OBSERVANCES OF SHAKSPEARE. 43 



Which kissM it like a wine cup ; rising o'er 

 The waves as they arose, and prouder still 

 The loftier they uplifted me ; and oft, 

 In wantonness of spirit, plunging down 

 Into their green and glassy gulfs, and making 

 My way to shells and sea-weed, all unseen 

 By those above, till they wax'd fearful ; then 

 Returning with my grasp full of such tokens 

 As show'd that 1 had search'd the deep : exulting 

 With a far-dashing stroke, and drawing deep 

 The long-suspended breath, again I spurned 

 The foam which broke around me, and pursued 

 My track like a sea-bird. I was a boy then J" 



How beautiful! How voluptuous 1 He even swims like a lover. 

 Byron is the Shakspeare of the " world within us," not that of 

 untaught nature, but of man in the highest state of civilization. 



Among the opinions of men, none are so eccentric as those of 

 human happiness ; and while every individual, however mean, has 

 somewhat to hope, it is only great minds who have wandered into 

 this many-coloured speculation, and laid down schemes for its reali- 

 ty. From the time of Plato to the Owenites of to-day, the golden 

 age of universal love has been imagined and sighed for ; as though 

 the lingering regrets of our first parents had clung to our natures 

 as one of its elements. The Eden of earth, by an easy transition, 

 is transfigured in the blissfulness of heaven • what was imagined 

 possible in time, is interwoven in our religious faith as the reality 

 of eternity. The Eutopiists can number names the most illustrious 

 in the history of the world, t( who have set forth the law of their 

 own minds.'** The French philosophers, nationally speculative, 

 too eager for perfection to be patient of reform, would anticipate the 

 tc final doom," and foretell a new earth rising out of the universal 

 overthrow. The Owenites of the present day, advance irrefutable 

 arguments, and with an almost divine prescience, arrogate to them- 

 selves the millenium of the christian. 



It is probable that Shakspeare had read the Republic of Plato : 

 not that a mind so expansive could not have imagined what is so 

 essential an element in poetry, but the following striking passage 

 is, at least, a precedent for successive Atalantists, where Bacon and 

 Moore might have beheld their Edens : — 



• Gonzalo. — Had I the plantation of this isle, my lord, — 

 Antonio. — He'd sow it with nettle-seed. 



* Petrarch. 



