_Tristo._ “The difference is this, Shakspeare brings together improbable occurrences in almost impossible conjunctions; yet he _always_ makes the _words_ and _actions_ of his characters consistent. Other dramatists have their plots sufficiently probable, and their junctures and transitions natural and easy--this is the effect of study; but their actors have no individuality--and this is a defect of genius, that no study nor midnight watchings can supply: their figures are sometimes one thing, sometimes another: the _contour_, air, and attitude, are all shifting and various. This is more particularly observable in works of the tragic or semi-tragic cast, than in the comic productions of the older writers. In Dryden, for instance, the comedies are many of them laughable and good; but the tragedies, saving here and there a splendid spangle, are cold, inflated fustian. Even in scenes of the most intense excitement, when grief is wrought up to agony, and passion foams with ungovernable rage, he makes his characters talk, talk, talk, instead of acting. In place of some brief and stormy exclamation, such as nature prompts and passion utters, they stand still, gesticulate by rule, and bring out long similitudes of studied elegance, and elaborate perfection. Their ruined hopes they liken to a blighted tree, and coolly pursue the track of the lightning from the topmost leaf to the downmost root, showing you how _here_ it grazed, and _there_ cut to the very heart. Oh agony! Their words are hot--hot enough in all conscience, when taken one by one--_minutatim_--but collectively they are verbiage, not pathos.” _Nescio._ “I have been thinking that a natural may be distinguished from an unnatural author, in that you can not only clearly conceive, but distinctly remember the form and bearing of the characters in the one, while the actors in the other leave no definite impression. The Falstaff of Shakspeare, and the Arbaces of Bulwer, are good illustrations of my meaning. Both are characters, which, we are certain, never _did_ exist. How, then, is Falstaff natural, and Arbaces the reverse? The former _might_ exist; the latter _never could_ have being. The _former_ is a collection of qualities, carried, it may be, to excess; the _latter_ is a union of contradictions. The _former_ is witty and sensual and boastful beyond reality, but not beyond possibility; the _latter_ is a lumbering conception of a grand and gloomy _something_--a shadow of magnificent shapelessness--it has no _identity_, and its shifting outline it would puzzle Proteus to trace. In the language of the schools, Falstaff is in _posse_, but not in _esse_--while Arbaces is neither in _esse_, nor _posse_, nor any where else save in Bulwer’s head.”