offences against chronology and geography, not
against poetry. As to the unities, he was right in setting them at
defiance. He was fonder of puns than became so great a man. His barbarisms
were those of his age. His genius was his own. He had no objection to
float down with the stream of common taste and opinion: he rose above it
by his own buoyancy, and an impulse which he could not keep under, in
spite of himself or others, and "his delights did shew most
dolphin-like."

He had an equal genius for comedy and tragedy; and his tragedies are
better than his comedies, because tragedy is better than comedy. His
female characters, which have been found fault with as insipid, are the
finest in the world. Lastly, Shakspeare was the least of a coxcomb of any
one that ever lived, and much of a gentleman.

IV

THE CHARACTERS OF SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS

CYMBELINE

CYMBELINE is one of the most delightful of Shakspeare's historical plays.
It may be considered as a dramatic romance, in which the most striking
parts of the story are thrown into the form of a dialogue, and the
intermediate circumstances are explained by the different speakers, as
occasion renders necessary. The action is less concentrated in
consequence; but the interest becomes more aerial and refined from the
principle of perspective introduced into the subject by the imaginary
changes of scene, as well as by the length of time it occupies. The
reading of this play is like going a journey with some uncertain object at
the end of it, and in which the suspense is kept up and heightened by the
long intervals between each action. Though the events are scattered over
such an extent of surface, and relate to such a variety of characters, yet