"The might of the imagination is manifested by its launching forth from the petty creek, where the accidents. of birth moored it, into the wide ocean of being, - by its going abroad into the world around, passing into whatever it meets with, animating it, and becoming one with it. This complete union and identification of the poet with his poem, this suppression of his own individual insulated consciousness, with its narrowness of thought and pettiness of feeling, - is what we admire in the great masters of that which for this reason we justly call classical poetry, as representing that which is symbolical and universal, not that which is merely occasional and peculiar. This gives them that majestic calmness which still breathes upon us from the statues of their gods. This invests their works with that lucid, transparent atmosphere wherein every form stands out in perfect definiteness and distinctness, only beautified by the distance which idealizes it. This has delivered those works from the casualties of time and space, and has lifted them up like stars into the pure firmament of thought, so that they do not shine on one spot alone, nor fade like earthly flowers, but journey on from clime to clime, shedding the light of beauty on generation after generation. The same quality, amounting to a total extinction of his own selfish being, so that his spirit became a mighty organ through which Nature gave utterance to the full diapason of her notes, is what we wonder at in our own great dramatist, and is the groundwork of all his other powers; for it is only when purged of selfishness that the intellect becomes fitted for receiving the inspirations of genius." * What Mr. Hare so justly considers as the great moving principle of "classical poetry," what he further notes as the preeminent characteristic of "our own great dramatist," is abundantly found in that great dramatist's earliest work. Coleridge was the first to point out this pervading quality in the Venus and Adonis: and he has done this The Victory of Faith; and other Sermons." By Julius Charles Hare, M. A. 1840. P. 277. so admirably, that it would be profanation were we to attempt to elucidate the point in any other than his own words: "It is throughout as if a superior spirit, more intuitive, more intimately conscious, even than the characters themselves, not only of every outward look and act, but of the flux and reflux of the mind in all its subtlest thoughts and feelings, were placing the whole before our view; himself meanwhile unparticipating in the passions, and actuated only by that pleasurable excitement which had resulted from the energetic fervor of his own spirit in so vividly exhibiting what it had so accurately and profoundly contemplated. I think I should have conjectured from these poems, that even then the great instinct which impelled the poet to the drama was secretly working in him, prompting him by a series and never-broken chain of imagery, always vivid, and, because unbroken, often minute, — by the highest effort of the picturesque in words of which words are capable, higher, perhaps, than was ever realized by any other poet, even Dante not excepted, to provide a substitute for that visual language, that constant intervention and running comment by tone, look, and gesture, which in his dramatic works he was entitled to expect from the players. His Venus and Adonis seem at once the characters themselves, and the whole representation of those characters by the most consummate actors. You seem to be told nothing, but to see and hear every thing. Hence it is, that, from the perpetual activity of attention required on the part of the reader, from the rapid flow, the quick change, and the playful nature of the thoughts and images, and, above all, from the alienation, and, if I may hazard such an expression, the utter aloofness of the poet's own feelings from those of which he is at once the painter and the analyst, that though the very subject cannot but detract from the pleasure of a delicate mind, yet never was poem less dangerous on a moral account."* Coleridge, in the preceding chapter of his "Literary Life," says, "During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and "Biographia Literaria," 1817, vol. ii. p. 15. I were neighbors, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry-the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colors of imagination." In Coleridge's "Literary Remains," the Venus and Adonis is cited as furnishing a signal example of "that affectionate love of nature and natural objects, without which no man could have observed so steadily, or painted so truly and passionately, the very minutest beauties of the external world." The description of the hare-hunt is there given at length as a specimen of this power. A remarkable proof of the completeness as well as accuracy of Shakspeare's description lately presented itself to our mind, in running through a little volume, full of talent, published in 1825, "Essays and Sketches of Character, by the late Richard Ayton, Esq." There is a paper on hunting, and especially on hare-hunting. He says, "I am not one of the perfect fox-hunters of these realms; but having been in the way, of late, of seeing a good deal of various modes of hunting, I would, for the benefit of the uninitiated, set down the results of my observations." In this matter he writes with a perfect unconsciousness that he is describing what any one has described before. But as accurate an observer had been before him: "She (the hare) generally returns to the seat from which she was put up, running, as all the world knows, in a circle, or something sometimes like it, we had better say, that we may keep on good terms with the mathematical. At starting, she tears away at her utmost speed for a mile or more, and distances the dogs half-way: she then returns, diverging a little to the right or left, that she may not run into the mouths of her enemies — a necessity which accounts for what we call the cireularity of her course. Her flight from home is direct and precipitate; but on her way back, when she has gained a little time for consideration and stratagem, she describes a curious labyrinth of short turnings and windings, as if to perplex the dogs by the intricacy of her track." Compare this with Shakspeare: "And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare, How he outruns the wind, and with what care Mr. Ayton thus goes on: silent. "The hounds, whom we left in full cry, continue their music without remission as long as they are faithful to the scent; as a summons, it should seem, like the seaman's cry, to pull together, or keep together, and it is a certain proof to themselves and their followers that they are in the right way. On the instant that they are "at fault," or lose the scent, they are The weather, in its impression on the scent, is the great father of "faults," but they may arise from other accidents, even when the day is in every respect favorable. The intervention of ploughed land, on which the scent soon cools or evaporates, is at least perilous; but sheep-stains, recently left by a flock, are fatal: they cut off the scent irrecoverably-making a gap, as it were, in the clew, in which the dogs have not even a hint for their guidance." Compare Shakspeare again : "Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep, To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell, And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer; "For there his smell with others being mingled, Then do they spend their mouths: Echo replies, One more extract from Mr. Ayton: 66 Suppose, then, after the usual rounds, that you see the hare at last (a sorry mark for so many focs) sorely beleaguered-looking dark and draggled — limping heavily along; then stopping to listen — again tottering on a little and again stopping; and at every step, and every pause, hearing the death-cry grow nearer and louder." One more comparison, and we have exhausted Shakspeare's description: "By this poor Wat, far off upon a hill, Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear, To harken if his foes pursue him still; And now his grief may be compared well "Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch And being low, never relieved by any." It would be easy Here, then, be it observed, are not only the same objects, the same accidents, the same movement, in each description, but the very words employed to convey the scene to the mind are often the same in each. to say that Mr. Ayton copied Shakspeare. We believe he did not. There is a sturdy ingenuousness about his writings which would have led him to notice the Venus and Adonis if he had had it in his mind. Shakspeare and he had each looked minutely and practically upon the same scene; and the wonder is, not that Shakspeare was an accurate describer, but that in him the accurate is so thoroughly fused with the poetical, that it is one and the same life. The celebrated description of the courser in the Venus and Adonis is another remarkable instance of the accuracy of the young Shakspeare's observation. Not the most experienced dealer ever new the points of a horse better. The whole poem, indeed, is full of evidence that the circumstances by which the writer was surrounded, in a country district, had entered deeply into his mind, and were reproduced in the poetical form. The bird "tangled in a net" the "di-dapper peering through a wave" - the "blue-veined violets"-the "Red morn, that ever yet betokened Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field”. the fisher that forbears the "ungrown fry"- the sheep gone to fold "the caterpillars feeding on "the tender |