good to look at, they will not bear looking into; because the outside, that which is directly seen or heard, really exhausts their whole meaning and significance.

The authors, then, as already intimated, instead of begin ning at the heart of a character, and worki g outwards, be gan at the surface, and worked the other way; and so were precluded from getting beyond the surface by their mode of procedure. It is as if the shell of an egg should be ful.y formed and finished, before the contents were prepared; in which case the contents, of course, could not be got into it. It would have to remain a shell, and nothing more: as such, it might do well enough for a show; just as well indeed as if it were full of meat; but it would not stand the weighing; so that none but the poor innocent hens themselves would long be taken in by it.

With Shakespeare, all this is just precisely reversed. His egg is a real egg, brimful of meat, and not an empty shell; and this, because the formation began at the centre, and the shell was formed last. He gives us not the mere imitations or appearances of things, but the very things themselves. His characters have more or less of surface, but they are solids what is actually and directly shown, is often the least part of them, never the whole: the rest is left to be inferred; and the showing is so managed, withal, that the inferential process is naturally started and propagated in the spectator's mind.

All which clearly implies that Shakespeare conceived his persons, not from their outside, but in their rudiments and first principles. He begins at the heart of a character, and unfolds it outwards, forming and compacting all the internal parts and organs as he unfolds it; and the development, even because it is a real and true development, proceeds at every step, not by mere addition or aggregation of particulars, but by digestion and vital assimilation of all the matter that enters into the structure; there being sent, in virtue of the life that pervades the thing, just such elements, and

Just so much of them, to every organ, as is necessary to its formation. The result of this wonderful process is, that the characters stand for vastly more than is or can be directly seen there is food for endless thought and reflection in them beneath and behind the surface, there is all the substance that the surface promises or is able to contain, — an inexhaustible stock of meaning and significance beyond what appears; so that the further they are looked into, the more of truth they are found to contain.

Thus the Poet's genius seems to have dwelt "at Nature's inner shrine, where she works most when we perceive her least." There is, therefore, no extravagance in the justlycelebrated criticism of Pope. "The poetry of Shakespeare," says he, "was inspiration indeed: he is not so much an imitator as an instrument of Nature; and it is not so just to say that he speaks from her, as that she speaks through him. His characters are so much Nature herself, that it is a sort of injury to call them by so distant a name as copies of her."

On this point, we find, in an essay by Mr. Maurice Mor gan on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff, some remarks so exceedingly apt and striking, that we cannot make up our mind to withhold them:

"The reader must be sensible of something in the composition of Shakespeare's characters, which renders them essentially different from those drawn by other writers. The characters of every drama must indeed be grouped; but in the groups of other poets the parts which are not seen do not in fact exist. But there is a certain roundness and integrity in the forms of Shakespeare, which give them an independence as well as a relation, insomuch that we often meet with passages which, though perfectly felt, cannot be sufficiently explained in words without unfolding the whole character of the speaker.

"Bodies of all kinds, whether metals, plants, or animals, are supposed to possess certain first principles of being, and

to have an existence independent of the accidents which form their magnitude or growth. These accidents are supposed to be drawn in from the surrounding elements, bu not indiscriminately; each plant and each animal imbibes those things only which are proper to its own distinct nature, and which have, besides, such a secret relation to each other, as to be capable of forming a perfect union and coalescence: but so variously are the surrounding elements mingled and disposed, that each particular body, even of those under the same species, has yet some peculiar of its own. Shakespeare appears to have considered the being and growth of the human mind as analogous to this sys

"The reader will not now be surprised if I affirm that those characters in Shakespeare, which are seen only in part, are yet capable of being unfolded and understood in the whole; every part being in fact relative, and inferring all the rest. It is true that the point of action or sentiment, which we are most concerned in, is always held out for our special notice. But who does not perceive that there is a peculiarity about it, which conveys a relish of the whole? And very frequently, when no particular point presses, he boldly makes a character act and speak from those parts of the composition which are inferred only, and not distinctly shown. This produces a wonderful effect; it seems to carry us beyond the Poet to nature itself, and gives an integrity and truth to facts and character, which they could not otherwise obtain. And this is in reality that art in Shakespeare, which, being withdrawn from our notice, we more emphatically call nature. A felt propriety and truth from causes unseen, I take to be the highest point of poetic composition. If the characters of Shakespeare are thus whole, and, as it were, original, while those of almost all other writers are mere imitation, it may be fit to consider them rather as historic than dramatic beings; and, when occasion requires, to account for their conduct from the whole of character. from

general principles, from latent motives, and from policies not avowed."

It is also to be noted, that Shakespeare's characters, gen erally, are not exhibited in any one fixed state or cast of formation. There is a certain vital limberness and ductility in them, so that upon their essential identity more or less of mutation is ever supervening. They grow on and unfold themselves under our eye: we see them in their course of development, in the act and process of becoming; undergoing divers changes, passing through divers stages, animated by mixed and various motives and impulses, passion alternating with passion, purpose with purpose, train of thought with train of thought; so that they often end greatly modified from what they were at the beginning; the same, and yet another. Thus they have, to our minds, a past and future, as well as a present; and even in what we see of them at any given moment there is involved something both of history and of prophecy.

All this, indeed, is but a part of that complexity which belongs to the spirit of Gothic art in all its forms. So that here we have still further reason, in the nature of the thing, why the Gothic Drama was bound to override and ignore the minor unities. For, as it is unnatural that a man should continue altogether the same character, or subject to the same passion, or absorbed in the same purpose, through a period of ten years; so it is equally against nature, that he should undergo much change of character, or be occupied by various passions, or get engrossed in many purposes, the same day. If, therefore, a character is to be represented under divers phases and fluctuations, the nature of the work evidently requires much length of time, a great variety of objects and influences, and, consequently, a wide range of place. On the other hand, the clearness and simplicity of design and structure, which belong to Classic art, necessarily preclude, in the Drama, any great diversity of time and place; since, as the genius of the work requires character to be

represented only under a single and uniform aspect, the time and place of the representation must needs be limited. So that the same principle which, in the Classic Drama, made it necessary to observe the minor unities, made it equally necessary to disregard them in the Gothic Drama; the complexity of the latter, with its implied vicissitudes of character, being naturally incompatible with them.

Again: The organic fitness and correspondence of part with part, which we have found in Shakespeare's dramatic composition, is equally maintained in his individual characterisation. Now, it is quite notorious, that in his works, far more than in almost any others, every thing appears to come, not from him, but from the characters; and from the characters, too, speaking, not as authors, but simply as men. The reason of which must be, that the word is most admirably suited to the character, the character to the word; every thing exactly fitting into and filling its place. Doubtless there are many things which, considered by themselves, might be bettered; but it is not for themselves that he uses them, but as being characteristic of the persons from whom they proceed; and the fact of their seeming to proceed from the persons, not from him, is the best possible proof of his good judgment in using them. Hence it is, that in reading his works we think not of him, but only of what he is describing: we can scarce realize his existence, his individuality is so lost in the objects and characters he brings before us. That he should have known so perfectly how to avoid giving too much or too little; that he should have let out and drawn in the reins at the precise time and place where the subject required; this, as it evinces an almost inconceivable delicacy of mind, is also one of the points wherein there was the least to be learned from his predecessors.

And not only does he so select and apportion the several elements of a character that they coalesce into perfect or ganic wholeness, but also so orders and moves the several characters of a play, as that they may best draw out one