ony and
Cleopatra_. By methods that can hardly be described, he contrives to
establish a sort of secret understanding with the reader, so as to
arrest the impression just as it is on the point of becoming tragic.
While dealing most seriously with his characters, he uses a certain
guile: through them we catch, as it were, a roguish twinkle of his
eye, which makes us aware that his mind is secretly sporting itself
with their earnestness; so that we have a double sympathy,--a sympathy
with their passion and with his play. Thus his humour often acts in
such a way as to possess us with mixed emotions: the persons, while
moving us with their thoughts, at the same time start us upon other
thoughts which have no place in them; and we share in all that they
feel, but still are withheld from committing ourselves to them, or so
taking part with them as to foreclose a due regard to other claims.

STYLE.

The word _style_ is often used in a sense equally appropriate to all
the forms of Art,--a sense having reference to some peculiar mode of
conception or execution; as the Saxon, the Norman, the Romanesque
style of architecture, or the style of Titian, of Raphael, of
Rembrandt, of Turner, in painting. In this sense, it includes the
whole general character or distinctive impression of any given
workmanship in Art, and so is applicable to the Drama; as when we
speak of a writer's tragic or comic style, or of such and such dramas
as being in too operatic a style. The peculiarities of Shakespeare's
style in this sense have been involved in the foregoing sections; so
that I shall have no occasion to speak further of them in this general
survey of the Poet's Art. The more restrained and ordinary meaning of
the word looks merely to an author's use of language; that is, his
choice and arrangement of words, the structure of his sentences, and
the cast and texture of his imagery; all, in short, that enters into
his diction, or his manner of conveying his particular thoughts. This
is the matter now to be considered. The subject, however, is a very
wide one, and naturally draws into a multitude of details; so that I
can hardly do more than touch upon a few leading points, lest the
discussion should quite overgrow the limits I have prescribed myself.

On a careful inspection of Shakespeare's poetry, it becomes evident
that none of the epithets commonly used in regard to style, such as
_plain, simple, neat, ornate, elegant, florid, figurative