From what precedes--few, very few, as the circumstances are--some faint idea may be formed of Shakespeare as a man. As a poet, his works present him to us, in all his fulness, as the most wonderful dramatic genius that ever the world has seen, ranging with equal ease from the lowest to the highest point of the whole scale of the drama, from the broad farce of the Comedy of Errors, through the enchanting light and graceful comedy of As You Like It, and similar pieces, up to the sublimest tragedy of Macbeth, Lear, Othello. Of him alone can this be asserted. We have no reason to suppose that the great tragic poets of Greece, any more than those of France, excelled also in comedy; while the dramatists of Spain notoriously failed in tragedy, and their comedy, gay, spritely and animated as it is, depends chiefly on plot and intrigue, and is greatly deficient in variety of character. Mr. Dyce has justly observed how absurd it is to say that Shakespeare was, though the greatest, only one of a race of contemporary giants. The poetic greatness of Jonson, Fletcher, and Massinger was doubtless beyond that witnessed in most other ages of the world; but surely they were but as the stars to the sun when compared with Shakespeare. In like manner I apprehend few will agree with the following character of Shakespeare as a poet, drawn by Gifford in his Introduction to the Plays of Massinger. "The claims of this great poet on the admiration of mankind are innumerable, but rhythmical modulation is not one of them; nor do I think it either wise or just to hold him forth as supereminent in every quality which constitutes genius. Beaumont is as sublime, Fletcher as pathetic, and Jonson as nervous. Nor let it be accounted poor or niggard praise to allow him only an equality with these extraordinary men in their peculiar excellencies, while he is admitted to possess many others, to which they made no approaches. Indeed if I were asked for the discriminating quality of Shakespeare's mind, that by which he is raised above all competition, above all prospect of rivalry, I should say it was WIT."