most conspicuous.

* * * * *

Equally remarkable is the Poet's intellectual plenipotence in so
ordering and moving the several characters of a play as that they may
best draw out each other by mutual influences, and set off each other
by mutual contrasts. The persons are thus assorted and attempered with
perfect insight both of their respective natures and of their common
fitness to his purpose. And not the least wonderful thing in his works
is the exquisite congruity of what comes from the persons with all the
circumstances and influences under which they are represented as
acting; their transpirations of character being withal so disposed
that the principle of them shines out freely and clearly on the mind.
We have a good instance of this in Romeo's speech just before he
swallows the poison; every word of which is perfectly idiomatic of the
speaker, and at the same time thoroughly steeped in the idiom of his
present surroundings. It is true, Shakespeare's persons, like those in
real life, act so, chiefly because they are so; but so perfectly does
he seize and impart the germ of a character, along with the proper
conditions of its development, that the results seem to follow all of
their own accord. Thus in his delineations every thing is fitted to
every other thing; so that each requires and infers the others, and
all hang together in most natural coherence and congruity.

To illustrate this point a little more in detail, let us take his
treatment of passion. How many forms, degrees, varieties of passion
he has portrayed! Yet I am not aware that any instance of
disproportion or unfitness has ever been successfully pointed out in
his works. With but two or three exceptions at the most, so perfect is
the correspondence between the passion and the character, and so
freely and fitly does the former grow out of the circumstances in
which the latter is placed, that we have no difficulty in justifying
and accounting for the passion. The passion is thoroughly
characteristic, and pervaded with the individuality of its subject.
And this holds true not only of different passions, but of different
modifications of the same passion; the forms of love, for instance,
being just as various and distinct as the characters in which it is
shown. Then too he unfolds a passion in its rise and progress, its
turns and vicissitudes, its ebbings and flowings, so that we go along
with it freely and naturally fr