We are very much disposed to think that the age which follows ours, though still admiring Shakspeare as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of poets, will look upon this present age as eminently distinguished for having talked a marvellous deal of nonsense about that great man--whether with or without help from beyond the German Ocean. There is, however, confessedly some light to be got from another quarter, though still a very remote one. We are rather affectedly told in the preceding page:-- "Were nothing else to be learnt from the _rhetoric_ and _ethics_ of Aristotle, they should be studied by every educated Englishman as the best of commentaries on Shakspeare." To Coleridge, indeed, whose snatches of literary criticism are admirable, (when he is not evidently led away by some capricious paradoxical spirit,) we have a debt to acknowledge on this subject. He first taught us, if we mistake not, to appreciate the structure of Shakspeare's plays, and vindicated them from that charge of rudeness and irregularity which had been so frequently made that it had passed for an admitted truth. He showed that there was a harmony in his intricate plots of a far higher order than the disciples of the _unities_ had ever dreamed of. Whatever may be their critical appreciation of the poetic language of others, these writers display very little taste themselves in the use of imagery, or illustration, or metaphor. What is intended for wit or pleasantry proves to be a cumbrous allegory or unwieldy simile; we feel that we are to smile, but we do not smile. Instances of this may be found at page 111, in a sort of fable about "leather" and "stockings;" and at page 133 about "four-sided and five-sided fields." The examples are too long to quote. At page 260, great men are compared to mountains. The simile is not new, but the manner of dealing with it has more of novelty than of grace.--"Mountains never shake hands," &c.--like great men, they stand alone. "But if mountains do not shake hands, neither do they kick each other." And here, at page 259, is an instance, not too long to quote entire, which shows how little tact and delicacy these writers have in dealing with metaphorical language. "It is a mistake to suppose the poet does not know truth by sight quite as well as the philosopher. He must; for he is ever seeing her in the mirror of nature. The difference between them is, that the poet is satisfied with worshipping her reflected image, while the philosopher traces her out, _and follows her to her remote abode between cause and consequence, and there impregnates her_." Frequently the illustration, standing alone, brief and obscure, becomes a mere riddle, a conundrum, to which you can either attach no meaning, or any meaning you please.