whole, "vital in every part"; and the organization is strictly an addition to the world, with nothing in literature and nothing in nature which exactly matches it. And it is alive, and refuses to die. Nature herself is compelled to adopt it into her race,

"And give to it an equal date

With Andes and with Ararat."

You can gaze at it as you can gaze at a natural landscape, where hills, rocks, woods, stubble, grass, clouds, sky, atmosphere, each separate, each related, combine to form one impressive effect of beauty and power.

Perhaps, however, it would be more proper to call this Shakespearian drama an approximation to an organic product, rather than a realization of one. The processes of nature are followed, but the perfection of nature is the ideal it aims at rather than reaches. Still, if we allow for human defects and imperfections, and take into view the fact that Shakespeare had to submit to conditions imposed by his audience as well as conditions imposed by his genius, his work measurably fulfils the requirements of Kant's concise definition of an organic creation, namely, "that thing in which all the parts are mutually ends and means."

Admitting, then, that the drama we are considering has organic form, and not merely mechanical regularity, the question arises, What is the inner law, the central

idea, the principle of life, by which, and in obedience to which, it was organized? Perhaps the new school of philosophic critics have done almost as much injury to Shakespeare's fame, in their attempt to answer this question, as they have done good in rescuing his dramas from the old school of sciolists and commentators, who were pecking at him with their formal rules of taste. The philosophic critics very properly insisted that he should be judged by principles deduced from his own method, and not by rules generalized from the method of the Greek dramatists; that the laws by which he should be tried were the laws which he acknowledged and obeyed, the laws of his own creative imagination; and that the very originality of his dramas freed them from tests which are applicable only to the products of imitation. They thus raised Shakespeare from a breaker of the laws into a lawgiver; and the brilliant vagabond, whom every catchpole of criticism thought he could hustle about and reprimand, was all at once lifted into a dictator of law to the bench.

Having relieved Shakespeare from these policemen of letters, and substituted some reach of human vision for their rat's eyes, the new school of philosophic critics proceeded to state what were the ideas which formed the ground-plans and organizing principles of his works; but in doing this, they brought Shakespeare down to

their own level, and made him their spokesman. Intellectual egotism supplanted intellectual interpretation. Read Schlegel, Ulrici, even Gervinus, and you are delighted as long as they confine themselves to the busi. ness of exposing the folly of the critics they supplanted ; but when they come to the real problem, and attempt to state the meaning and purpose of Shakespeare in any given play, you are apt to be as much surprised as was that philanthropist, who was confidentially informed that the ultimate object Napoleon had in view in his numerous wars was the establishment of Sunday schools. They find in Shakespeare's plays certain ethical, political, or social generalities, which, it seems, they were written to illustrate, or rather from which the plays grow, as from so many roots. But causes are to be measured by effects; the effects here are marvellous structures of genius; and these do not shoot up from the withered roots of barren truisms. A whole must be greater than any of its parts; and yet the philosophic idea of a Shakespearian drama, as eliminated by the German professors, is less than the least of its parts. A single magical word in Shakespeare is often greater, and has more reach of application, than the professorial bit of wisdom which they present as the grand total of the play, and which is often too obvious in itself to make a resort to Shakespeare necessary for a perception of

its truth. Their "ground ideas" of the dramas are not worth any minor Shakespearian ideas they are assumed to include.

Indeed, before we claim to understand a Shakespearian whole, we must first see if we are competent to take in one of its parts. It is evident that the most important parts are the characters, and in respect to these, and to Shakespeare's method of characterization, there is much misconception. What are these characters? Are they copies of men and women, as we see them in the world, slightly idealized portraits of persons, witty, passionate, thoughtful, or criminal? Are they such people as Shakespeare might have seen in the streets of London in the time of Elizabeth? No, for they are plainly Shakespearian, and not merely Elizabethan. Even the court-fools are endowed with the Shakespearian quality, are perfect of their kind, and are such court-fools as Shakespeare might have conceived himself to be one of, if he had, in Mr. Weller's phrase, "been born in that station of life."

Yet these characters are certainly not individualized qualities and passions, for they are eminently natural. If their naturalness does not come from their being portraits, slightly varied and heightened, of individuals, in what does their naturalness consist?

In answer to this question, it is first to be said, that

these characters prove that Shakespeare had a conception of human nature, abstracted from all individuals. He not only looked at individuals, and into individuals, but through individuals to their common basis in humanity. But he did not rest here. This imaginative analysis, this vital generalization, this glance into the sources of things, evinces, of course, his possession of the profoundest philososophical genius as the foundation of his dramatic genius; but it is not the genius itself, for he also surveyed human nature in action, human nature as modified by human life, by manners, customs, institutions, and beliefs, and by that primitive personality which separates men, as humanity unites them.

These characters, then, are individual natures rooted in human nature. The question then arises, Is their individuality particular or representative? The least observation shows, we think, that they stand for more than individuals. We are continually saying that this or that person of our acquaintance resembles one of Shakespeare's characters; we may even learn much about him by studying the character he resembles; but we never thoroughly identify him with the character; for the character is more powerful, more perfectly developed, acts out the law of his being with more freedom, than the actual person with whom he is compared. Further than this, if we are accustomed to classify

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