"How astonishing is it again, that the passions directly opposite to these, laughter and spleen, are no less at his command? that he is not more a master of the _great_ than the _ridiculous_ in human nature; of our noblest tendernesses, than of our vainest foibles; of our strongest emotions, than of our idlest sensations!
"Nor does he only excel in the passions; in the coolness of reflection and reasoning he is full as admirable. His _sentiments_ are not only in general the most pertinent and judicious upon every subject; but by a talent very peculiar, something between penetration and felicity, he hits upon that particular point on which the bent of each argument turns, or the force of each motive depends. This is perfectly amazing, from a man of no education or experience in those great and public scenes of life which are usually the subject of his thoughts; so that he seems to have known the world by intuition, to have looked through human nature at one glance, and to be the only author that gives ground for a very new opinion, that the philosopher, and even the man of the world, may be _born_, as well as the poet."
Nothing can be better. Dryden gave us large and grand outlines. Pope's is closer criticism. But it is more than that which Johnson says, that all the successors of Dryden have produced--an expansion only of his notions; unless, in that sense in which every follower in time could by possibility do nothing but expand the notions of the first critic who should have said--"Shakspeare was a poet of the highest description, with a good many troublesome faults." Pope's portraiture is drawn from near and intent inspection; a likeness after the life, and reflecting the life; thoroughly independent of any thing preceding him. Thus, THE COMPLETE SEVERING OF NEARLY-ALLIED PERSONAGES (upon which Pope insists, and which, more than the immense multiplicity, contemplated in a general way, of the some hundred DRAMATIS PERSONÆ, determines essential variety; attests the constituting of every character, after the manner of Nature, from an indivisible SELF, which at once rules it into unity, and holds it unconfused with all others) is a finely-just observation, of which we have not a hint from Dryden; and it carries us, instantly, deep into a most interesting study of comparisons. As of Macbeth and Richard III., both murderous usurpers, as different as two men can well be; of Leontes and Othello, two jealous husbands, and as different, even in their jealousy, as two men can be; of Coriolanus and Hotspur, each an earthly Mars; each "the soul of honour;" each sudden in passion, impetuous, and ungovernable; each with a kindliness of nature that draws and attaches his friends as much as the superiority of his character overrules them; each with a rough, abrupt, penetrating strength of intellect; each endowed, which is more peculiar, with vivid imagination, that leaps into bold poetical figures; each of a cutting wit, and, in his own way, humourous pleasantry; and yet the semi-traditionary Roman patrician, and the quite historical English earl's son, so distinct that you shall read the two plays, in which they are, ten and twenty times over, without thinking of putting the towering heroes, twinned by so many, so marked, and so profound affinities, upon a line of comparison. Or put all Shakspeare's gallant warriors in a catalogue, and what a diversified list have you drawn up! Hector, Troilus, Diomed, Coriolanus, Tullus Aufidius, Mark Antony, Othello, Cassio, nay, and Iago, Falconbridge, Hotspur, Glendower, Mortimer, Henry V., Talbot, Warwick, Richard III., Richmond, Macbeth, Banquo, Macduff, Old Seward, Edmund, Edgar, Benedict, Bertram, are some of them; for Shakspeare like Scott loved a good soldier. Compare the melancholy Hamlet and the melancholy Jaques; both shrewd observers of men; both given to philosophizing; and yet different--Heaven knows. And so on. Thus, the remark of Pope goes to the root of Shakspeare's creative art, and leads you into a method of thinking, not soon exhausted.