be the objective clearness, the depth and breadth of his self-consciousness—so far, that is, as philosophy is essentially nothing more than the essence of humanity, developed in and with humanity—-then in this sense has Shakspeare exhibited an unfathomable depth of philosophy. In short, the history of the world is mirrored. with such clearness and transparency in the mind of Shakspeare, its leading ideas are so present to him, the riddle of human nature so apparent and open, that we may study philosophy as well as history in his works.

Lastly, if we inquire what he owed to his circumstances in life, to his nation and his age, we must here again answer little, and yet much—much, and yet little. Little-in so far as he carried in his own bosom all that is best and highest, maintained it pure and fine, carefully nursed it and powerfully developed it. Much-in so far as, first of all, the personal circumstances, which resulted from his youthful indiscretions which drove him to London, took a favourable shape for the improvement of his poetical genius. The opulent, diversified, and elegant life of the capital, furnished him opportunity of studying the world and mankind, of collecting knowledge and experience, and satiating his heart and soul with all the fulness of existence. His free and independent position opened to him an unbounded horizon, an unbroken view into the entire breadth and depth of the present, while the thought of a wife and child, and helpless father, furnished the checks necessary to keep him from losing himself amid the license of this liberty. The want which at the first outset weighed heavily upon him, no doubt strung and strengthened his mental faculties. His good fortune denied to him hereditary distinction, or an easy acquisition of wealth and fame; by a painful struggle he must gain for himself whatever of the world's pomps and riches he was to call his own. He did not, however, steel himself with that passionate, self-pleasing, fantastic vanity, and titanic defiance and haughtiness, which rent the soul of Byron, and veiled before his eyes pure beauty in a troubled mist; neither did he flatter himself into an easy, undisturbed, contemplative indifference, as Goethe did, who assuredly would have been still more energetic, more solid, more morally and religiously earnest, had his outward circumstances been less uninterruptedly prosperous. Lastly, by his

acquaintance with distinguished men of all ranks, and especially by his friendship with the eminent historical characters, Southampton, Pembroke, and Montgomery, who played a considerable part in the most important affairs of their age, Shakspeare gained an immediate vivid perception of the hidden springs of history and politics—a perception of which no study can supply the place to the poet. Even the growing controversy with his learned friend Ben Jonson was without doubt useful to him; the sharp ley of the critic may probably have washed away many a blemish from his poems, which he indeed never considered perfect, but was continually revising and correcting.

How much the spirit of his age, the character and mighty advance of the English nation under Elizabeth, contributed to the improvement of Shakspeare's genius, I have already indicated at the opening of this section. And yet Shakspeare-and this characteristic distinction of his poetry has hitherto been entirely overlooked -stands in a very different relation to the spirit of his age, from what Goethe, for instance, or Calderon, or Schiller, and Tieck do. The latter adopted in their poems the special ideas, the peculiar predominant tendencies, views, passions of their nation and age, in a greater or less degree, in order to invest them with the light and brilliancy of a poetical colouring. Shakspeare, on the contrary, allows only the general spirit of the age to operate upon him; he works upon, and is moved by nothing but what is common to all mankind. This he exhibits, no doubt, under the colours and contours of the age; since all the general human traits need a limited and concrete form before they can be artistically pourtrayed. They appear, therefore, even in his poetry, no doubt, under the form of the 16th century and of English nationality. But on the other hand, we find no trace of any of the special one-sided tendencies of his age. He rather stands in a directly reverse ratio to his age to what Goethe does. While the latter, (as, for instance, in "The Natural Daughter," &c.) exhibits single moments of the spirit of the age, under wholly general forms, Shakspeare throughout invests the general in the special forms of life of his country and nation, and whereas Goethe adopts the essential character, as well as the separate intellectual motives of the present age, lives in them, and elaborates them into poetical figures; Shak

