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Shakspere's plays, hoping to improve them by giving- 

 them more orderly form and happy endings. It was 

 unfortunate that their laudable desire was frustrated, 

 and that their terminations of the " single married, and the 

 married happy," of " vice pimished and virtue rewarded," 

 orthodox as they wei'e, were not accepted. They made 

 the plays more representable than they were before, and 

 thus, if they could not command success being mortal, 

 perhaps, they deserved it. The public still prefer Shak- 

 spere's plays as he wrote them, bad acting plays as many 

 of them no doubt are, though it requires some nerve to 

 state it. Hviman nature is inconsistent, and perversely 

 prefers these unfinished examples to more finished ones. 

 Rude and imperfect, the fragment of an elder time and 

 of a colossal race, they Avould prefer the statue as it is, 

 than finished by meaner minds. The hand of genius has 

 been upon it, and as it is, it must remain till the end of 

 time. 



With reference to his character, we are so dependent 

 on tradition, beyond his works, for all that we know of 

 Shakspere's life, that it is very difficult to advance any 

 thing in favour of his personal disposition that could 

 either add to, or take from, the merit of his labours. He 

 was esteemed and honoured by all who knew him, most 

 by those who knew him best. The epithet of gentle 

 Shakspere, the testimony of rivals, the affection of 

 friends — captious and irritable as history knows them — is 

 sufficient to attest his unusual amiability. Beyond this 

 we know little. His purchases prove him prudent — his 

 will pious. For the rest we must turn to his works. 

 They offer voluminous evidence, and it is perhaps 

 more rational to turn to his labours for vindication 

 of his life, tlian to his life to impeach his works. It 

 is possible that he was not a precisian, but that his was 

 an earnest mind, confirmed in principle and sustained in 



