It might, perhaps, be said that there are three kinds of poetical temperament which have never yet been found equally combined in any one poet—not even in Shakespeare himself. There is the lyric temperament, as exemplified in writers like Sappho, Shelley, and others; there is the meditative temperament—sometimes speculative, but not always accompanied by metaphysical dreaming—as exemplified in Lucretius, Wordsworth, and others; and there is the dramatic temperament, as exemplified in Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, and Shakespeare. In a certain sense the Iliad is the most dramatic poem in the world, for the dramatic picture lives undisturbed by lyrism or meditation. In Æschylus and Sophocles we find, besides the dramatic temperament, a large amount of the lyrical temperament, and a large amount of the meditative, but unaccompanied by metaphysical speculation. In Shakespeare we find, besides the dramatic temperament, a large amount of the meditative accompanied by an irresistible impulse towards metaphysical speculation, but, on the whole, a moderate endowment of the lyrical temperament, judging by the few occasions on which he exercised it. For fine as are such lyrics as “Hark, hark, the lark,” “Where the bee sucks,” &c., other poets have written lyrics as fine. In a certain sense no man can be a pure and perfect dramatist. Every ego is a central sun found which the universe revolves, and it must needs assert itself. This is why on a previous occasion, when speaking of the way in which thoughts are interjected into drama by the Greek dramatists, we said that really and truly no man can paint another, but only himself, and what we call character-painting is at the best but a poor mixing of painter and painted—a third something between these two, just as what we call colour and sound are born of the play of undulation upon organism. Very likely this is putting the case too strongly. But be this as it may, it is impossible to open a play of Shakespeare’s without being struck with the way in which the meditative side of Shakespeare’s mind strove with and sometimes nearly strangled the dramatic. If this were confined to ‘Hamlet,’ where the play seems meant to revolve on a philosophical pivot, it would not be so remarkable. But so hindered with thoughts, reflections, meditations, and metaphysical speculations was Shakespeare that he tossed them indiscriminately into other plays, tragedies, comedies, and histories, regardless sometimes of the character who uttered them. With regard to metaphysical speculation, indeed, even when he was at work on the busiest scenes of his dramas, it would seem—as was said on the occasion before alluded to—that Shakespeare’s instinct for actualizing and embodying in concrete form the dreams of the metaphysician often arose and baffled him. It would seem that when writing a comedy he could not help putting into the mouth of a man like Claudio those words which seem as if they ought to have been spoken by a