--
No one who does not feel the passion which these objects inspire can
go along with the imagination which seeks to express that passion
and the uneasy sense of delight accompanying it by something still
more beautiful, and no one can feel this passionate love of nature
without quick natural sensibility. To a mere literal and formal
apprehension, the inimitably characteristic epithet, 'violets DIM',
must seem to imply a defect, rather than a beauty; and to any one,
not feeling the full force of that epithet, which suggests an image
like 'the sleepy eye of love', the allusion to 'the lids of Juno's
eyes' must appear extravagant and unmeaning. Shakespeare's fancy
lent words and images to the most refined sensibility to nature,
struggling for expression: his descriptions are identical with the
things themselves, seen through the fine medium of passion: strip
them of that connexion, and try them by ordinary conceptions and
ordinary rules, and they are as grotesque and barbarous as you
please!--By thus lowering Shakespeare's genius to the standard of
common-place invention, it was easy to show that his faults were as
great as his beauties; for the excellence, which consists merely in
a conformity to rules, is counterbalanced by the technical violation
of them. Another circumstance which led to Dr. Johnson's
indiscriminate praise or censure of Shakespeare, is the very
structure of his style.
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