Some able and appreciating critics think no criticism on Shakespeare valuable that does not rest purely on the dramatic merit; that he is falsely judged as poet and philosopher. I think as highly as these critics of his dramatic merit, but still think it secondary. He was a full man who liked to talk; a brain exhaling thoughts and images, which, seeking vent, found the drama next at hand. Shakespeare is as much out of the category of eminent authors as he is out of the crowd. He is inconceivably wise; the others, conceivably. With this wisdom of life is the equal endowment of imaginative and lyric power. An omnipresent humanity co-ordinates all his faculties. He has no peculiarity, no importunate topic, but all is duly given. No mannerist is he; he has no discoverable egotism--the great he tells greatly, the small subordinately. He is wise without emphasis or assertion; he is strong as Nature is strong, who lifts the land into mountain slopes without effort, and by the same rule as she floats a bubble in the air, and likes as well to do the one as the other. This power of transferring the inmost truth of things into music and verse makes him the type of the poet. One royal trait that belongs to Shakespeare is his cheerfulness. He delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy, he sheds over the universe. If he appeared in any company of human souls, who would not march in his troop? He touches nothing that does not borrow health and longevity from his festal style. He was master of the revels to mankind. _Napoleon_ Among the eminent persons of the nineteenth century, Bonaparte owes his predominance to the fidelity with which he expresses the aim of the masses of active and cultivated men. If Napoleon was Europe, it was because the people whom he swayed were little Napoleons. He is the representative of the class of industry and skill. "God has granted," says the Koran, "to every people a prophet in its own tongue." Paris, London, and New York, the spirit of commerce, of money, of material power, were also to have their prophet--and Bonaparte was qualified and sent. He was the idol of common men because he, in transcendent degree, had the qualities and powers of common men. He came to his own and they received him.