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our hourly contemplations; so that the whole of our existence is concentrated, as it were, into every part, and every part is in turn extended throughout the whole. Our earthly visible life is but an insignificant fragment of an endless existence, refracted, as it were, into visibility; and even where it passes beyond our power of vision we are taught to follow it by the power of imaginative reflection. Thus the now and the here dwindle into mere points in the boundless extent and duration which crowd themselves into our thoughts. The present with its interests and enjoyments does not suffice us. To see actions and characters by themselves is not enough; we must see them in their causes and their consequences. Where we are is but a trifle compared to whence we came, and whither we are going. We live not in what we have, but in what we remember and what we hope. Our destinies are in our own hands; and our all-important concern is, to shape them according to our desires. Such, as you all know, is the genius of modern culture. The ideas of eternity and immensity, with their infinite hopes and fears, lie at the bottom of all our serious instructions and contemplations. Here, then, we have along with the picturesque spirit of modern art, an absolute merging of the unities of time and place in the far higher unity of intellectual and moral existence; an existence having nothing to do with time and place, save as the fleeting vesture in which it clothes itself. Events, and actions, and characters, however remote from each other in time and place, are brought together, and viewed in the relations of cause and effect, of condition, and dependence, and reciprocal influence.

In the Romantic drama, therefore, the unities of time and place must obviously give way to higher and more important relations. To see things by themselves does not meet the demands of modern culture; we must see them in their vital and essential relations; and whether they be twenty miles or twenty years asunder matters not, provided they be really related in this way. Here, therefore, these far-famed unities have nothing whatever to do, save as an altogether subordinate concern. Accordingly, Shakspeare everywhere played such fantastic tricks with them as did not fail to make the critics stare. He did not scruple to take his audience over large portions of Europe, and through long periods of time in the course of the same play. From this circumstance some have conjectured that he did not know of the unities at all. They seem to have forgotten that he was the intimate friend of Ben Jonson, who understood the unities as well as Aristotle himself did, and who did his utmost to enforce them on the English stage. The truth is, Shakspeare understood them perfectly; but he knew there were more things in heaven and earth than were ever dreampt of in the philosophy either of those who preached, or of those who practised them. He knew precisely what they were good for, and what they were not good for, as is evident from the fact that he always observed them just so far and no farther than the nature of his subject required. He not only saw them indeed, but saw round them and through them into regions of which neither Aristotle nor Jonson ever dreamed; and the wonderful insight which caught the true genius of modern culture, and anticipated the demands of modern

art, as much surpassed the conceptions of his critics as his practice differed from their precepts.

It is true, Shakspeare wrote for the stage as well as the closet, and therefore had to maintain the probability, or at least the possibility, necessary to scenic illusion. All this, too, he understood as well as any other mortal, and, what is more, he did it better than any other mortal. For, as some one has said, in his hands, the wildest and wonderfulest dreams become more probable, than the commonest forms of life do in the hands of almost any body else. In other words, he gives more seeming reality to what cannot be, than others give to what is. Shakspeare evidently knew both his audience and himself; what they would ask, and what he could give. He knew they did not visit the theatre to learn geography or chronology, but to see a vivid, truthful, lifelike representation of action, character, and passion; that they brought intellects and imaginations as well as senses; and that, if he could not in all cases supply adequate scenery to the latter, he could at least silence their questionings, and raise the former into domination over them. In short, he wrote, as he himself knew very well, for spectators, for men, not for mere geographical and chronological critics. But, though he had in view the stage as the exhibitory scene of his delineations, he knew their real scene was and ought to be the sphere of universal humanity. Into that sphere he aimed to transport, and did transport the minds of his audience. He made the stage, what very few others have made it, a place to exhibit what did, or might, or should occur in God's world, and in the mind of man; and if he could not annihilate the visible con

tradictions of the theatrical whereabout, he knew he could cause those contradictions to be lost or forgotten in the surpassing truth, and life, and coherency of his representations. In doing all this, he showed himself the skilfulest of artists as well as the profoundest of philosophers; and his achievements are not more astonishing than his plans were judicious.

LECTURE V.

SHAKSPEARE'S ALLEGED WANT OF TASTE-HIS FEMALE

CHARACTERS.

IN my last lecture I endeavoured to vindicate Shakspeare from the criticisms of the dissecting school, touching the principle and method of his productions. That Shakspeare developed his subjects organically and according to their innate laws, not according to any system of external rules, was spoken of as the crowning excellence of his works. If, therefore, in this respect, he had not offended the critics in question, his works had been comparatively worthless.

But perhaps the greatest perplexity with these critics was, how to account for the brotherhood between the wonderful excellencies which they acknowledged, and the wonderful faults which they censured. How a mind capable of such exalted beauties should have been betrayed into such shocking deformities, was indeed a problem of no very easy solution. Unable to disentangle the knot which themselves had made, they were obliged to devise some theoretic knife wherewith to cut it asunder. The readiest, perhaps the rationalest way that occurred to them was, to attribute the acknowledged beauties to an astonishing power of genius; the alleged defects, to an equally astonishing want of taste. They

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