"The Two Gentlemen of Verona," like "Love's Labour's Lost," is a bud full of promise. Launce is as delightfully humorous as Silvia is gay and charming, and Julia is the first of the ladies in page's guise and deep in love; but "Romeo and Juliet," and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" are already nonpareils, full-blown roses that time cannot wither. The "Comedy of Errors," based on Plautus, with the farcical errors of indistinguishable identities in the masters, reduplicated in the servants, would add by its broad farce to Shakespeare's popularity, though not to his fame. But in "The Merchant of Venice" the blending of moral tragedy in the sombre character of the outraged Jew, Shylock, combined with the delightful and tender romance of the lovers, proved the multifarious versatility of the poet, his power in the delineation of the most various moods and passions, and also the unequalled magic of his verse. On such a night Stood Dido with a willow in her hand Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love To come again to Carthage. Here Virgil is equalled or surpassed in the province where Virgil was greatest; in the use of words that by some inexplicable art suggest more than they seem to say, filling the mind with vague and potent emotion, and a longing not to be appeased, as does the beauty of twilight and moonlight. Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold; There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims; Such harmony is in immortal souls; But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. In this passage, whether he knew it or not--and _we_ know not how he knew things,--Shakespeare soars to the heights of Plato's dreams, in the "Phædrus" and the "Symposium". Did he go beyond the appreciation of "the groundlings" in such passages? Did they find mirth in the passion of the Jew, and fail to fathom Shakespeare's deep sympathy with the oppressed? Probably he gave them more and other things than he seemed to give; to them Shylock's may have appeared as a comic part, but indeed we cannot judge that strange Elizabethan audience. Shakespeare knew what they wanted, horrors, ghosts, revenges, manslayings. He gave them these things in "Lear" and "Hamlet," but gave with them the deepest and subtlest thoughts, the most magical poetry, treasures of wit, and all this they could enjoy, as they could follow every point, pass, and parry in the wit-combats.