The movement of the thoughts and passions has something in it
not unlike Shakespeare, and several of the descriptions are either
the original hints of passages which Shakespeare has engrafted on
his other plays, or are imitations of them by some contemporary
poet. The most memorable idea in it is in Marina's speech, where she
compares the world to 'a lasting storm, hurrying her from her
friends'.
POEMS AND SONNETS
Our idolatry of Shakespeare (not to say our admiration) ceases with
his plays. In his other productions he was a mere author, though not
a common author. It was only by representing others, that he became
himself. He could go out of himself, and express the soul of
Cleopatra; but in his own person, he appeared to be always waiting
for the prompter's cue. In expressing the thoughts of others, he
seemed inspired; in expressing his own, he was a mechanic. The
licence of an assumed character was necessary to restore his genius
to the privileges of nature, and to give him courage to break
through the tyranny of fashion, the trammels of custom. In his
plays, he was 'as broad and casing as the general air'; in his
poems, on the contrary, he appears to be 'cooped, and cabined in' by
all the technicalities of art, by all the petty intricacies of
thought and language, which poetry had learned from the
controversial jargon of the schools, where words had been made a
substitute for things.
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