What we can find of him there we
must find by regarding the whole, and allowing the spiritual essence of
the whole to find its way to our brain, and thence to our heart. The
student of Shakspere becomes imbued with the idea of his character. It
exhales from his writings. And when we have found the main drift of any
play--the grand rounding of the whole--then by that we may interpret
individual passages. It is alone in their relation to the whole that we
can do them full justice, and in their relation to the whole that we
discover the mind of the master.
But we have another source of more direct enlightenment as to Shakspere
himself. We only say more _direct_, not more certain or extended
enlightenment. We have one collection of poems in which he speaks in his
own person and of himself. Of course we refer to his sonnets. Though
these occupy, with their presentation of himself, such a small relative
space, they yet admirably round and complete, to our eyes, the circle of
his individuality. In them and the plays the common saying--one of the
truest--that extremes meet, is verified. No man is complete in whom
there are no extremes, or in whom those extremes do not meet.
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