and, finally, at its very point of culmination,-- Lear. Hamlet. Macbeth. Othello. Last Epoch, when the energies of intellect in the cycle of genius were, though in a rich and more potentiated form, becoming predominant over passion and creative self-manifestation. Measure for Measure. Timon of Athens. Coriolanus. Julius Cæsar. Antony and Cleopatra. Troilus and Cressida. Merciful, wonder-making Heaven! what a man was this Shakspeare! Myriad-minded, indeed, he was. NOTES ON THE TEMPEST. There is a sort of improbability with which we are shocked in dramatic representation, not less than in a narrative of real life. Consequently, there must be rules respecting it; and as rules are nothing but means to an end previously ascertained--(inattention to which simple truth has been the occasion of all the pedantry of the French school),--we must first determine what the immediate end or object of the drama is. And here, as I have previously remarked, I find two extremes of critical decision;--the French, which evidently presupposes that a perfect delusion is to be aimed at,--an opinion which needs no fresh confutation; and the exact opposite to it, brought forward by Dr. Johnson, who supposes the auditors throughout in the full reflective knowledge of the contrary. In evincing the impossibility of delusion, he makes no sufficient allowance for an intermediate state, which I have before distinguished by the term, illusion, and have attempted to illustrate its quality and character by reference to our mental state, when dreaming. In both cases we simply do not judge the imagery to be unreal; there is a negative reality, and no more. Whatever, therefore, tends to prevent the mind from placing itself, or being placed, gradually in that state in which the images have such negative reality for the auditor, destroys this illusion, and is dramatically improbable. Now the production of this effect--a sense of improbability--will depend on the degree of excitement in which the mind is supposed to be. Many things would be intolerable in the first scene of a play, that would not at all interrupt our enjoyment in the height of the interest, when the narrow cockpit may be made to hold The vasty field of France, or we may cram Within its wooden O, the very casques, That did affright the air at Agincourt. Again, on the other hand, many obvious improbabilities will be endured, as belonging to the ground-work of the story rather than to the drama itself, in the first scenes, which would disturb or disentrance us from all illusion in the acme of our excitement; as for instance, Lear's division of his kingdom, and the banishment of Cordelia.