er he takes part
with the good character or the bad; nevertheless he somehow so puts
the matter that we cannot help taking part with the good. For I run no
risk in saying there is not a single instance in his plays where the
feelings of any natural-hearted reader fail to go along with those who
are, at least relatively, the best. And as he does not make nor even
let us see which side he is on, so of course we are led to take the
right side, not because he does, but simply because it is the right
side. Thus his moral lessons and inspirations affect us as coming, not
from him, but from Nature herself; and so the authority they carry is
not his, good as that may be, but hers, which is infinitely better.
Thus he is ever appealing directly to the tribunal of our own inward
moral forces, and at the same time speaking health and light into that
tribunal. There need be, there can be, no higher proof of the perfect
moral sanity of his genius than this. And for right moral effect it is
just the best thing we can have, and is worth a thousand times more
than all the ethical arguing and voting in the world. If it be a
marvel how the Poet can keep his own hand so utterly unmoved by the
passion he is representing, it is surely not less admirable that he
should thus, without showing any compassion himself, move our
compassion in just the degree, and draw it to just the place, which
the laws of moral beauty and proportion require.

Herein even Milton, great and good as he unquestionably is, falls far
below Shakespeare as a moral poet. Take the delineation of Satan in
_Paradise Lost_. Now Milton does not leave us at all in doubt as to
where his own moral sympathies go in that delineation: they are
altogether on the side of God and the good Angels. And he tells us
again and again, or as good as tells us, that ours ought to be there;
so that there is no possibility of mistake in the matter.
Notwithstanding I suspect he does not quite succeed in keeping the
reader's moral sympathies there. He does indeed with me: my own
feelings have somehow been so steeped in the foolish old doctrine or
faith which holds obedience to be a cardinal virtue, that they have
never sided with Satan in that controversy. But I believe a majority
of readers do find their moral feelings rather drawing to the rebel
side; this too, notwithstanding their moral judgment may speak the
other way: and when the feelings and the judgment are thus put at
odds, the former ar