“the soul’s fair temple is defaced; To whose weak ruins muster troops of cares, To ask the spotted princess how she fares.” But when so many lines of delineation meet, and run into, and correct one another, assuming such a natural and vital form, that there is no _making of a point_ anywhere; and the woman is shown after no theory, but according to the natural laws of human declension, we feel that the only way to account for the perfection of the representation is to say that, given a shadow, Shakspere had the power to place himself so, that that shadow became his own--was the correct representation as shadow, of his form coming between it and the sunlight. And this is the highest dramatic gift that a man can possess. But we feel at the same time, that this is, in the main, not so much art as inspiration. There would be, in all probability, a great mingling of conscious art with the inspiration; but the lines of the former being lost in the general glow of the latter, we may be left where we were as to any certainty about the artistic consciousness of Shakspere. I will now therefore attempt to give a few plainer instances of such _sweet observance_ in his own work as he would have admired in a painting. First, then, I would request my reader to think how comparatively seldom Shakspere uses poetry in his plays. The whole play is a poem in the highest sense; but truth forbids him to make it the rule for his characters to speak poetically. Their speech is poetic in relation to the whole and the end, not in relation to the speaker, or in the immediate utterance. And even although their speech is immediately poetic, in this sense, that every character is idealized; yet it is idealized _after its kind_; and poetry certainly would not be the ideal speech of most of the characters. This granted, let us look at the exceptions: we shall find that such passages not only glow with poetic loveliness and fervour, but are very jewels of _sweet observance_, whose setting allows them their force as lawful, and their prominence as natural. I will mention a few of such. In “Julius Caesar,” act i. scene 3, we are inclined to think the way _Casca_ speaks, quite inconsistent with the “sour fashion” which _Cassius_ very justly attributes to him; till we remember that he is speaking in the midst of an almost supernatural thunder-storm: the hidden electricity of the man’s nature comes out in poetic forms and words, in response to the wild outburst of the overcharged heavens and earth.