If every writer could write up to his own best, we should have far less to marvel at in Shakspere. It is in great measure the wealth of Shakspere’s suggestions, giving him abundance of the best to choose from, that lifts him so high above those who, having felt the inspiration of a good idea, are forced to go on writing, constructing, carpentering, with dreary handicraft, before the exhausted faculty has recovered sufficiently to generate another. And then comes in the unerring choice of the best of those suggestions. Yet if any one wishes to see what variety of the same kind of thoughts he could produce, let him examine the treatment of the same business in different plays; as, for instance, the way in which instigation to a crime is managed in “Macbeth,” where _Macbeth_ tempts the two murderers to kill _Banquo_; in “King John,” when _the King_ tempts _Hubert_ to kill _Arthur_; in “The Tempest,” when _Antonio_ tempts _Sebastian_ to kill _Alonzo_; in “As You Like it,” when _Oliver_ instigates _Charles_ to kill _Orlando_; and in “Hamlet,” where _Claudius_ urges _Laertes_ to the murder of _Hamlet_. He shows no anxiety about being original. When a man is full of his work he forgets himself. In his desire to produce a good play he lays hold upon any material that offers itself. He will even take a bad play and make a good one of it. One of the most remarkable discoveries to the student of Shakspere is the hide-bound poverty of some of the stories, which, informed by his life-power; become forms of strength, richness, and grace. He does what the _Spirit_ in “Comus” says the music he heard might do,-- “create a soul Under the ribs of death;” and then death is straightway “clothed upon.” And nowhere is the refining operation of his genius more evident than in the purification of these stories. Characters and incidents which would have been honey and nuts to Beaumont and Fletcher are, notwithstanding their dramatic recommendations, entirely remodelled by him. The fair _Ophelia_ is, in the old tale, a common woman, and _Hamlet’s_ mistress; while the policy of the _Lady of Belmont_, who in the old story occupies the place for which he invented the lovely _Portia_, upon which policy the whole story turns, is such that it is as unfit to set forth in our pages as it was unfit for Shakspere’s purposes of art. His noble art refuses to work upon base matter. He sees at once the capabilities of a tale, but he will not use it except he may do with it what he pleases.