aterloo--not a very wise proceeding, you will allow; and the
greatest proof of the universal insanity is, that nobody thought Essex
or Raleigh mad for doing as they did. Nor did the calmest observers--if
there were any "calm observers" in those days--perceive that Shakspeare
was labouring under an access of the most confirmed delirium. They
listened to _Hamlet_, and _Lear_, and _Othello_, and did not discover
that his inspiration was the effect of over-excitement; that his energy
was the preternatural strength bestowed on him by convulsion; and that,
in fact, instead of being a swan of Avon, he was neither more nor less
than a March hare.

Pardon me, my dear Smith, in the escapade in the last page or two--it is
a figurative mode of speech, and you will at once dissect the
_alligator_ through all its scales, and see every thing it is intended
to convey. It was a mad world, my masters; and, as you generally find an
inferior dauber magnify the peculiarities of a great man's style, so as
to give a better idea of his manner than you gather from his own
performances, let us see the prodigious insanity developed in the
imitators of Shakspeare. Never, till I saw the brass knocker on the door
of the Vizier's palace in Timor the Tartar, painted, you told me, by
Wilkins of the _Yorkshire Stingo_, did I know how you produced your
marvellous effects on the door of Billy Button, the tailor of Brentford.
The Vizier's knocker was a caricature; but it showed your style. So,
read the love-scenes of any dramatist during Shakspeare's period--or the
heroic passages of any poetaster copying his manner;--isn't that Bedlam,
my dear Smith? isn't that Hanwell? Read the rhapsodies of Nat Lee--(by a
stretch of truth-speaking which it would be wise to make more
common)--called mad Nat Lee. What do you see in him more indicative of
insanity than in any play of Shakspeare you like to name? Not,
understand me, that Shakspeare was mad according to the standard of
sanity in his own day. Far from it; he was infinitely wise compared to
any man in his century, except, perhaps, Bacon and Burleigh, and retired
to Stratford-on-Avon with a realized fortune equal to twelve or fifteen
hundred a-year. But all mankind run the risk of having a different
standard applied to them from that according to which they were measured
during life. Diocletian was thought an excellent emperor for persecuting
the Christians--we think him a considerable beast for doing so, now.