The one star differs from the other in glory; for if Cervantes brought the matter of his masterpiece under the “species of eternity,” he brought much less than Shakespeare, who included everything except religion, and leaves us persuaded of his power to deal with that. _Don Quixote_ is equivalent to one of the great dramas. Yet they meet in this supreme quality of universality. So much can be said of only one among their contemporaries, the Frenchman Montaigne, in whom also there was something which speaks to all men at all times. [SN: _Divisions of his work._] The work of Shakespeare falls into two classes--the pure poetry and the drama. The second is, indeed, intensely poetic, both in form and spirit, so that the division becomes unintelligent if we push it too far. But when his poetry is dramatic--when it is employed to set forth an action by talk--it is used for another purpose, and is found in combination with other qualities than are to be found in the pure poems. These are the _Venus and Adonis_, _The Rape of Lucrece_, the sonnets, and the lyrics, which are mostly to be found in the plays, but can be detached from them. [SN: _The poems._] It is a sufficient proof of the vast sweep of Shakespeare’s genius that if we had nothing of him but these, the loss to the literature of the world would be irreparable, but he would still be a great poet. The _Venus and Adonis_ and _The Rape of Lucrece_ are greater poems than Marlowe’s _Hero and Leander_, more intense in passion, more uniformly magnificent in expression. Marlowe may reach their level when he is speaking to the full extent of his power, but he is not always there. Shakespeare always leaves the impression that he is within the limit of what he could do. The lyrics are the most perfect achievements of an age of lyric poetry. It is the presence of this note which atones for the much that is wanting in Lyly, Peele, and Greene. But if their best is put beside Shakespeare it suffers, as a pretty water-colour would suffer if hung by the side of a Velasquez. They lose colour by the comparison. The age was rich in sonnets. It produced the passion and melody of Sidney, the beauty of Spenser, the accomplishment of Daniel, and the vigour of Drayton. Yet Shakespeare’s sonnets are no less distinctly the greatest than his lyrics. It is even here that his pre-eminence is the most marked, for he has triumphed over more. The lyric is free and is brief. The sonnet is bound by rigid laws, and a cycle of sonnets is peculiarly liable to become monotonous, to be redundant, to be mechanical and frigid. But Shakespeare’s sonnets, whether or no they be in the order in which he would have put them, or were written to fall into any particular order, gave a varied yet consistent play of thought and passion, overshadowed by the ever-present consciousness of “the barren rage of death’s eternal cold.” In them, too, we always feel the superiority of the faculty to the work done. There is no toil, no