Now, this being understood, I proceed to say, using the term objectivity (arbitrarily, I grant), for this identity of truth and fact, that Milton hid the poetry in or transformed (not trans-substantiated) the poetry into this objectivity, while Shakspere, in all things, the divine opposite or antithetic correspondent of the divine Milton, transformed the objectivity into poetry.
Mr. G. observed as peculiar to the Hamlet, that it alone, of all Shakspere's plays, presented to him a moving along _before_ him; while in others it was a moving, indeed, but with which he himself moved equally in all and with all, and without any external something by which the motion was manifested, even as a man would move in a balloon--a sensation of motion, but not a sight of moving and having been moved. And why is this? Because of all the characters of Shakspere's plays Hamlet is the only character with which, by contra-distinction from the rest of the _dramatis personæ_, the fit and capable reader identifies himself as the representation of his own contemplative and strictly proper and very own being (action, etc., belongs to others, the moment we call it our own)--hence the events of the play, with all the characters, move because you stand still. In the other plays, your identity is equally diffused over all. Of no parts can you say, as in Hamlet, they are moving. But ever it is _we_, or that period and portion of human action, which is unified into a dream, even as in a dream the personal unity is diffused and severalised (divided to the sight though united in the dim feeling) into a sort of reality. Even so [it is with] the styles of Milton and Shakspere--the same weight of effect from the exceeding _felicity_ (subjectively) of Shakspere, and the exceeding _propriety_ (_extra arbitrium_) of Milton.
The best plan, I think, for a man who would wish his mind to continue growing is to find, in the first place, some means of ascertaining for himself whether it does or no; and I can think of no better than early in life, say after three-and-twenty, to procure gradually the works of some two or three great writers--say, for instance, Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, and Kant, with the _De Republicâ_, _De Legibus_, the _Sophistes_ and _Politicus_ of Plato, and the _Poetics_, _Rhetorics_, and _Politics_ of Aristotle--and amidst all other reading, to make a point of reperusing some one, or some weighty part of some one of these every four or five years, having from the beginning a separate note-book for each of these writers, in which your impressions, suggestions, conjectures, doubts and judgments are to be recorded with date of each, and so worded as to represent most sincerely the exact state of your convictions at the time, such as they would be if you did not (which this plan will assuredly make you do sooner or later) anticipate a change in them from increase of knowledge. "It is possible that I am in the wrong, but so it now appears to me, after my best attempts; and I must therefore put it down in order that I may find myself so, if so I am." It would make a little volume to give in detail all the various moral as well as intellectual advantages that would result from the systematic observation of the plan. Diffidence and hope would reciprocally balance and excite each other. A continuity would be given to your being, and its progressiveness ensured. All your knowledge otherwise obtained, whether from books or conversation or experience, would find centres round which it would organise itself. And, lastly, the habit of confuting your past self, and detecting the causes and occasions of your having mistaken or overlooked the truth, will give you both a quickness and a winning kindness, resulting from sympathy, in exposing the errors of others, as if you were an _alter ego_, of his mistake. And such, indeed, will your antagonist appear to you, another past self--in all points in which the falsity is not too plainly a derivation from a corrupt heart and the predominance of bad passion or worldly interests overlaying the love of truth as truth. And even in this case the liveliness with which you will so often have expressed yourself in your private note-books, in which the words, unsought for and untrimmed because intended for your own eye, exclusively, were the first-born of your first impressions, when you were either enkindled by admiration of your writer, or excited by a humble disputing with him reimpersonated in his book, will be of no mean rhetorical advantage to you, especially in public and extemporary debate or animated conversation.