Shakspeare pleases by his animated and masterly represen tations of character, by the liveliness of his descriptions, the force of his sentiments, and his possessing, beyond all writers, the natural language of passion :-beauties, which true criticism no less teaches us to place in the highest rank, than nature teaches us to feel. DR. BLAIR. Shakspeare was the first who painted moral affliction in the highest degree: the bitterness of those sufferings, of which he gives us the idea, might pass for the phantoms of imagination, if Nature did not recognise her own picture in them. MADAME DE STAEL HOLSTEIN. 3925 1851 v. 14 29762 |