The theory of Ulrici accords exactly with my impressions of Shakspeare. Such an event as his coming—such superhuman powers of mind—such a mixture of all that is grand, terrible and profound with all that is tender—sweet, and aerial—in one brain, seems fit to be linked with a great purpose. The idea of an ever superintending Providence being in my mind, I cannot join those philosophers who find in our poet merely a colossal diamond or a chance giant—as if the same hazard which gives to the farmer an overgrown cucumber or pumpkin had dropped the rare soul of this first of human geniuses among men. To me—I repeat, he resembles the globe. I see in him always, as when I travel over any country, sweet and striking scenes. I enter him as I do a landscape or an island; looking around, above, and beneath me, and sure to find wonders and beauties. Here, the bending rose—there—the silver brook—yonder the swelling hill—and again the shadowy forest. I stop sometimes to examine the hues of a violet half withdrawn from sight by the road-side—and then I am struck at the majestic grandeur of the oak at whose root it grows. Suddenly a storm which awes and startles my soul sweeps over me—and then the broad sunshine breaks upon the glittering face of nature. These are in the _foreground_ of Shakspeare, but this is not _Shakspeare_. He has far remote wonders and beauties. If I choose to _travel_ into him, I shall come upon things new and strange. He has foreign countries and distant wonders like Rome or Jerusalem. There are even in him tracts yet untravelled, and secrets—like the Pyramids and hieroglyphics of Egypt, like the Polar seas and the central wastes of Africa—which future time will perhaps unravel, but which we do not yet understand. The meaning of _Othello_ has always been locked from me. I have not yet been a reader of commentators and, perhaps, some of the crowd of distinguished writers who, ever since his death, have been endeavoring to throw light on him, may have accounted for the till now inexplicable mystery of it. But I could never conceive it. Why a perfectly noble mind, should be so cruelly tortured without guilt on its own part; why a scene of innocent happiness should be thus wantonly destroyed was always an unanswerable question I asked myself on seeing or reading this, one of the greatest of his five great tragedies. The reader will find the mystery solved, by an extract, in the course of these papers. _Hamlet_ is yet full of unexplained mystery. Why he does not kill the bloody usurper? Why he ill treats Ophelia? Was he mad? etc. etc. etc., are long standing themes of debate. In the _Tempest_, Act I. Scene 2, when Prospero is telling his history to Miranda, there is one of these little enigmas which lie in our poet like the veil sometimes thrown over the intentions of nature, known only to those who study her habitually.