speare stands, apparently wholly uninfluenced by them, on the free mountain height above them. Even the great separation of the Papists and the Reformed, which at this time excited every mind, is not in one of his acknowledged genuine works alluded to by a single word of party or sectarian rancour. He has not adopted into his poetry the dispute, and equally little has the idea occurred to him of making the moral and ecclesiastical differences between the Puritan and the high Churchman the subject of a drama; scarcely can a few covert allusions to them be detected. In politics he followed, it is true, the general current of love and admiration for Elizabeth; he is eminently monarchical in his sentiments, and his reverence for the sacred right of an hereditary monarchy speaks out loudly and without reserve in many of his pieces. And yet he has not employed for the purpose of his poetry the already matured, or fast growing opposition to it in the political views of his day. It is only the general idea of the state in its relation to the Church and in its general forms-the essence of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy respectively, that he has attempted to elucidate in some of his historical dramas. We meet, no doubt, with jokes and allusions to many of the prevailing tendencies of the spirit of his age-to traits of character, to the opinions and humours, the customs and habits of his countrymen, but no entire poem is founded on them. In reference to his own art, and especially to the new form which Jonson and his school sought to give to it, he made no doubt an exception. Unquestionably more than one of his pieces was designed to combat the new, and to defend the old. This object, however, was only secondary, while the real and fundamental idea was much higher, and of universal interest; as, for instance, in the "Troilus and Cressida," which I have principally in view in these remarks. Even here, too, his poetry still retains its virgin purity, a lovely absence of all design, and the lofty ideal freedom and independence which in so eminent a degree marked his personal character.

III.

SHAKSPEARE'S DRAMATIC STYLE, AND POETICAL VIEW OF THINGS IN GENERAL.

THE character of a Poet historically depends, partly on the contemporary condition of art, and partly on the circumstances of his age and nation. In the preceding sections I have attempted to sketch the character of Shakspeare under both these aspects. In his case, however, their influence was not so great as it usually is with most other poets; the former, however, was more considerable in this respect than the latter. With every true artist and poet, indeed, they can only act upon his poetical organization so far as they are the conditions and springs of the formation of his character as a man, and of his mental development as a poet or artist. As an individual, the poet is no doubt an organic member of the totality of his nation, as well as of history and humanity, and subject, therefore, to the conditions of time and finite existence. But as a genuine poetical genius, he stands at once abore every special grade of the progress of art; he belongs to all times and to all people. The greater he is, the more independent will he be of all the particular and narrow interests, ideas, and tendencies of his age and country, and the higher will he soar above the special and existing development of his art. For the human, finite, individuality of the artist is as it were but the substratum and mechanism with which the eternal idea, the immutable mind of art, combines itself for its temporary realisation. Out of this combination arises a new life, and a special form of the universal spirit of art, in which the human, the individual, and the perishable, are fused together with the ever-enduring vitality of the idea, into organic unity, which, consequently, is the expression no doubt of individual character, but also at the same time the living portraiture and realization of the universal essence of art. This is, in

short, artistic genius. The particular manner in which Shakspeare, agreeably to his own individuality, apprehended the spirit and essence of art-the peculiar poetic view of the world and things, which pervades his works as their fundamental and animating principle, and from which arise all the characteristic and distinctive features of his poetry-these, in one word, are Shakspeare's self, in his special character as poet,

Now, in the first place, Shakspeare is pre-eminently a dramatic poet; this is sufficiently proved by such works of his as we possess, which are not directly of a dramatic character. In his lyrical pieces-the 154 Sonnets, and the collection entitled "The Passionate Pilgrim,”—he reveals not merely his own individual personality, he depicts not only the emotions of his own soul, his own experience and views, but still more the character of the personages (whether real or feigned) whom he is addressing, and it is only in the interwoven description of his own connexion with them that his individual feelings are allowed to transpire. These pieces, moreover, are chiefly of an epigrammatic turn, full of verbal play and antithesis, replete with wit and acuteness, and distinguished not so much by the free, poetic flow of feeling, or by the unbroken and harmonious echo of external life in the poet's rich and exquisite sensibility-wherein, in truth, the subjectmatter of lyrical poetry consists-as rather by the depth and fulness of the thoughts and reflections. They argue far too much; they are more like speeches than lyrical songs; indeed, we might justly describe them as dialogical, in so far as the reasons and objections, the principles and views, as well as the whole personal character of the persons to whom they are addressed, find distinct utterance in them. It is on this account that they can only be rightly understood in the order which Shakspeare himself has given to them, and that taken singly they are for the most part extremely obscure. His other minor poems-the "Venus and Adonis," "The Rape of Lucrece," "The Lover's Complaint," which have been wrongly termed epical, since they are more correctly described as idyllic (i. e. in the original sense of the term idyl -a short poetic picture in narrative verse) are also both in drawing and colouring of so dramatic a cast, that they seem to want nothing but the dialogue in order to be transferred to another domain of

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