What poets appear at first sight more different than Shakespeare and Ariosto? Yet they have this in common, that both look upon something that is beyond particular emotions, and for this reason it has been said of both of them, more than once, that "they speak but little to the heart." They are certainly sentimental and agitated by the passions to a very slight degree; the "humour" of both has been referred to, a word that we avoid here, because it is so uncertain of meaning and of such little use in determining profound emotions of the spirit. Ariosto veils and shades all the particular feelings that he represents, by means of his divine irony; and Shakespeare, in a different way, by endowing all with equal vigour and relief, succeeds in creating a sort of equilibrium, by means of reciprocal tension, which, owing to its mode of genesis, differs in every other respect from the harmony in which the singer of the _Furioso_ delights. Ariosto surpasses good and evil, retaining interest in them only on account of the rhythm of life, so constant and yet so various, which arises, expands, becomes extinguished and is reborn, to grow and again to become extinguished. Shakespeare surpasses all individual emotions, but he does not surpass, on the contrary, he strengthens our interest in good and evil, in sorrow and joy, in destiny and necessity, in appearance and reality, and the vision of this strife is his poetry. Thus the one has been metaphorically called "imaginative"; the other "realistic," and the one has been opposed to the other. They are opposed to one another, yet they meet at one point, not at the general one of both being poets, but at the specific point of being cosmic poets, not only in the sense in which every poet is cosmical, but in the particular sense above explained. Let us hope that it is not necessary to recommend that this should be understood with the necessary reservations, that is to say, as the trait that dominates the two poets in a different way and does not exclude the other individual traits of feature, above all not that which belongs to all poetry whatsoever. The limits set to every critical study, which should henceforth be known to all, are laid down by the impossibility of ever rendering in logical terms the full effect of any poetry or of other artistic work, since it is clear that if such a translation were possible, art would be impossible, that is to say, superfluous, because admitting of a substitute. Criticism, nevertheless, within those limits, performs its own office, which is to discern and to point out exactly where lies the poetical motive and to formulate the divisions which aid in distinguishing what is proper to every work.