espeare is philosopher of both sexes, though this is not the rule,
as we will readily agree, thinking over the great portrait painters of
character. To state a single illustrative case: Hall Caine must be
allowed to have framed some mighty men, tragic, or melodramatic
sometimes, somber always, but men of bulk and character. Pete, in "The
Manxman," is a creation sufficient to make the artist conceiving him
immortal; and Red Jason is no less real, manly, mighty, self-mastering,
self-surrendering. Caine's men are giants; but his women do not
satisfy and seldom interest us, with an exception in a few cases--as
with Naomi in "The Scape Goat," and Greeba, wife of Michal Sunlocks;
though Naomi is little more than a figure seen at a doorway, standing
in the sun; for she has not forged a character up to the time when her
lover puts arm about her, as she droops above her dying father, when
his vast love would make him immortal for her sake. Glory Quayle is
interesting, but unsatisfactory. My belief is that Tolstoi has drawn
no man approaching his astonishing Anna Karenina. Shakespeare is
ambidexter here. All things are seemingly native to him; for he is
never at a loss. Not words, thoughts, dreams, images, music, fail him
for a moment even. Who found him feeling for a word? Did we not find
them ready at his hand as Ariel was ready to serve Prospero? Lear,
Prospero, Brutus, Cassius, Falstaff, Iago, Macbeth, Hamlet, are as
crowning creations as Cleopatra, Miranda, Lady Macbeth, Katharine the
Shrew, Imogen, or Cordelia. We know not which to choose, as one who
looks through a mountain vista to the sea, declaring each view fairer
than the last, yet knowing if he might choose any one for a perpetual
possession he could not make decision. We are incapable of choosing
between Shakespeare's men and his women.

Small volumes are best for reading Shakespeare, for this reason: In
large volumes the dramas get lost to your thought, as a nook of beauty
is apt to get lost in the abundant beauty of summer hills, solely
because there are so many; but when put into small volumes, each play
becomes individualized, made solitary, and stands out like a tree
growing in a wide field alone. Do not conceive of Shakespeare's plays
as marble column, pediment, frieze, metope, built into a Parthenon, but
conceive of each play as a Parthenon; for I think it certain each one
might have stood solitary on cape or hill, as those old Greeks built
temp