German 'belle lettrists', and the last fifteen years in addition, far more intensely in the analysis of the laws of life and reason as they exist in man,--and that upon every step I have made forward in taste, in acquisition of facts from history or my own observation, and in knowledge of the different laws of being and their apparent exceptions, from accidental collision of disturbing forces,--that at every new accession of information, after every successful exercise of meditation, and every fresh presentation of experience, I have unfailingly discovered a proportionate increase of wisdom and intuition in Shakspeare;--when I know this, and know too, that by a conceivable and possible, though hardly to be expected, arrangement of the British theatres, not all, indeed, but a large, a very large, proportion of this indefinite all--(round which no comprehension has yet drawn the line of circumscription, so as to say to itself, 'I have seen the whole')--might be sent into the heads and hearts--into the very souls of the mass of mankind, to whom, except by this living comment and interpretation, it must remain for ever a sealed volume, a deep well without a wheel or a windlass;--it seems to me a pardonable enthusiasm to steal away from sober likelihood, and share in so rich a feast in the faery world of possibility! Yet even in the grave cheerfulness of a circumspect hope, much, very much, might be done; enough, assuredly, to furnish a kind and strenuous nature with ample motives for the attempt to effect what may be effected. [Footnote: 'Advancement of Learning, book 1. 'sub fine.'] [Footnote 2: Confestim Peneos adest, viridantia Tempe, Tempe, quae cingunt sylvae superimpendentes. 'Epith. Pel. et. Th.' 286.] SHAKSPEARE, A POET GENERALLY.