If we had been clever enough, we should have already thought of Hamlet’s first utterance in this scene, when he sees the Ghost:--“What would your gracious figure?” For we have not words enough to express all that the English mean by the word “gracious,”--everything that is kind and gentle, friendly and benign, tender, and attractive, is fused in that word. Certainly it is no term for a hero in armor. These doubts are happily now dispelled by the reprinting of the first edition. We are convinced anew that Shakespeare, like the Universe, is always offering us new aspects, and still remains, at the end of it all, lofty and inaccessible. For all our powers are not competent to do justice to his words, much less his genius. _TROILUS AND CRESSIDA_ (1824) A comparison of the _Iliad_ with _Troilus and Cressida_ leads to similar conclusions: here, too, there is neither parody nor travesty, but, as in the case of the eagle and the owl two subjects taken from nature were put in striking contrast with each other, so here are contrasted the intellectual fibre of two epochs. The Greek poem is in the grand style, self-restrained and self-sufficient, using only the essential, and, in description and simile, disdaining all ornament,--basing itself on noble myths and tradition. The English classic, on the other hand, one might consider a happy transposition and translation of the other great work into the romantic-dramatic style. In this connection we should not forget, however, that this piece, like many another, is based on second-hand narratives, already rendered into prose, and only half-poetical. Yet it is also quite original, as much so as if the ancient piece had never been at all; for it requires just as profound a sincerity, just as decided a talent, to depict for us similar personalities and characters with so light a touch and so lucid a meaning, and represent them for a later age with all the human traits of that age, which thus sees itself reflected in the guise of the ancient story. ON OTHER WRITERS GOETHE AS A YOUNG REVIEWER (1772) I _Lyrical Poems_, by J. C. Blum. Berlin, 1772