ering plant, and
destroys its shape, may be in the oak a harmless sport of
exuberance, and even an ornament to its form: bushes which would
be a wilderness in a garden may enhance the beauty of the
grander scenes of Nature. Irregularity, when isolated or taken
out of its place, will always be ugly; while in its proper
connection it may add to the charm by variety. The good men of
Polonius's school, who cannot see beyond their beards, who never
get further than such particulars as, "that is a foolish
figure,"--"that's an ill phrase, a vile phrase,"--"that's
good,"--"this is too long,"--these Hamlet sends "to the barber's
with their beards" and their art criticisms; they are out of
place with such a poet as Shakespeare. All the experience we
have gained warns us against following their steps. The whole
history of Shakespearian criticism for the last century is but a
discovery of the mistakes of those who, for a century before,
were thought to have discovered faults in the Poet. For numbers
of the errors of taste in Shakespeare have turned out to be
striking touches of character; the aesthetic deformities imputed
to his poetry have proved the moral deformities of certain of
his persons; and what had been denounced as a fault was found to
be an excellence.--GERVINUS.

It is to be observed, also, that Shakespeare never brings in any
characters as the mere shadows or instruments or appendages of others.
All the persons, high and low, contain within themselves the reason
why they are there and not elsewhere, why they are so and not
otherwise. None are forced in upon the scene merely to supply the
place of others, and so to be trifled with till the others are ready
to return; but each is treated in his turn as if he were the main
character of the piece. So true is this, that even if one character
comes in as the satellite of another, he does so by a right and an
impulse of his own: he is all the while obeying, or rather executing
the law of his individuality, and has just as much claim on the other
for a primary as the other has on him for a satellite; which may be
aptly instanced in Justice Shallow and Justice Silence, or in Sir Toby
Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. The consequence is, that all the
characters are developed, not indeed at equal length, but with equal
perfectness as far as they go; for, to make the dwarf fill the same
space as t