and these beings, though existing only in the imagination,
nevertheless possess such truth and consistency, that even with such
misshapen abortions as Caliban, he extorts the assenting conviction, that
were there such beings they would so conduct themselves. In a word, as he
carries a bold and pregnant fancy into the kingdom of nature, on the
other hand, he carries nature into the region of fancy, which lies beyond
the confines of reality. We are lost in astonishment at the close intimacy
he brings us into with the extraordinary, the wonderful, and the
unheard-of."

_a mind reflecting ages past_. "These words occur in the first lines of a
laudatory poem on Shakespeare printed in the second folio (1632). The poem
is signed 'J. M. S.' and was attributed by Coleridge to 'John Milton,
Student.' See his 'Lectures on Shakespeare' (ed. T. Ashe), pp. 129-130."
Waller-Glover, IV, 411.

P. 36. _All corners_, etc. "Cymbeline." iii. 4, 39.

_nodded to him_. "Midsummer Night's Dream," iii, I, 177.

_his so potent art_. "Tempest," v, i, 50.

_When he conceived of a character_, etc. Cf. Maurice Morgann, "On the
Character of Falstaff": "But it was not enough for Shakespeare to have
formed his characters with the most perfect truth and coherence; it was
further necessary that he should possess a wonderful facility of
compressing, as it were, his own spirit into these images, and of giving
alternate animation to the forms. This was not to be done _from without_;
he must have _felt_ every varied situation, and have spoken thro' the
organ he had formed. Such an intuitive comprehension of things and such a
facility must unite to produce a Shakespeare." (Nichol Smith: "Eighteenth
Century Essays on Shakespeare," p. 247, n.)

_subject to the same skyey influences_. Cf. "Measure for Measure," iii, I,
9: "servile to all the skyey influences."

_his frequent haunts_. Cf. "Comus," 314: "my daily walks and ancient
neighborhood."

P. 37. _coheres semblably together_. Cf. 2 "Henry IV," v, i, 72: "to see
the semblable coherence."

_It has been ingeniously remarked_, by Coleridge, "Seven Lectures on
Shakespeare and Milton," p. 116: "The power of poetry is, by a single word
perhaps, to instil that energy into the mind, which compels the
imagination to produce the picture.... Here, by introducing a single happy
epithet, 'crying,' a complete picture is presented to the mind, and in the
production of such pictures the power of genius consists."