I will now therefore attempt to
give a few plainer instances of such _sweet observance_ in his own work
as he would have admired in a painting.
First, then, I would request my reader to think how comparatively seldom
Shakspere uses poetry in his plays. The whole play is a poem in the
highest sense; but truth forbids him to make it the rule for his
characters to speak poetically. Their speech is poetic in relation to
the whole and the end, not in relation to the speaker, or in the
immediate utterance. And even although their speech is immediately
poetic, in this sense, that every character is idealized; yet it is
idealized _after its kind_; and poetry certainly would not be the ideal
speech of most of the characters. This granted, let us look at the
exceptions: we shall find that such passages not only glow with poetic
loveliness and fervour, but are very jewels of _sweet observance_, whose
setting allows them their force as lawful, and their prominence as
natural. I will mention a few of such.
In "Julius Caesar," act i. scene 3, we are inclined to think the way
_Casca_ speaks, quite inconsistent with the "sour fashion" which
_Cassius_ very justly attributes to him; till we remember that he is
speaking in the midst of an almost supernatural thunder-storm: the
hidden electricity of the man's nature comes out in poetic forms and
words, in response to the wild outburst of the overcharged heavens and
earth.
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