imagination, and the rest. These faculties taken together constitute his mental organization, which was indeed a vigorous and powerful one, a rich soil. Yet, that soil, however vigorous or rich, could have produced nothing of itself,—any more than the earth could of itself bring forth flowers. There is capacity, and nothing more. It was the action of the Divine Rays upon that mind, which caused it to bring forth poetry—such exquisite poetry. All the sublime and beautiful thoughts which that mind put forth,—all the charming fancies, all the fervent feelings, the glowing images, the graceful expressions, ay, even to the sweet music of the rhythm of his verse—all were but the effect of the action of that spiritual heat and light, that love and truth from the Divine Sun, upon the soil of that rich mind. God first constituted that wondrous organization (Shakspeare did not make himself), and then poured into it continually, and from moment to moment, that vivifying warmth and light, which excited it to action, and which operating on the wealthy soil caused it to put forth in such bountiful profusion.
Is it not so? Let us see: let us follow Shakspeare to his writing-table, and observe him there beginning the composition of his "Hamlet." He sits down, having in his mind only a most general idea of the drama he is about to write: there exists in his thought, as yet, the merest outline of his work. For does any one suppose that Shakspeare had in his mind, at the commencement, all the particulars of that poem? that, all the fine speeches, wise thoughts, beautiful images, which fill that composition, as we now have it, lay all in his mind beforehand complete, and arranged in exact order, waiting only their turns to rise up and come
