Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

84 THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. [ill.
His analysis, as has been said, he keeps for inferior
characters — for Cressida and Cleopatra, But for the
favourites of his imagination, Portia, Perdita, Imogen,
Cordelia, he has too tender a reverence to treat them
so. And the thing to remark here is, that Shakespeare,
who knew the heart so well, when he would represent
in his heroines the truest, tenderest, most womanly-
love, cannot express it without stirring the depths of
their religious nature. It may be said that Shake-
speare merely represented feelings dramatically; we
must not take them for his own personal convictions.
Be it so: but it is something, if he, who of all men
knew human nature best, has shown us that those feel-
ings, which touch on the higher unseen world, are the
deepest and truest in the human bosom, and are uttered
then only, when men or women are most deeply moved.
Moreover, as Gervinus has said, the feelings and sen-
timents, which rise most frequently to the lips of his
purest characters, and are at every turn repeated, may
be fairly taken to be his own.
It is not however in his best characters only that this
is seen : to his worst and most abandoned he has given
very distinctly the sense of 'the Deity in their own
bosom ' — the forecast of a future judgment.
But we need not dwell longer on the sayings of
Shakespeare's best characters, or even on their always
implied, if not expressed, faith that the world is morally
governed. We have but to ask ourselves, Would the