To get the start of the majestic world,
And bear the palm alone!

If we seek to refer this preeminence to the possession of any peculiar quality, we think it may be found in the superior power of grouping men in natural classes by an insight of general laws. His penetrative genius discerns the common attributes of individuals; his dramatic genius gathers them up into one conception, and embodies that in a type; his poetic genius lifts it into an ideal region, where, under circumstances more propitious, it may find a free and full development ... Vital generalization is  thus the secret of Shakespeare's transcendent superiority over all other writers. His personages are of no locality, no sect. They belong to all regions, and to all ages. This is the essential principle of highest literature, -- that it is addressed to man as man, not to men as they are parted into trades and professions. Its audience-chamber is the globe. Its touches of nature make the whole world akin

We are not , however, to think of Shakespeare as having achieved his work by the power of his single genius. He was fortunately born. The tide of thoughts and events was at its flood. Contemporary ideas and necessities forced him on. He stood, like every greatest man, where all hands pointed in the direction in which he should go. Generations pioneered his road. Noble conceptions and a noble school of execution awaited him. Filled with the power of that spirit which prevailed widely around him and formed his environment, he carried them to the summit of excellence.

A nature affectionate and kind, witty in conversation, brilliantly gay; extreme in joy and pain; so exquisitely sensitive, that, like a perfect harp, it vibrated at the slightest touch; with an imagination so broad, that it grasped all the complexity of human lot, its laughter and its tears; so copious, that he never erased what he had written; so glowing, that it set at defiance the Unities which imprisoned it, and produced in their stead a fantastic pageant, -- a medley of forms, colors, and sentiments; with sympathies so embracing, so urgent that he become transfused into all that he conceived, and gave to a multitude of diverse individualities each a separate soul.

Without doubt, in his youth, he was not a pattern of propriety. His Venus and Adonis is little else than a debauch. As a dramatist he is certainly neither a professed religionist, nor a pronounced reformer. He copies at random the high and the low. He holds the mirror up to all that is -- the whole reality. While the lower half of the far-spread glass is therefore blotched, we believe that the upper half is his ultimate and essential self. With advancing years, he evidently dwells more upon the great characters of his tragedies, and gives increased light to moral issues. More and more, as he grows older, he tightens the strands in the colossal harp of his nature and strikes the resonant wires with a firmer plectrum. Deeper and deeper sink the pangs of affection misplaced, the memory of hours misspent. Conscience is ill at ease with the world ... Here are the last notes struck within the hearing of this world:

I commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ, my Savior, to be made partaker of life everlasting.