ng
of the theatres at the Restoration till the present day, the play has
kept its place on the stage; while it is also among the first of the
Poet's works to be read, and the last to be forgotten, its interest
being as durable in the closet as on the boards. Well do I remember it
as the very beginning of my acquaintance with Shakespeare; one of the
dearest acquaintances I have ever made, and which has been to me a
source of more pleasure and profit than I should dare undertake to
tell.

Critics have too often entertained themselves with speculations as to
the Poet's specific moral purpose in this play or that. Wherein their
great mistake is the not duly bearing in mind, that the special
proposing of this or that moral lesson is quite from or beside the
purpose of Art. Nevertheless, a work of art, to be really deserving
the name, must needs be moral, because it must be proportionable and
true to Nature; thus attuning our inward forces to the voice of
external order and law: otherwise it is at strife with the compact of
things; a piece of dissonance; a jarring, unbalanced, crazy thing,
that will die of its own internal disorder. If, then, a work be
morally bad, this proves the author more a bungler than anything else.
And if any one admire it or take pleasure in it, he does so, not from
reason, but from something within him which his reason, in so far as
he has any, necessarily disapproves: so that he is rather to be
laughed at as a dunce than preached to as a sinner; though perhaps
this latter should be done also.

As to the moral temper of _The Merchant of Venice_, critics have
differed widely, some regarding the play as teaching the most
comprehensive humanity, others as caressing the narrowest bigotries of
the age. This difference may be fairly taken as an argument of the
Poet's candour and evenhandedness. A special-pleader is not apt to
leave the hearers in doubt on which side of the question he stands. In
this play, as in others, the Poet, I think, ordered things mainly with
a view to dramatic effect; though to such effect in the largest and
noblest sense. And the highest praise compatible with the nature of
the work is justly his, inasmuch as he did not allow himself to be
swayed either way from the right measures and proportions of art. For
Art is, from its very nature, obliged to be "without respect of
persons." Impartiality is its essential law, the constituent of its
being. And of Shakespeare it could least