uce a unity of tone above even the art of the classic unities. From
the irresponsible comedy of Falstaff to the deepest tragic notes of Lear,
the whole gamut of human emotions encounters responsive chords in the
critic's mind--the young love of Romeo and Juliet or the voluptuous
abandonment of Antony and Cleopatra, the intellect of Iago irresistibly
impelled to malignant activity or Hamlet entangled in the coils of a fatal
introspection. To the sheer poetry of Shakespeare he is also acutely
sensitive, to the soft moonlit atmosphere of the "Midsummernight's Dream,"
to the tender gloom of "Cymbeline," to the "philosophic poetry" of "As You
Like It." Some of his interpretations of isolated passages are hardly to
be surpassed. He comments minutely and exquisitely on what he considers to
be a touchstone of poetic feeling,

"Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty."[90]

And with what complete insight he translates a speech of Antony's:

"This precarious state and the approaching dissolution of his greatness
are strikingly displayed in the dialogue of Antony with Eros:

'_Antony._ Eros, thou yet behold'st me?

_Eros._ Ay, noble lord.

_Antony._ Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish;
A vapour sometime, like a bear or lion,
A towered citadel, a pendant rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon't, that nod unto the world
And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs,
They are black vesper's pageants.

_Eros._ Ay, my lord.

_Antony._ That which is now a horse, even with a thought
The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct
As water is in water.

_Eros._ It does, my lord.

_Antony._ My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is
Even such a body,' etc.

"This is, without doubt, one of the finest pieces of poetry in Shakspeare.
The splendour of the imagery, the semblance of reality, the lofty range of
picturesque objects hanging over the world, their evanescent nature, the
total uncertainty of what is left behind, are just like the mouldering
schemes of human greatness. It is finer than Cleopatra's passionate
lamentation over his fallen grandeur, because it is more dim, unstable,
unsubstantial."[91]

If an understanding of Shakespeare in Hazlitt's day may be taken as a
measure of a critic's depth of insight, his attitude toward Shakespeare's
fellow-dramatists will just as surely r