All that can be admitted, because comformable to logic and experience, is that the two orders in general--but quite in general, and therefore with several exceptions and disagreements--big and little--correspond to one another. Indeed, if we take the usual chronological order, as fixed by philologists and to be found in all Shakespearean manuals and at the head of the plays, with little variation, we see that the first comedies of love and the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, including the romantic element, which is common to all of them, belong to the first period, between 1591 and 1592. We next find the historical plays, the comedies of love and the romantic dramas, closely associated; then begins the period of the great tragedies, _Julius Caesar_ and _Anthony and Cleopatra;_ then again,--after a return to anterior forms with _Coriolanus, Cymbeline_ and the _Winter's Tale,_--we reach the _Tempest,_ which seems to be the last, or among the last of Shakespeare's works. Biographers have tried to explain the last period of Shakespeare's poetry in various ways, sometimes as the period of his _"becoming serene,"_ sometimes as that of his _"poetical exhaustion"_ sometimes as _"an attempt after new forms of art"_; but with such utterances as these, we find ourselves among those conjectural constructions, which we have purposely avoided, if for no other reason than that so many people, who are good for nothing else, make them every day, and we do not wish to deprive them of their occupation. The _biographical_ character of that period can be interpreted, as we please, as one of repose, of gay facility, of weariness, of expectation and training for new works, and so on: but the _poetical_ character of the works in question, is such as we have described, and such as all see and feel that it is. It is too but a biographical conjecture, however plausible,--but certainly most graceful and pleasing--, which maintains that the magician Prospero, who breaks his wand, buries his book of enchantments, and dismisses his aerial spirit Ariel, ready to obey his every nod, symbolizes William Shakespeare himself, who henceforth renounces his art and takes leave of the imaginary world, which he had created for his own delight and in obedience to the law of his own development and where till then he had lived as sovereign. CHAPTER X THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE