d such natural temperance,
that there is seldom any thing of hollowness or insolidity in the
result. Except in some of his earlier plays, written before he had
found his proper strength, and before his genius had got fairly
disciplined into power, there is nothing ambitious or obtrusive in his
idealizing; no root of falsehood in the work, as indeed there never is
in any work of art that is truly worthy the name. Works of artifice
are a very different sort of thing. And one, perhaps the main, secret
of Shakespeare's mode in this respect is, that the ideal is so equally
diffused, and so perfectly interfused with the real, as not to disturb
the natural balance and harmony of things. In other words, his poetry
takes and keeps an elevation at all points alike above the plane of
fact. Therewithal his mass of real matter is so great, that it keeps
the ideal mainly out of sight. It is only by a special act of
reflection that one discovers there is any thing but the real in his
workmanship; and the appreciative student, unless his attention is
specially drawn to that point, may dwell with him for years without
once suspecting the presence of the ideal, because in truth his mind
is kindled secretly to an answering state. It is said that even
Schiller at first saw nothing but realism in Shakespeare, and was
repelled by his harsh truth; but afterwards became more and more
impressed with his ideality, which seemed to bring him near the old
poets.

Thus even when Shakespeare idealizes most the effect is to make the
characters truer to themselves and truer to nature than they otherwise
would be. This may sound paradoxical, nevertheless I think a little
illustration will make it good. For the proper idealizing of Art is a
concentration of truth, and not, as is often supposed, a substitution
of something else in the place of it. Now no man, that has any
character to speak of, does or can show his whole character at any one
moment or in any one turn of expression: it takes the gathered force
and virtue of many expressions to make up any thing rightly
characteristic of him. In painting, for instance, the portrait of an
actual person, if the artist undertakes to represent him merely as he
is at a given instant of time, he will of course be sure to
misrepresent him. In such cases literal truth is essential untruth.
Because the person cannot fairly deliver himself in any one instant of
expression; and the business of Art is to distil the se