t he is so pre-eminently wise. The others try to
be always wise, and, alas! it is not necessary to complete the antithesis.

These three things--restraint in the use of sympathy with suffering,
restraint in the use of interest in voluptuous excess, and humour--are, as
it seems to me, the three chief distinguishing points in Shakespere's
handling which are not found in any of his contemporaries, for though there
is humour in not a few of these, none of them is a perfect humorist in the
same sense. Here, as well as in that general range or width of subject and
thought which attracted Dryden's eulogium, he stands alone. In other
respects he shares the qualities which are perceptible almost throughout
this wonderfully fertile department of literature; but he shares them as
infinitely the largest shareholder. It is difficult to think of any other
poet (for with Homer we are deprived of the opportunity of comparison) who
was so completely able to meet any one of his contemporaries on that
contemporary's own terms in natural gift. I say natural gift because,
though it is quite evident that Shakespere was a man of no small reading,
his deficiencies in general education are too constantly recorded by
tradition, and rendered too probable by internal evidence, to be ignored or
denied by any impartial critic. But it is difficult to mention a quality
possessed by any of the school (as it is loosely called), from Marlowe to
Shirley, which he had not in greater measure; while the infinite qualities
which he had, and the others each in one way or another lacked, are
evident. On only one subject--religion--is his mouth almost closed;
certainly, as the few utterances that touch it show, from no incapacity of
dealing with it, and apparently from no other dislike than a dislike to
meddle with anything outside of the purely human province of which he felt
that he was universal master--in short from an infinite reverence.

It will not be expected that in a book like the present--the whole space of
which might very well be occupied, without any of the undue dilation which
has been more than once rebuked, in dealing with Shakespere alone--any
attempt should be made to criticise single plays, passages, and characters.
It is the less of a loss that in reality, as the wisest commentators have
always either begun or ended by acknowledging, Shakespere is your only
commentator on Shakespere. Even the passages which corrupt printing, or the
involved f