126 Shakspeare 



halt to examine and criticise even when they per- 

 chance talk blatant bombast, or make, for them, 

 quite impossible speeches ; wafts him in fancy 

 from scene to scene with a magic power and 

 celerity ; so subdues imagination to present sur- 

 render as to make him almost a simple child in 

 submissive faith. Inevitably so, for attention is 

 not separately called to the many processes, the 

 insignificant details, the million incidents, the long- 

 drawn-out periods and series of things as they 

 pass with slow pace through the length of times, 

 but continuously to the distilled and abstract 

 essence of them condensed into compact scenes 

 and acts by his insight and imagination ; and that 

 sometimes with sublime indifference to artistic 

 form, to the classic unities of time, place and 

 action, to a natural flow of events from characters 

 and situations. His method of mental produc- 

 tion was truly organic — in fact, just Nature's own 

 method of progressive evolution through time in 

 its work of building up an ascending series of 

 organic tissues, structures, and beings through 

 processes of minute concentrations of time, space 

 and motion : through increasing complexities and 

 specialities of structure and function, that is, up 

 to the finest mental organization, in which such 

 concentration reaches its utmost height. 



Being the close, clear-sighted and sympathetic 

 observer of nature he was — in such intimate com- 

 munion with it that he and it were one, he in it 

 and it in him — the nature-spirit so imbues his 



