the
cleverness of Portia, the loves of Jessica and of Juliet, the innocent
curiosity of Miranda, the broken heart and crazed brain of the fair
Ophelia.

In this connection also should be noticed his powers of grouping and
composition; which, in the words of one of his biographers, "present to us
pictures from the realms of spirits and from fairyland, which in deep
reflection and in useful maxims, yield nothing to the pages of the
philosophers, and which glow with all the poetic beauty that an
exhaustless fancy could shower upon them."

IMAGINATION AND FANCY.--And this brings us to notice, in the third place,
his rare gifts of imagination and of fancy; those instruments of the
representative faculty by which objects of sense and of mind are held up
to view in new, varied, and vivid lights. Many of his tragedies abound in
imaginative pictures, while there are not in the realm of Fancy's fairy
frostwork more exquisite representations than those found in the _Tempest_
and the _Midsummer Night's Dream_.

POWER OF EXPRESSION.--Fourth, Shakspeare is remarkable for the power and
felicity of his expression. He adapts his language to the persons who use
it, and thus we pass from the pompous grandiloquence of king and herald to
the common English and coarse conceits of clown and nurse and
grave-digger; from the bombastic speech of Glendower and the rhapsodies of
Hotspur to the slang and jests of Falstaff.

But something more is meant by felicity of expression than this. It
applies to the apt words which present pithy bits of household philosophy,
and to the beautiful words which convey the higher sentiments and flights
of fancy; to the simple words couching grand thoughts with such exquisite
aptness that they seem made for each other, so that no other words would
do as well, and to the dainty songs, like those of birds, which fill his
forests and gardens with melody. Thus it is that orators and essayists
give dignity and point to their own periods by quoting Shakspeare.

Such are a few of Shakspeare's high merits, which constitute him the
greatest poet who has ever used the English tongue--poet, moralist, and
philosopher in one.

HIS FAULTS.--If it be necessary to point out his faults, it should be
observed that most of them are those of the age and of his profession. To
both may be charged the vulgarity and lewdness of some of his
representations; which, however, err in this respect far less than the
writings of his