“The objection, that Shakespeare wounds our feelings by the open display of the most disgusting moral odiousness, harrows up the mind unmercifully, and tortures even our senses by the exhibition of the most insupportable and hateful spectacles, is one of much greater importance.  He has never, in fact, varnished over wild and blood-thirsty passions with a pleasing exterior,—­never clothed crime and want of principle with a false show of greatness of soul; and in that respect he is every way deserving of praise.  Twice he has pourtrayed downright villains; and the masterly way in which he has contrived to elude impressions of too painful a nature, may be seen in Iago and Richard the Third.  The constant reference to a petty and puny race must cripple the boldness of the poet.  Fortunately for his art, Shakespeare lived in an age extremely susceptible of noble and tender impressions, but which had still enough of the firmness inherited from a vigorous olden time not to shrink back with dismay from every strong and violent picture.  We have lived to see tragedies of which the catastrophe consists in the swoon of an enamoured princess.  If Shakespeare falls occasionally into the opposite extreme, it is a noble error, originating in the fulness of a gigantic strength:  and yet this tragical Titan, who storms the heavens, and threatens to tear the world from off its hinges; who, more terrible than AEschylus, makes our hair stand on end, and congeals our blood with horror, possessed, at the same time, the insinuating loveliness of the sweetest poetry.  He plays with love like a child; and his songs are breathed out like melting sighs.  He unites in his genius the utmost elevation and the utmost depth; and the most foreign, and even apparently irreconcilable properties subsist in him peaceably together.  The world of spirits and nature have laid all their treasures at his feet.  In strength a demi-god, in profundity of view a prophet, in all-seeing wisdom a protecting spirit of a higher order, he lowers himself to mortals, as if unconscious of his superiority:  and is as open and unassuming as a child.

’Shakespeare’s comic talent is equally wonderful with that which he has shown in the pathetic and tragic:  it stands on an equal elevation, and possesses equal extent and profundity.  All that I before wished was, not to admit that the former preponderated.  He is highly inventive in comic situations and motives.  It will be hardly possible to show whence he has taken any of them; whereas, in the serious part of his drama, he has generally laid hold of something already known.  His comic characters are equally true, various, and profound, with his serious.  So little is he disposed to caricature, that we may rather say many of his traits are almost too nice and delicate for the stage, that they can only be properly seized by a great actor, and fully understood by a very acute audience.  Not only has he delineated many kinds of folly; he has also contrived to exhibit mere stupidity in a most diverting and entertaining manner.’  Vol. ii, p. 145.