[16:1]Shakspeare's style, as every one knows, is metaphorical to excess. [Sidenote: His thought and imagination work together.] His imagination is always active, but he seldom pauses to indulge it by lengthened description. I shall hereafter have occasion to direct your observation to the sobriety with which he preserves imagination in its proper station, as only the minister and interpreter of thought; but what I wish now to say is, that in him the two powers operate simultaneously. He goes on thinking vigorously, while his imagination scatters her inexhaustible treasures like flowers on the current of his meditations. His constant aim is the expression of facts, passions, or opinions; and his intellect is constantly occupied in the investigation of such; but the mind acts with ease in its lofty vocation, and the beautiful and the grand rise up voluntarily to do him homage. He never indeed consents to express those poetical ideas by themselves; but he shows that he felt their import and their legitimate use, by wedding them to the thoughts in which they originated. [Sidenote: Shakspere's truths and their imagery glorify one another.] The truths which he taught, received magnificence and amenity from the illustrative forms; and the poetical images were elevated into a higher sphere of associations by the dignity of the principles which they were applied to adorn. [Sidenote: Metaphor the strength of poetry; simile its weakness.] Something like this is always the true function of the imagination in poetry, and dramatic poetry in particular; and it is also the test which tries the presence of the faculty; metaphor indicates its strength, and simile its weakness. [Sidenote: Fletcher is diffuse in description and simile, loses the original thought in it,] Nothing can be more different from this, or farther inferior to it, than the style of a poet who turns aside in search of description, and indulges in simile preferably to the brevity of metaphor, to whom perhaps a poetical picture originally suggested itself as the decoration of a striking thought, but who allowed himself to be captivated by the beauty of the suggested image, till he forgot the thought which had given it birth, and on its connexion with which its highest excellence depended. [Sidenote: is poor in metaphor, and picturesque.] Such was Fletcher, whose style is poor in metaphor. His descriptions are sometimes beautifully romantic; but even then the effect of the whole is often picturesque rather than poetically touching; and it is evident that lengthened description can still less frequently be dramatic. In his descriptions, it is observable that the poetical relations introduced in illustration [17:1]are usually few, the character of the leading subject being relied on for producing the poetical effect. [Sidenote: Fletcher's and Shakspere's descriptions contrasted.] Fletcher's longest descriptions are but elegant outlines;