_Nescio._ “I am by no means satisfied that their view is not a correct one. It seems to me that the allurements of poetry and the splendors of romance are all lymphatic draughts to inebriate the mind, and, as ‘the subtle blood of the grape,’ exalts and quickens the animal spirits, only thereafter to retard and depress, so do these unearthly potations elevate the soul, but leave it dull, drooping and disgusted. Especially pernicious in their influence are the trashy productions of ephemeral minds, which ‘dream false dreams and see lying visions,’ which clothe the children of their fancy in perfections to which man is a stranger, and fill the untaught soul with hopes and aspirations, which earth can never realize. Byron certainly, and, I think, even Shakspeare, exert an evil influence in their portraitures of character. Their actors are so sublime, or so lovely, that they first inspire the mind with false hope, and then fill it with vain despair.” _Tristo._ “You speak the language of a half philosopher, who generalizes a few isolated facts into an all-embracing theory. Even Byron’s evil influence results not from the unnatural beauty of his characters and scenery, but rather from the fact that he does not seem to conceive of virtue even in the abstract; he no where shows regard for aught but self, and no where recognizes even by accident a standard of right and wrong. As for Shakspeare, nature is visible in all his writings; virtue and vice are strangely mingled, even as among the scenes and occurrences of life. If he ever deviates from the actual and the known, it is either in the delineation of some creature of professedly ideal existence, such as Ariel and Puck; or else in the combination of circumstances which produces characters, that all will allow to be natural, though such they have never seen in actual life and motion.” _Nescio._ “Suffer me for a moment to interrupt you, and ask what is _nature_? Shakspeare is certainly more natural than most of his successors, and yet, for the life of me I cannot point out the difference, where it is, or in what it consists. For the incidents of that great master are sometimes not merely improbable, but impossible.”